Hello, parrot lovers and welcome to Discover PARROTS! Welcome BACK to
subscribers! I have a new book review, another one by Rosemary Low, the famous
parrot expert, breeder and author. The title is: “Understanding Parrots - Cues from
Nature”. The author has kept and bred various types of parrot for over 50
years, and is still breeding small numbers of lories and conures. She has
travelled around the world to watch parrots in the wild and has been a
curator of parrot collections at Loro Parque in Tenerife and Palmitos
Park in Gran Canaria. In 2018, the Loro Parque Foundation presented the
prestigious “Gorilla Award “ to Rosemary Low for her being “a passionate defender of
parrots who has dedicated her life to these birds through breeding and
conservation“. This was a direct quote from Loro Parque’s Facebook page. You can
find out more about Rosemary Low and her books about parrots by visiting her web
page, linked in the description below. OK, so here is the book. I was saying
it’s a very interesting book; in fact it’s quite unique. The central idea of
the book is that, by learning about wild parrots and their natural behaviour, you can
truly understand your pet bird and thus you can offer it a better life as a
companion parrot. Even the tamest captive-bred, hand-reared
pet parrots are fundamentally wild in nature. Their behaviour is more in
tune to the life in a jungle or a savannah
than in the living room or in a backyard aviary. The only way to have a happy,
healthy parrot is to offer it some substitute for the natural activities it
would perform in the wild. Here’s how Rosemary Low states her
intention in the introduction to this book: "Many people throughout the world
are privileged to live with parrots, to interact with them on a daily basis, yet
they know little about their wild relatives.
I want them to know. I want them to care what is happening to them
and to know how they live in nature. In this book I have tried to weave together
details of their lives in the wild and relate them to what they need when kept
in our homes and aviaries." That's from the introduction. Now you will find this
idea throughout Rosemary Low’s books, and indeed in other good parrot books,
but as far as I know this is the only one that focuses specifically on this
topic and brings forth lots of scientific evidence to support it. Don’t be
afraid, it’s not a dry science book! On the contrary, the author has done a great job
of researching the scientific literature and boiling it down to a very easy to read
text. No stats and graphs, no formulae and difficult words and concepts, just
the essence of the research and its results. PLUS, the book is smartly
illustrated with photos by the author and with drawings by Mandy Beekmans, a
Dutch artist with a passion for parrots. More about her in the book! The content
of book is organised by subject, in seven parts and about forty chapters. For
example, part one is about parrot anatomy and physiology. Well, that’s my way of
saying it. You see, the actual tile is ‘The parts that make up the whole’ and I
don’t think you will find anywhere in this chapter the words
‘anatomy’ or ‘physiology’. All the science is really well translated into clear
English and you will find a lot about the parrots’ beaks and how they work, the
plumage and the wonder of flight, and so on, without ever feeling you’re reading
science. In fact, it’s more like reading short stories about parrots and their
amazing features. OK, so just to mention a few other parts of the book: part two
is about psychology, and includes subjects like feather plucking and aggression
and biting. Part three is about behaviour, and you will learn a few things about how
parrots communicate in the wild and how in captivity they end up talking, about
territoriality and what that means for your pet parrot, and so on. Part four,
‘What parrots need’, will help you discover the basic needs of parrots in the wild,
and how you can offer these conditions to your pet parrot. You know, like water,
sun light, branches to gnaw (and why?), and lots of such elements of a parrot’s
good life. Part five is about breeding. It’s not about how you can start
parrot breeding facility, build an aviary or nest boxes etc. No, it’s a lot of
information about how parrots breed in the wild, things you may not
have known and which do help IF you ever wish to breed parrots, because they
explain the behaviour of captive parrots based on what scientists discovered
about the wild ones. For example, you will understand why some species are
monogamous and breed in isolation, while others are colonial, why some parrots
live in matriarchal societies, and what this means for anyone trying to breed
them at home, a lot of types of nest site preferences of various species because
not all parrots will breed in classic, vertical nest boxes,
how the eggs are incubated and how the chicks develop until until
they gain independence. Weaning is a very important subject here because lots of
pet parrots are produced by hand rearing and you can now find out how to do this
