Book Review: A Century of Parrots

Abstract

Few people have had as long an association with the American Federation of Aviculture as Rosemary Low. Her contrlbutions to the AFA Watchbird commenced in 1980, with articles on Eclectus and the St. Lucia Amazon (Fletcher, 1989), and so far continue to 2007, with an account, in the first number of Volume 34, of a visit to the Colombian Andes to witness local efforts to preserve the Fuertes' Parrot, and other indigenous species.

She has also been a favored speaker at AFA conventions over the decades, her reputation having long proceeded her because of the truly remarkable number of books she has written, going back, to my knowledge, to 1968, when her Aviary Birds was published in England, the American edition (Low, 1970) appearing two years later. In the nearly forty years since then, she has written more than twenty books.

Many of these are treasured favorites in aviculturist's libraries. I will never forget the rush of sensory overload when I got hold of the TFH edition of Lories and Lorikeets (Low, 1977) in 1979. It was a feast of information, a catalogue of first importations and first breedings, and, throughout it all, there were her own engaging observations of birds in her aviaries, as well as those in zoos and other people's collections. By the time her Hancock House Encyclopedia of Lories (Low, 1998) was published, her already considerable personal experience had expanded enormously, as she had, in the interim, served as Curator, first at Loro Park, then Palmitos Park, both in the Canary Islands, and both with encyclopedic Psittacine collections.

Between these two books, there appeared her Parrots, Their Care and Breeding (Low, 1980). In one remarkable volume, now rare and expensive in its original edition, she presented concise avicultural histories of every species of parrot (and a great many subspecies) for which she could find any record. More recently, she has produced books on Macaws, Amazons, and Cockatoos, and her Endangered Parrots (Low, 1984) continues to be an important reference.

 Therefore, it was with much anticipation that I heard that A Century of Parrots was in the works. In many ways it turned out to be a very different book from the one I was expecting.

Rather than a scholarly catalogue of twentieth century achievements in psittacine aviculture, A Century of Parrots is a deeply personal work, and very full of stronqly-worded opinions.

Rosemary Low is certainly no stranger to controversy. In 1996 "Aviculture at the Crossroads" was not only presented as a lecture at the AFA Annual Conference in Concord, California, but also published in the third number of that year's AFA Watchbird (Low, 1996 a&b). The response to this warning against the potential effects of certain U.S. Avicultural practices was immediate and violent (Heere, 1996), and itself stirred up some vigorous counterpoint (Dingle, 1996, Shearing, 1996, Stoodley, 1997, Strasser, 1996).

Ms. Low's opinions on the prevalence of handraising among U.S. Breeders of larger parrots, in order to produce companion birds, have not softened. To the contrary, her views on this subject, as expressed in A Century of Parrots, are as certain to offend as many people as they did ten years ago. In Chapter 2, she declares it "a tragedy for cockatoos that a television program called Baretta, which was shown from 1975 to 1978, starred a police detective who kept a cockatoo named Fred''. On the same page, the 1980's is designated "the dark age" of aviculture, when enormous numbers of breeding pairs were set up in "soulless conditions" and "the policy was to remove all chicks at the age of three weeks for hand-rearino" Concerning that decade, she writes, "It was now the vogue to keep pairs of parrots in tiny wire cages inside buildings. The size of these cages and the total lack of...

PDF

References

Delacour, J.T. (1937) American aviculture - Ill. California. Avicultural Magazine. Ser.5,Vol 2: 125-139.

Dingle, S. (1996) Shameless Dingle! AFA Watchibrd 23(No.4):55-56.

Fletcher, V. (1989) Watchbird index (Volumes 1-15). American Federation of Aviculture.

Heere, P. (1996) Shame on you, Dingle ..... AFA Watchbird 23(No.4):55.

Lindholm, J.H. (1999) An Historical Review of Parrots Bred in Zoos in the U.S.A. Avicultural Magazine 105:145-184.

Low, R. (1970) Aviary Birds. A.S. Barnes and Company.

__ . (1977) Lories and Lorikeets - The Brush-tongued Parrots. T.F.H. Publications.

__ . (1980) Parrots - Their Care and Breeding. Blandford Press.

__ . (1984) Endangered Parrots. Blandford Press.

__ . (1987) Hand-rearing Parrots and Other Birds. Blandford Press

__ . (1996) Aviculture at the Crossroads. American Federation of Aviculture Annual( onference Proceedings, 1996: 175-177.

__ . (1996) Aviculture at the Crossroads. AFA Watchbird. 23(No.3):20-21.

__ . (1998) Hancock House Encyclopedia of the Lories. Hancock House Publishers.

__ . (2000) The Loving Care of Pet Parrots. Hancock House Publishers.

__ . (2000) Why Does My Parrot ... ? Souvenir Press.

__ . (2006) The Parrot Companion. Firefly Books, limited.

Shearing (1996) Opinions. AFA Watchbird 23(No.6):26.

Stoodley, J. (1997) Stoodley Responds to Hee re's Letter. AFA Watch bird 24(No.1 ):55.

Strasser, P. (1996) Opinions. AFA Watchbird 23(No.5):34.