Abstract
Travelers to distant and exotic places often see birds in market places that would make any aviculturist drool, and sell for a very few dollars. I have seen hyacinth macaws selling for $ 25 and cock-of-the-rock for about $20. That, however, is only the prelude to the story. Why are not more rare birds imported?
There are a few built-in obstacles, and a few less difficult barriers to be negotiated. Among the former are prohibitions against exporting that several foreign countries have set, and, until recently, barriers in the United States that prevent importation from certain "dirty" countries where there has been recent history of Newcastle disease or other infections affecting poultry. From that list of countries, absolutely no feathered creature could be imported legally. But this left a lot of other countries that were potential sources of rare birds. What about them?
Current federal regulations permit a family to bring in two birds as family pets. Space must be reserved in advance, then the birds are placed in isolettes, which are pressure-controlled, plastic cubicles that isolate the bird totally from the environment. If at the end of thirty days there has been no indication of a disease communicable to poultry, your birds will be released to you. There is a charge of about $100. 00 for this service. Up-to-date details can be learned by phoning (301) 436-8172.
There are two other ways of bringing birds in. One is through a privately operated quarantine station, either to rent the entire operation for a month, which is frightfully expensive ($10,000 or more, probably), or to find a friendly owner of a quarantine station who will permit you to bring in a smaller number of birds as a part of his operation. This has a number of awkward scheduling aspects, since he has to get all of his birds in at the same time, then remain in his station for thirty days. It requires careful calibration of shipping schedules to do this, and very few importers are willing to do it because they know what they are getting from their own birds, but they do not know what diseases your birds have been exposed to. If one of yours carries a forbidden germ, the importer loses his entire shipment, which is probably worth $100,000 or more. You can see the reason why this is a difficult approach.
However, United States Department of Agriculture last year opened up a new quarantine facility in Newburg, New York, which is available for persons such as the members of American Federation of Aviculture. It is a modern, well constructed and well managed facility and will prove to be an extremely important adjunct to aviculture, I'm sure.
Quarantine regulations are, as they should be, extremely strict and any deviation from the regulations is not tolerated. The safety of all of our own birds depends upon a diligent quarantine system calculated to keep the diseases outside the United States. This is in the interest of every one of us, and we should be pleased that the U.S.D.A. is administering the regulations in a diligent manner even though it may prove inconvenient at times.
Last winter I brought in an experimental shipment of hummingbirds from Peru and learned how well and how aggravating the new system can operate. It has its problems, but it also has its victories. Readers of Watchbird will be interested in the story.
The first step was to find somebody to supply the birds. I used to live in Peru and that seemed the logical place to start, since I wanted some hummingbirds. I arranged to spend a couple of weeks in the country and began to search out contacts. It helps, of course, if you can speak the language. I found a gentleman who had been in birds most of his life and he actually had on hand at the time I talked with him a collection of hummingbirds which he was about to ship to Europe. I met another very impressive collector who dealt in everything except hummingbirds but told me there would be no reason why he would not be able to provide me with what I wanted. With that as the beginning, I gained a little confidence that the project might work out.
It became necessary to convince the first contact that I could be trusted. He had had an experience with a North American herpetologist who had sent him an order for a large number of serpents, then refused to accept them after they were collected, which was a considerable loss because they died before they could be resold. So he was not trusting anybody with a U.S. passport. I finally persuaded him that I would send him a cashier's check in full before he collected the birds and that seemed to reassure him.