Other Animals

Macaws in Tambopata, Peru. Image courtesy The Macaw Project The old and lush forests surrounding the Tambopata River in southeast Peru are home to clay licks that attract up to 32 species of parrots, including Amazons, Pionus, several species of macaws, and caiques. The Macaw Society (formerly known as the Tambopata Macaw Project) conducts long-term

Two male lions, Tibu and Jacob, recently made headlines by making a record-breaking night swim across the Kazinga Channel, a nearly mile-long river teeming with crocodiles and hippos in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. And then they did it five more times. Why did the two brothers make this perilous journey over and over? They

Many wildlife species are dubbed “elusive.” Pangolins are hard to study due to their nocturnal and secretive nature. Snow leopards are rarely sighted. Dr. Rocío Palacios, Executive Director of Andean Cat Alliance, has admitted that most of her staff has never laid eyes on the Andean cat, causing them to nickname it a “ghost.” Still,

Red-Fronted Macaws; image by Twycross Zoo The conservation of parrots is an active undertaking with many components including study, experimentation, training, and more than a few other tricks to help further declining populations of birds in the wild.  And with all this work, you’d hope that the population of rare parrots would be proliferating heartily.

Webinar: The Grey Way: Moving – Applying Behavior Techniques to Prepare Your Birds Date: Friday, August 16, 2024 Time: 12:00 pm PDT (double-check your local time with this time zone converter) Join us for a FREE, live, interactive webinar hosted by Laura Doering, former editor of Bird Talk magazine and Birds USA magazine. Our special

Webinar: Species Spotlight: Peruvian Parrots Date: Friday, August 9, 2024 Time: 12:00 pm PDT (double-check your local time with this time zone converter) Join us for a FREE, live, interactive webinar hosted by Laura Doering, former editor of Bird Talk magazine and Birds USA magazine. Our special guest, Stephanie Lamb, DVM, DABVP (Avian Practice), will

Mechanical Parrot 70154 by JM Bricklayer We like to keep our ears to the ground for anything that relates to our feathered friends. That is true when we discover how human-like they can be via scientific studies. It’s also true when we’re able to play games that give us a chance to think like a

Webinar:AFA: 50 Years of Aviculture – Protection, Conservation, Education Date: Friday, August 2, 2024 Time: 12:00 pm PDT (double-check your local time with this time zone converter) Join us for a FREE, live, interactive webinar hosted by Laura Doering, former editor of Bird Talk magazine and Birds USA magazine. Our special guest, Jamie Whittaker, AFA

It has been several years since I wrote about my parrots’ speech comprehension, and when I did so, I discussed only anecdotal evidence. I now realize that it might be useful to delve a bit more deeply into that topic, first discussing the formal studies we did with Alex, and then sharing another anecdote about

Flying burrowing parrots in Argentina. Photo by Daiana Lera One Earth Conservation (OEC) has developed a replicable model for successful parrot conservation projects in the Americas by working in places that receive little attention and where parrots are threatened. OEC works in the field with local, marginalized, and mostly Indigenous people to create local Parrot

Alexis Lours, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Mathematics is often called a universal language, understood by all intelligences in our universe—and perhaps beyond. We know crows are incredibly smart birds. The term “crow” actually refers to all 35 species in the Corvus family. Their intelligence continues to amaze us with new discoveries. Recently, carrion

Jean-Gaël “JG” Collomb, CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Network, was recently featured in an article from GW Magazine. This article focuses on one of JG’s crucial beliefs, and a core tenet of WCN, which is that while humanity is the greatest threat to wildlife and wild places, it’s humans—and to be more precise, the thoughtful

Webinar: Parrot Confiscations & Their Welfare Implications Date: Friday, July 19, 2024 Time: 12:00 pm PDT (double-check your local time with this time zone converter) Join us for a FREE, live, interactive webinar hosted by Laura Doering, former editor of Bird Talk magazine and Birds USA magazine. Our special guest, Anthony Pilny, DVM, DABVP (Avian),

Webinar: Ask the Vet with Tom Tully, DVM, DABVP (Avian Practice), DECZM (Avian) Date: Friday, July 12, 2024 Time: 12:00 pm PDT (double-check your local time with this time zone converter) Join us for a FREE, live, interactive webinar hosted by Laura Doering, former editor of Bird Talk magazine and Birds USA magazine. Our special

image by Photo by Gareth Davies on Unsplash When you see a grouping of birds, it’s called a flock. The practice of flocking serves two known purposes; to fly together during migratory periods, or to forage for food. It’s the whole safety in numbers thing. The visual appearance of a flock is an amazing view

