Parrots get new roost
YACOLT — Several Quaker Parrots who have made an unlikely home in this rural burg were a cheerful bunch on Saturday.
Joy Tindall could tell so from the birds’ familiar chirps, a far cry from angry shrieks after their most recent eviction from a utility pole transformer platform they covet.
“They’ve been really happy … watching us all day,” Tindall said, pointing to the spindly tree next to her back yard.
The green parrots couldn’t have yet known, but Tindall and a dozen neighbors and other fans had hatched a plausible solution to their quandary.
The group worked hours to install the base of a 30-foot-high nesting platform — the first of several planned to lure the 20 or so birds away from their current perches, where Clark Public Utilities fears a fire might result.
Utility workers last autumn swept in to try to capture and kill several birds, a move that shocked Tindall into action.
With a $100 gift from a Portland-area chapter of a national Quaker Parrot rescue network, Tindall and her partner, Luther Johnsson, had purchased lengths of sturdy PVC pipe and concrete mix to secure the pole base.
When finished, a chicken-wire cylinder laced with some food and starter twigs should entice the parrots to settle in, Tindall said. An orange sleeve placed on the power pole should deter their return there, she added.
Answers came from Internet resources that show how other communities have kept similar lost parrot groups at bay.
Only last Monday, Tindall and fellow birders convinced the Yacolt City Council to allow the roosting poles. The first will rise behind her home on East Twin Falls Street.
“We had to go through a lot of politics,” said Tindall, 30. The near-lifelong Yacolt resident was enthralled since she saw the parrots arrive in 2001, she said. Taking pre-law courses at Clark College, she used her mettle and other bird groups to help save her favorite brood.
Clark Public Utilities has agreed to wait and see if the plan works.
“We just had to make it such a sweet deal, for (the birds) and the town and the (Clark) PUD, they couldn’t turn it down,” Tindall said.
Creeping vines to cover guy wires and other decorations should ease fears about unsightly poles, she said.
To Tindall and Yacolt Parrot Preservation Association colleagues, seeing parrots about town is a rather welcome jolt.
The birds respond to human voices, neighbors report fewer bug problems and there’s no sign of them harassing other birds or local crops, she said.
“Plus, c’mon — we have eight months of winter,” Tindall said. Watching the parrots soar past her second-floor bedroom, she said, “It’s like a little bit of tropical summer coming to our nasty Yacolt winter.”
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