Watch Parrots to Help Parrots, in Five Easy Steps

Watching Wild Parrots at YouTube Makes a Difference

Recently, the World Parrot Trust started a channel on YouTube as a way of making some of their video content available to a worldwide audience. It has been well received by the YouTube community - there has been over 30,000 views to date!

The great thing about YouTube is that anyone can have fun watching parrots, and by doing so help raise awareness for our organization. So pay us a visit, and while you're there please also take a minute to make your visit really count. Here's how to do it:

Sign up to YouTube
Just go to YouTube and click on "Sign Up" at the top of the page, it only takes a few seconds. You don't even need to use your real name.

Visit our page at YouTube:Parrotsdotorg
Once you're registered and logged in, then you can start viewing videos at the above URL. Click on any of the 55 videos of parrots of all shapes and colours!

Make Your Viewing Count
While you're logged in watching a video you can rate what you're watching by clicking on the red stars. You can also make comments, ask questions, or click on the "favorite" tab to add that video to your list of favorites. Most importantly, when you take these actions, you help the Trust by making us and our videos more prominent on YouTube and the web in general.

Share Your Favourite Videos
If you get really serious, you can add our videos to your own playlist, and then you can share your enthusiasm for a given video by clicking on MySpace, Facebook, Digg and other buttons, sending it out to the world.

Tell your friends and the WPT what you think
Sending a message to your friends means a lot and will really help drive lots of enthusiasm for our work ...it's that simple. And we'd love to hear from you, your comments on our videos and the channel at YouTube. We hope to put up a lot more new and different parrot related material here, so send us your suggestions. Contact World Parrot Trust

Meet Tipper the Congo African Grey

Meet Tipper

Tipper was born in captivity in 1998, and eight years later relinquished to the Utah Critter Sanctuary & Ferret & Parrot Rescue Shelter.
Destined for the pet trade, Tipper was raised at the nadir of a booming market for hand-fed Grey babies. What happened between his hatching and his surrender to sanctuary is anybody’s guess. Only Tipper knows for sure. He was probably less than 3 months old when he was sold to humans who bought him, a cage, a toy, bowls and food. Less than 10 years later, Tipper has been rejected and passed from “owner” to “owner,” until he finally became homeless.

When he was surrendered into shelter, the people who gave up Tipper told their story of disappointment: Tipper doesn’t act like a well-socialized Grey: he isn’t friendly, he won’t come out of his cage, he’s not playful, he doesn’t talk all that much, he’s easily frightened, and worst of all, he’s a biter. They described how they struggled to get him to exit his cage until they discovered “toweling.” Using a towel, Tipper would be caught by the head and neck in his cage and his wings pinned to his body. Tightly wrapped and held feet up, the panicked bird twitches and thrashes until he is “set free” back into the cage and allowed to kick off the towel. (It is notable that at the shelter, Tipper has never bitten anyone and is considered to be very gentle.)

Unlike many traumatized birds, Tipper is still in overall good health, beautiful, and in excellent, full feather--an “upright and feathered” parrot. For the full story and more, please click HERE

As you will read in the rest of Tipper's story at The Kerulos Center Website, Tipper has come to the attention of many Avian Experts and lovers. We will be keeping up with Tipper and his story here as we learn any news of him finding a new forever home and over-comes his life of being cage bound and mis-understood.

Stay tuned!

Bird Lovers Dance

Most of you know of or have seen Snowball, the Dancing Cockatoo.

Today, March 4th, 2008 at 2:30pm Eastern time, you can hear Snowball's best friend and care taker, Irena Schulz of Bird Lovers Only Rescue on Animal Talk Naturally's Weekly LIVE internet radio show. Simply go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/animaltalknaturally when the show is live.

The call-in number for this show is 646.595.4693 when we open the lines for questions.

Irena rescued the now very well known Cockatoo, I fell in love with this amazing bird for more than just his amazing dancing abilities but because he is doing much to bring awareness on three important issues:
1)The cognitive abilities of animals
2)The nature of birds
3)Bird rescue.

If you missed the live show, you can listen to the recording right here!

1,200 parrots rescued at airport

1,200 parrots rescued at airport

Over 1,200 exotic African Grey Parrots have been seized from traffickers in Cameroon after 2 two shipments were intercepted by the Ministry of Forests and Wildlife in Douala International Airport.

The parrots were being illegally shipped to Bahrain and Mexico for the exotic pet trade, and are now being cared for by the Limbe Wildlife Centre (LWC).

“As you can imagine it was pandemonium here when they all arrived, squashed into tiny crates, the live birds standing on top of their dead cage mates. It was a terrible scene” says Felix Lankester, Chief Veterinarian of LWC., that has now received 2 truckloads of the dying parrots.

Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), only limited numbers of parrots can be moved or traded.

Please read the full story here!

The World Parrot Trust has more info and ways for you to help.