Normally, I am not a great fan of “citizen science” when it involves companion animals—the situation in which scientists design an experiment and then ask members of the public to carry out the study The scientists then collate and analyze the data. I have good reason for being skeptical of such studies. Even with decades

The study focussed on the episodic memory capabilities of Eurasian jays.Alpsdake, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons We all enjoy memories of places we’ve been, things we’ve done, and people we’ve met. Science likes to call the more explicit memory events “episodic memory” as it more easily encapsulates specific information that we access more deeply

Today is World Parrot Day, when we celebrate some of the most incredible birds to grace the skies across our planet. Of this colorful variety of birds, the great green macaw is one of the most radiant, and unfortunately, also one of the most Critically Endangered. Less than 1,000 great green macaws remain across Colombia,

Griffin enjoys his “tickle.” In previous blog posts, I’ve written about our daily schedule with the parrots…how we try to balance meals, clean-up, playtime, exercise, and research tasks to ensure that everything gets done on a daily basis. Sometimes, however, good intentions are not enough, and occasionally life conspires to wreck our plans. At those

Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons An unsettling mystery is unfolding along California’s coastlines as a mass of Brown Pelicans are turning up on California coastlines, injured, ill due to malnutrition, and starving. All these pelicans are being picked up where they’re found and moved to facilities in San Pedro at the Los

Just last week, Spectacled Bear Conservation (SBC) deployed the first GPS collars on two spectacled bears living in Peru’s Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu. This marks a groundbreaking advancement in SBC’s work to safeguard this important bear habitat among the ancient ruins of this World Heritage Site. The SBC team collaring a female spectacled bear

Dr. Olah examines a cockatoo feather.Image by George Olah, PhD George Olah, PhD, of the Australian National University (ANU) College of Science has been on the cutting edge of conservation research, tropical ecology, and sequencing technology for many years. I have been following his work on behalf of wild parrots with awe for a long

Dr. Peter Lindsey, Director of the Lion Recovery Fund, recently wrote an opinion piece that was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle about the need for people to turn their attention away from consumerism and toward the natural treasures of our planet—wildlife. African lion Rather than purchasing the latest trick tech device, consumers can use

Webinar: The Grey Way: Designing a Bird Room for Maximum Enrichment Date: Friday, June 21, 2024 Time: 12:00 pm PDT (double-check your local time with this time zone converter) Join us for a FREE, live, interactive webinar hosted by Laura Doering, former editor of Bird Talk magazine and Birds USA magazine. Our special guest, Lisa

Webinar: Translating Parrot: Pet Bird Behavior Q&A Date: Friday, June 7, 2024 Time: 12:00 pm PDT (double-check your local time with this time zone converter) Join us for a FREE, live, interactive webinar hosted by Laura Doering, former editor of Bird Talk magazine and Birds USA magazine. Our special guest, Pamela Clark, is a well-known

A crow appears to be “anting” by spreading its wing feathers to allow ants to crawl over its body as it sits on the ground. Marie-Lan Taÿ Pamart, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons There are a variety of applicable ointments, salves, lotions, and powders that we use to ease or enhance parts of our

In March, Wisdom was photographed still dancing with potential mates, still seeking the perfect match. Photo by Jon Plissner USFWS 2023 Wisdom is a Laysan albatross that we have written about before. Back in 2021, Wisdom was 70 and still laying eggs. She was banded in 1956 as a young bird and is currently recognized

Dr. Aristide Takoukam Kamla, a former participant in the WCN Scholarship Program and Career Program, recently received a Whitley Award for his important work restoring Cameroon’s Lake Ossa for the African manatees and local communities who rely on the lake to survive. Dr. Aristide Takoukam Kamla In a world facing pressing environmental challenges, individuals like

Birds in the wild and their many species, all full of colors and shapes, are so much fun to watch. But it is often difficult to carve out the minutes from a busy day to dedicate to a bit of “watch time.” With technologies becoming more sophisticated by the day, it’s fun to discover that

African grey Griffin. Image courtesy Dr. Irene Pepperberg Last month, I wrote about how we were having issues with getting Griffin to work on a complicated 4-cup task because he didn’t like testing when Athena was at his back and how simply rotating the apparats 90° took care of the problem. Well, we then had