Abstract
Sometimes when I am in my back yard feeding the chickens or pulling weeds, I hear a "squau/e" followed by '' Knock it off''' in the same voice, hoarse but high, rather like a man trying to imitate a woman. I know that both sides of the conversation come from the same source: Clinger, my neighbor's military macaw.
That Clinger even had a chance at life is thanks to his owner, Susan Tharp, a former Sea World of San Diego aviculturalist now transplanted to the Pacific Northwest. One summer day in 1979 when tending the military macaws, she found an egg on the floor of the cage. She found two more on alternating days, again on the floor since the birds had no nest box. These were intended to be show birds, not breeders but obviously they did not agree.
Most eggs at Sea World are incubated to guarantee a better survival ratio, so Susan took them out and asked where to incubate them. The answer was, "Nowhere;' because there were no proper facilities for raising parrots; Sea World breeds waterfowl, penguins and sea birds.
Feeling that these eggs were precious commodities, Susan decided to do what she could for them and put the macaw eggs in a waterfowl incubator which was kept at 95 °F, figuring this at least would give them a chance. And all three did hatch in August, weighing in at 20 grams. Before the babies completely absorbed their yolks, Susan reinforced their feeding response by periodically lifting their heads and moving their beaks with her finger the way a mother bird's beak would. When the remainder of their yolks was completely absorbed, the babies were ready to begin eating. All their plumbing proved to be in good working order, for they all defecated right after feeding, a healthy lime green.
Every night the birds went home with Susan in a shoe box, enclosed in sawdust and eiderdown on top of a towel and sitting close together in an ash tray. They spent their days in a Sea World brooder. Susan fed them whenever their crops emptied. Their formula was based on Wheat Hearts, Karo syrup, egg yolk, water, Sea Tabs (a multi-purpose vitamin originally developed for marine animals), dicalcium phosphate, and chopped lettuce.
The birds were weighed before each feeding and soon learned that a trip to the torsion balance scale meant food was to follow. They were not shy about voicing their anticipation and each weighing session was accompanied by burbles, gurgles, and hoarse mumblings. Susan fed them with a bent spoon which, when at home, she kept on the windowsill for easy access and hoped no one would get strange ideas about her activities. She sterilized food equipment before each use, knowing that these human-fed babies would not have the antibodies that a bird would get in the food regurgitated from its parent.
After feeding each baby-never more than ten percent of its body weight so that the crop would empty before the next feeding-she cleaned off their beaks with a moistened Q-tip to make sure the food that tended to collect around their faces would not cause any beak distortion. She also spent a few minutes handling each one to accustom them to being touched.
At one week the birds could stand by themselves. Their eyes, which at first showed as pale blue spots, began to look darker under the skin and to grow more prominent. They began to open at three weeks and the beaks turned dark grey. They graduated from the bent spoon to a syringe and then to a turkey baster and seeds at three months. By that time, they had most of their feathers and made some attempts at flying, especially when Susan walked into their cage at feeding time. They would leap onto her from their open perch, flapping mightily, and cling hard wherever they landed-on an arm, a leg, a hip. There they would stay while she fed each one its formula. Clinger received her name because she was the most stubborn clinger of all who, even as a tiny youngster, had clamped onto her bent spoon so hard that she could be lifted up by its handle.