6. Hummingbird
There are numerous songs about flying creatures. The title above represents one of my favorite songs by Seals and Crofts. It’s from their 1972 album, Summer Breeze, which was their fourth. The record was a breakthrough for them and hit number seven on the billboard chart. “Hummingbird” reached number six on the pop chart.
Irene grew up in Brooklyn and Queens and was an only child. At school in the former, she didn’t fit in. She didn’t have too many friends but had a parrot as pet at the age of four. She doesn’t remember his or her name but recalls the appellations for others: Greeny, Bluey and two named Charlie Bird. Those last two couldn’t play the saxophone. As far as I know, the only animals that are musicians are the Muppets. In high school Irene was a nerd, finishing near the top. She excelled in French and history and loved chemistry. Before graduation, she considered Cornell, then Radcliffe, but applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was accepted.
She did well and before graduating met David Pepperberg, who was a few years ahead of her at the school. Graduate school for her was Harvard and the pair dated. Then they married, moving into a small studio apartment in Cambridge. In November 1973, their home burned down and John Dowling, who was David’s advisor, took them into his home. The next year Nature made its debut on PBS. After seeing an episode, Irene was captivated by animals and their communication with humans. This may have been the initiative to leave the chemistry agenda and become involved with animal behavior.
She decided on birds rather than chimpanzees because it seemed easier and she had had parrots for pets so she already knew how to talk to them. Her choice was the African Grey Parrot, which went back four thousand years. Egyptians, Greeks and Romans raised them as pets as did King Henry VIII. They were gorgeous creatures, gray with white around the eyes and a red tail. They also were known for the bonds they made with their masters.
In the beginning of January 1977, David and Irene moved to West Lafayette, Indiana. Six months later they went to the pet store, Noah’s Ark, and picked out a Grey, and named him Alex. The bird with the forgotten name weighed about an ounce, but the Grey came in at almost a pound and was ten inches tall. The ride back home was three hours and Alex didn’t seem happy about it. As a result, it took him sometime to bond with Irene. They were times when Irene wrote a journal entry saying that Alex was grumpy, stupid, crazy, dumb, grouchy and impossible.
Alex was no dumb bird, though. He was trained to identify a key that was colored silver, but also recognized a red one. Psychologists refer to what Alex had done as transfer. When people spoke, he learned. Hearing no resulted in his reply of nuh. It meant no, I don’t want to and Alex soon replaced the nuh with no. He really knew what the word meant and was capable of identifying shapes, sizes and colors. Parrots chew things, such as index cards, telephone cables, important documents – like a grant proposal – and just about anything else. All Greys do. Alex loved playing with corks. He was given one and destroyed most of it and asked for another. Irene mentioned that he had a cork, what was left of it. Alex replied, no, meaning he wanted another. Soon he replied, cork, proving he was no bird brain.
When his owner saw the devastated grant proposal, she admonished him. He responded, I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry. A short time before Alex’s document destruction, Irene said those words and he picked up on it. This African Grey could be described as haughty, precocious, social as well as intelligent. One day, Kathy Davidson brought Alex into the washroom and the African Grey saw himself in a mirror. He asked, What’s that? Davidson replied, That’s you. You’re a parrot. Alex said, What color? Her reply of gray was how he learned that color.
Alex knew what bananas, cherries and grapes were. I’m not sure which was his favorite. When given an apple, he replied Banerry . . . I want bannery. What he had done was combine banana and cherry to come up with his response. Another time at the vets’ he asked an accountant on the scene if she wanted a nut, which she refused. He added, You want corn? Her reply was No thank you, Alex, I don’t want corn. This banter went on until the bird asked, Well, what do you want?
Irene and David drifted apart and on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, she and the Grey were on their way to O’Hare Airport for a flight to Tucson, where she had a job at the University of Arizona. Checking in, Irene gave the clerk two tickets, one for Alex Pepperberg. Seeing the bird carrier, the agent mentioned that United Airlines didn’t sell tickets to pets. Despite her arguing, Irene couldn’t convince the agent so she asked for her supervisor, who disagreed with the clerk. Seeing three boxes at the bird owner’s feet, the agent inquired what they were. Irene replied that this was the luggage for the Grey. When the clerk sarcastically asked, And I suppose you ordered him a meal? Irene answered that she had, saying, He’s getting the fruit plate.
In Tucson, Alex had two other Greys to keep him company, Alo and Kyo. When either of the pair was asked a question, Alex might offer the answer before either of them did, or say, You’re wrong. In general, Grey Parrots can talk and sound just like their owners. Deborah and Michael Smith have a Grey named Charlie Parker. Deborah related an incident with an obnoxious insurance agent where she wasn’t making much progress and was quite frustrated. Charlie knew what was happening so imitating Michael, he said, I’m going to kick your xxx, you xxx xx x xxxxx. As you can see, parrots are proficient with different languages.
One experiment that was tried involved linguistic analysis, using sonograms. A technician would be able to identify the speaker as a person. By comparing a human’s patterns with that of a parrot, there should be a difference, but the sonograms were very similar. This applied to Alex, a bird that had abilities that he wasn’t supposed to have. I said it before, but I’ll say it again: this was one smart bird.
