Flying to the rescue of parrots in distress

For parrot rescuers and their helpers, there is no such thing as a slow day. There are always baby parrots to be hand-fed, wings to be clipped, or another bird in need of a new home.

Just ask Brian Wilson of the Wilson Parrot Foundation of Damascus, or Ruth Hanessian, president of the Animal Exchange, an avian-centric pet shop in Rockville. They, along with Phoenix Landing of Arlington, are some of the very few bird rescuers in the region who specialize in saving and rehabilitating the big, smart, engaging and colorful creatures we call parrots.

It’s no small job. These birds of the order Psittaciformes — including not just parrots but macaws, conures, parakeets, budgerigars, lovebirds, parrotlets, cockatoos and cockatiels, most of them native to Central and South America (with some types hailing from Asia, Africa and Australia) — are among the most intelligent, conversational and social of birds.

At least that’s what they’ll tell you.

“They will demand and take as much attention as you can give them,” Ms. Hanessian says.

A lifetime commitment

Why the need for such good Samaritans? These exotic birds fetch $7,000 to $12,000 within the pet trade, and their owners don’t simply abandon them or casually hand them over to the pound.

But parrots and their kin are high-maintenance pets that require a lifelong commitment: Some of the larger birds can live to 100 years in captivity, and their smaller cousins to at least 20. Any potential big-bird owners should think twice about casually taking on a member of the parrot or cockatoo families as a pet, the specialists say.

And it’s when the unwary owners have fallen down on the job — by tiring of the care the demanding birds need or by getting fed up with annoying antics that the humans themselves have encouraged, or by dying — that the rescuers come into the picture.

Mr. Wilson gained a word-of-mouth reputation as a man who understood parrots in his days as a firefighter with the Laytonsville Fire Department, when he would use his own pet parrots as actors and visual aids in fire- and gun-safety talks to children at daycare centers.

Now he’s the go-to person for parrot care, and has acquired his flock of parrots, macaws and cockatoos from a range of owners who couldn’t cope.

One parrot, a Congo African Grey whose owners complained it would not let them touch it, came to him completely plucked and with a deformed beak. Another, a biter and screamer that had been returned to the pet store where it was originally purchased, was passed on to Mr. Wilson by the store’s owner.

Others arrive for a variety of reasons: allergies, household moves, changing family circumstances of any kind.

For Ms. Hanessian, who earned a degree in ornithology from Cornell University, the experience is similar: The parakeets, lovebirds, parrotlets and cockatiels she currently looks after were brought into her shop by families who could no longer manage them.

Both have developed techniques of dealing with misbehaving birds that, in some cases, approximate the way they might handle an unruly child.

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