the right way. And if you consider hand-rearing
chicks or buy one, this is very useful. Part 6 is about foods and it's of great
interest to anyone keeping a parrot. Does it need grit? Can you offer your
parrot a good substitute for natural food? Yes, you can. And there is one thing
I didn't think about, but Rosemary Low reveals
in this book: even wild parrots eat substitute food. It's clear to see this in
the wild parakeets of London, thousands of miles away from their native land,
eating seeds of British rather than Asian trees, but even in their native
lands wild parrots readily exploit human crops such as corn and they compensate
for the lost habitat due to human settlements. So don't stress about buying
gum tree leaves from Australia for your budgie. He will be fine
chewing on lettuce and dandelion from your garden! The last part is part 7: 'Stop
and think' and it's a reflection on our relationship with parrots and the
ways in which we have harmed them, both in the wild and in captivity,
how we drove to extinction some beautiful and charismatic species like
the Glaucous macaw... Many breeders will probably reject Rosemary
Low's assertion that 'breeding is not conservation', but it's worth reading the
chapter and understand her take on this, as it's more nuanced than the title. In
any case, many people will be upset by her conclusion. Let me read it out for
you. She writes" What can we do? The message is
simple - and highly unpopular. Human over-population and consumerism is
driving the destruction of the earth's habitats and resources and wildlife. Not
until humans learn to limit their families to one or two children and to
show respect for nature and all the wonderful creatures on the planet will
the tide of destruction start to turn." So yeah, these are words that make you think.
Anyway, let me show you an example of how this book translates good science into
easy to read stories. Let's go to page 85 to show you. See, it's just here, just this
paragraph. It's a study on wild green-rumped parrotlets
in Venezuela and how scientists discovered that adults have individual
contact calls. But chicks also learn these calls while in the nest and when
they fledge they too have individual calls, almost like names, like personal
names. I guess you aren't surprised by parrots'
intelligence and how they recognize individual parrots and of individual
people, but it's nice to see that again and again confirmed by scientists
studying wild birds. Anyways, my point here is that "Understanding Parrots - Cues
from Nature" is a book based on science, but it's not a science textbook. Just
take a look at the original paper referenced by Rosemary Low in her books.
I have printed it so you can see it. It's 8 pages, you know technical jargon, graphs
and the statistical analysis, all of that concentrated in one paragraph, a story
anyone can read and which gives you the essence of what you need to know about
parrots. And it's not just science. Many passages in this book are quite
poetical. Here's how Rosemary Low talks about macaws. Let me see... 'The wonders of
flight'. Okay, so she describes her encounter with the wild Lear's macaws in
Brazil. She writes: "As the sun crept over the
distant horizon, tingeing the sky above with a narrow line of red, the Lear's flew
from their roosting cliff in a steady rhythmic flight whose elegance was
hypnotizing in its beauty. The macaws were like airborne javelins. With their
long wings, they are superbly acrobatic in flight, moving up and down the cliff
face with consummate ease." So yeah this is actually typical for this author.
Rosemary Low masters a very very beautiful in English, even for people
like me who have English as a second language.
So we also appreciate the style. It's another good or strong point of
this book and all other books by Rosemary Low. Anyway, nice! There's a lot
to discover in this book and I'm sure you will think many times: "I didn't know
that" or "That's why my parrot does this". It will help you better understand parrots
in general and appreciate the fragility of your parrot's wild cousins. So I think
it's well worth reading this book. You can find this book and others on
Rosemary Low's web page, linked in the description below, or you can buy it on
Amazon or other online bookstores. If you buy Parrots Magazine or you are a subscriber,
you may find good offers for parrot books advertised in the pages of the
magazine. For example, this is January 2019 this is the latest issue and if I
go towards the end of the magazine yeah page 41 you can see this column here
Rosemary Low's books. "Understanding Parrots - Cues from Nature" was £21.99 now
16.95 pounds. So you'll find others like "Why does my parrot?"
which i reviewed before. Definitely subscribe to Parents Magazine. I'm going
to review here other parrot books. I've already picked my next two titles, but
please leave me a comment below if you have better ideas of books you wish to
find out about. Until next time enjoy discovering parrots. Good bye!