by Wolf » Mon Sep 05, 2016 7:27 am
In so many ways the question that was asked is a loaded question and no one answer can do it justice. As I said, I would not hesitate if they could survive on their own, right here where we live. My birds are from both the New World and the Old world and they are all bonded to either myself or my Lady, so I could not free them any place other than here or they would not have the choice of remaining or not. They have all grown up here and would not have an immune system set to deal with the diseases that they would encounter in their native areas, their immune systems are set for here. But in any case not one of they birds that I have could survive the winters here so in most ways, for me it is a moot point.
As part of my thoughts about this question, I think that we should also look at the lives of those parrots that escape from their caregivers. These are all birds that are effectively returned to the wild, wherever they are living at, at the time. Many of them are recovered and many are not and if they are not recovered either dead or alive, we don't really know what happens to them. Some of them will be rescued by individual and never returned to the party they escaped from, some are turned in to rescues or vet offices or even pet stores and still we don't know what has happened to them as there is often no real attempt to find the owners of these birds. I hope that this is what happens with most of them, but I suspect that many of them are killed or die from exposure, or other things such as starvation or dehydration.
I often wonder, since the arrival of Kiki, Senegal and also from the time that Kookooloo took a couple of sightseeing tours around the holler that I live in, why our birds fly and then are not recovered. One of the things that come to mind concerns the nature of the bird in the uses of their flock calls.
When Kookooloo took her fly about, she circled back to very close to the house and the first flight I climbed the tree and she rode my shoulder down to the ground, at least until my first foot hit the ground and then took off again. She still circled back to the house but landed in a tree that I could not climb, I had to knock her off of that branch using another tree about 30 feet long and small enough for me to lift, very difficult, but I did get her back. One of the things that struck me was that she did call for me using the whistle that we used in the house fro between rooms, but not the loud flock call of which she is capable. I wonder if this was her answer to staying quiet in unfamiliar territory where she was scared, and still trying to let me know where she was at since she could easily see me from where she landed. I will never know.
Many of the birds that fly due to human error are scared and do not call out. I understand that they are scared and that being alone and calling out is dangerous, but what would happen if we recorded their flock calls and played it back amplified to the levels that they use them in the wild, would they respond and return to us or what? Or would we have to use the calls that we normally use to respond to them in our homes, amplified to the same degree? Are they waiting to hear that one call that tells them that it is us that is calling so that they can either respond or come back on their own? Again I doubt that I will ever know.