Full-time job
Not surprisingly, parrot rehabbers love birds first and rescue second. Most already have parrots or work with animals before gaining recognition as "the guy who knows all about birds," or "the nice lady who takes in cockatiels".

Beyond their shared love for parrots, rehabilitators are high school teachers, real estate agents, housewives, artists, veterinarians and law enforcement officials. They are retired, middle-aged, and high school students.

His pet parrots helped Brian Wilson recover from a serious auto accident and inspired him to rescue.

A surprising number have made parrot welfare their full-time occupation, spending their days caring for birds with health or behavioral problems; driving hundreds of miles to pick up new ones; and speaking to anyone who will listen about the importance of proper parrot care.

A reason to recover
Brian Wilson, founder of the Wilson Parrot Foundation in Damascus, Md., decided to rescue birds full-time after his two companion parrots helped him recover from an auto accident.

Wilson, a retired firefighter, had trained his three parrots to perform tricks at public talks he gave on fire and firearm safety. Driving to a talk one day in 1995, Wilson lost control of his car and crashed into a parked van.

Rocco, a green-wing macaw Wilson had owned since he was 14, was crushed to death in Wilson's lap. Wilson sustained a serious brain injury that paralyzed the right side of his body.

"The doctors told my parents I would never walk or talk any better than a two-year-old," recalls Wilson. But doctors had not banked on the therapeutic effect of Wilson's two surviving parrots, Rosebud, a double-yellow-headed Amazon, and Rocco's mate, Daisy, a blue-and-gold macaw.

"They taught me through repetition how to talk again. They were my inspiration. Because of the role they played in my recovery, I decided to put all my efforts into rescuing and rehabilitating parrots."

Wilson, who still walks with a limp but whose speech betrays little evidence of the accident, soon will move into a four-bedroom house to accommodate his 19 rescue birds.

Breeding about-face
Breeding parrots can be lucrative, with some larger species, such as cockatoos and macaws, selling for thousands of dollars. However, more than a few rescuers once were breeders who decided to abandon their dream of raising birds after they saw the devastating effect uneducated owners had on parrots.

Sybil Erden, director of The Oasis Sanctuary, a 1300-square-foot facility on 72 acres near Benson, Ariz., stopped breeding lovebirds in her back yard in Phoenix seven years ago when she realized she was "keeping three out of four birds because I didn't like the people who wanted them.

"A lot of people would say, 'I want to buy a bird for my kid.'

Former breeder Sybil Erden turned to rescue after she decided her buyers were not serious enough about owning a bird.

But they had no idea of what to feed a bird and no vet lined up. Others would try to negotiate price, saying they couldn't afford more than a certain amount. I would say, 'If you can't afford this, you can't afford to take the bird to a vet,' and they would say, 'Well, I'll get another vet.'

"You begin to realize there are not a lot of people out there who are willing to provide the amount of care and long-term commitment needed to seriously own a bird."

Working with whooping-crane chicks for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service whetted Dee Thompson's appetite for raising parrots. "I was really ready to care for baby birds on my own in a trained scientific and professional manner," says the Maryland rescuer.

Edith and Archie, blue-and-gold macaws thought to be 50 years of age, retired to The Oasis after raising over 200 chicks.

Thompson had gathered all the equipment she needed and the birds she wanted to breed--Quaker parakeets, citron cockatoos and Timnehs--when she decided she could not go through with her plans in good conscience. More pet birds were being abandoned at the animal hospital where she worked; in 1986, Thompson took 15 of them home.

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