WHAT DOES SOMEONE who grew up with budgies wind up doing with her life? Run the nation’s largest bird-rescue organization, of course. But Eileen McCarthy hopes that a new group she helped cofound, the Avian Welfare Coalition, will someday put her rescue group out of business.

Eileen McCarthy busses Baby the cockatoo, a client at the Midwest Avian Adoption & Rescue Services Inc., the largest bird shelter in the nation.

McCarthy, executive director and cofounder of the Midwest Avian Adoption & Rescue Services, Inc. in Stillwater, Minn., took the usual path to a life dedicated to parrots. Her family always had a budgie allowed the run of the house. "Pets were part of the family. We never believed birds should be in cages. They chewed my sister's wallpaper."

However, McCarthy didn't know birds could be affectionate pets until she bought her first cockatiel in 1994. When the bird died six months later, McCarthy felt devastated - and annoyed that it had been so difficult to find good care information. "I would go to pet stores and ask, 'How do I get her to eat other stuff besides seed?' Nobody knew."

McCarthy's friends bought her another cockatiel, which escaped out an open door. After a self-imposed break from bird ownership, McCarthy got another cockatiel and then a Quaker, who "really taught me about birds. Abaco would scream for attention, but I had band-aids everywhere because he would also bite me. I thought, you don't get rid of animals, but what do I do?"

McCarthy picked up some pointers from Mattie Sue Athan, a now-well-known Quaker fan she found on the Internet, and she joined the Minnesota Companion Bird Association because she heard it had birds that needed homes. McCarthy soon took over the club's adoption program, placing 113 birds her first year at the helm. In 1999, McCarthy and four other MCBA members started their own rescue organization and recruited friends to provide temporary foster homes.

In 2000, MAARs rented its own space in an unmarked storefront in the small Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. The organization's homeless birds, which currently number 232 with more on a 90-day waiting list, peacefully coexist in the same block as a karate school, dry cleaner, barbershop and gift shop, thanks to "nice, thick concrete walls," says McCarthy.

Seventy volunteers, the largest number helping any bird rescue in this country, have helped fix up MAARS' headquarters with paint, shelves, cabinets and refrigerators. Seventeen separate indoor flights house the birds, including 100 cockatiels.

Donations, adoption fees and McCarthy's part-time job waiting tables cover the $5,000-plus it costs each month to run MAARs, including vet care, food, insurance and rent. In three short years, the group has found new homes for an astounding 600 birds.

Also an activist
Not content to take in hundreds of homeless parrots, McCarthy has also volunteered her time to help draft animal welfare legislation. Last year she saw the fruits of her labor when Minnesota passed the Felony Companion Animal bill, which makes certain animal cruelty acts felonies punishable by a prison sentence. Previously, all forms of animal cruelty in the state were misdemeanors.

Also a founder of the Avian Welfare Coalition, McCarthy hopes to introduce sweeping changes to the way pet birds are bred and treated.

And then there's the Avian Welfare Coalition, the brainchild of a group of like-minded bird rescuers, including McCarthy. Formed in 2000, the AWC wants to improve conditions for pet parrots in a big way.

Its first goal is to outlaw the sale of unweaned parrots, a practice that often results in the death of the bird because the new owner doesn't know how to properly care for it. "Most everyone agrees on this, or they should," says McCarthy.

Second, the AWC wants to regulate the breeding of birds for the pet trade, a goal less well received by the avicultural community. "It’s kind of polarized people. Aviculture's position is the status quo: promoting birds as pets. Some members of the AFA actually testified in Senate hearings against the Wild Bird Conservation Act. I have been told that their position was that capturing wild parrots was a humane act because the birds were threatened and were gratefully flying into nets to be 'saved'."

Not even some non-AWC rescuers can agree on breeding, says McCarthy, with some of them adopting the AFA's stance. However, if breeding is not curtailed - if not banned outright - the AWC sees more unwanted parrots needing homes in the future, even ones that start out life as "perfect" tame hand-raised babies.

"It doesn’t matter where a bird started out when it comes into rescue," says McCarthy. "People have spent thousands and thousands from the best breeders, and the birds still have behavior problems. Every time someone buys a baby, they’re taking a home away from an adult that needs a home. If you’re a breeder who has the best interest of birds in mind, how can you continue what you’re doing? All breeding contributes to the problem."

Finally, the AWC's third working goal is to change the public's perception of captive parrots from throwaway pets to wild creatures that deserve the best of care. Already, many people are discovering that birds aren't the easy pets they are often portrayed to be, says McCarthy. She predicts that as a result, pet-store chains will suffer a consumer backlash, which may eventually encourage them to drop birds from their inventory as they have kittens and puppies.

Some people view the AWC's goals as radical. Its own members realize that in a world where most animal organizations are still unaware of the homeless bird problem, the AWC has a long haul ahead of it. But the group's goals are worth fighting for, says McCarthy.

"In my ideal world, there would be a ban on breeding and we would then spend the next 100 years trying to take care of the birds that are already here and focus on conservation efforts. In an even more idealistic world, we would create a huge preserve where these birds could live in a more natural environment."

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