Bernd Heinrich worked with ravens and crows. He tied a string almost three feet long to a piece of meat and tied the free end to a tree branch. He wondered if ravens had the intelligence to get the meat. The birds landed on the branch and little by little brought the string up until they had the food. When a similar trial was done with Greys, they did exactly what their cousins had done.
Alex was friendly with some parrots, but not all. The toys that could talk back or played songs really annoyed him. When he encountered one of the former, he was ready to shred it. The talking back doll was removed. Someone sent him a musical toy and he tried to talk to it. Nothing happened. He bent his head over expecting a tickle, just like the lab people would give. Again there was no response. Alex replied, You turkey. Apparently, he didn’t respect all things whether they could fly or not.
At the end of a typical day, Irene was alone with the birds. Kyo went to his cage, but the trainer ate with Alex and Griffin, another parrot. She had to share and the parrots loved green beans and broccoli. If Griffin had one more bean than Alex, the latter would squawk, with Alex saying, Green bean. A similar response came from Griffin if he were shortchanged. After a few days, Alex would utter, Green, and Griffin chimed in, Bean. They repeated this display with even more gusto.
Alex was terrified of storms, which were quite common in Indiana, especially tornadoes. He was at Pepperberg’s home one day when he became upset, saying, Wanna go back. There wasn’t any storm. Alex had seen two screech owls and was spooked. Irene closed the curtains but that didn’t help. She had to take Alex back to the lab. This was the last time he was at the house. That was the only way to calm him down.
Irene was tenured at Arizona University, but even then had no job there when funding was cut for her program. She took sabbaticals and gave presentations back east, some for as long as a year. She could have stayed in Tucson, except she had to teach a biology class, not her specialty. While at a meeting one day, Pepperberg left frustrated because the university left her out in the cold. She came back to the lab, infuriated. Alex could hear her steps and probably saw that she wasn’t happy. He didn’t whisper, as usual. Instead he said, Calm down.
Irene was doing great things, but funding was always a problem. Michael Bove invited her to MIT’s Media Lab, which was a nerd’s paradise. She spent a year there and continued her work. Alex and some of the other parrots joined her. Because Greys were easily bored, Alex gave wrong answers at times. The project at Media Lab wanted to see if the Internet could keep the birds busy. Fortunately, Alex didn’t shred the mouse. The parrots were curious and being online made a difference, even to Alex. They were a few options but our friend opted for the music, grooving to the tunes.
One day Irene received an email with sadness in the subject line. It said that one of the Greys died in the cage. It sounded like Alex the amazing had been the one, and indeed it was. Those in the lab were sad and distressed, especially Pepperberg. It took her days to regain her life. Alex was a star of television, newspapers and magazines. His trainer would be bombarded with sympathy on the phone, in the mail and through emails. So many people knew of the African Grey. There were numerous videos and programs about the smart and smart Alex. Irene felt she had to add more by writing Alex & Me: How A Scientist And A Parrot Discovered A Hidden World Of Animal Intelligence – And Formed A Deep Bond In The Process. I highly recommend this book for its laughs and insight.
There are over 300 species of parrots, which are native to Australia, Africa, Central America, Asia and South America. The United States had its own, the Carolina parakeet, but it became extinct in 1918. Parrots come in an assortment of radiant colors: blue, green, red, yellow, purple, black, orange and gray. Most are green. They can be from a few inches to three feet in length, with much of that being the tail. The word parakeet describes many different species of parrots with the difference being the length of the tail. Other parrots include cockatiels, lovebirds, Amazons, macaws, rosellas, cockatoos and lories. Other terms for these birds are budgies and conures.
Poaching threatens parrots because of their demand as pets. The young are captured and shipped away to countries demanding them but are packed haphazardly. Great numbers perish on the trip, as many as 60% on route to pet stores. Some new owners grow disappointed with their parakeet since he doesn’t talk as much as they had hoped, or his jokes aren’t that funny. The result may be to release the bird to make it on his own in a park or rural area. This may have been the case in San Francisco.
Mark Bittner moved from Seattle to Telegraph Hill in that great city. He had no steady job so he struggled for food and a place to sleep, settling on places in the park, on the street or in abandoned buildings. He even slept in a broken down VW van. For food, he might see a dime or quarter on the street and this would be enough to buy a roll. He went to a bakery, put his money on the counter and asked for a roll. The clerk placed one in a bag but then added a few more things. Mark grabbed the bag and left before the sales person said a mistake was made. When he returned a few days later, a different person did the same thing as the first clerk and others repeated the kind gesture. Only one didn’t.
One spring, Mark was given the chance to live in a studio apartment in exchange for running errands and housecleaning for a woman named Maxine. He jumped at the chance and worked for her for four years. When Maxine’s health failed, her cousin Edna took over her finances and soon placed Maxine in a nearby nursing home. While Edna was selling the home, Mark could move into it and maintain it, staying until it was sold. By this time he became acquainted with dozens of parrots that flew near the house. They were timid at first but Mark soon won them over, even feeding them. A few times the parrots squawked for his attention and food. His knowledge about them grew and he even named them, based on their looks or something they reminded him of. There was Catherine, Connor, Sonny – a bully named after a character in The Godfather – Eric, Erica, Lucia, Marlon and Mozart, whose name was soon changed to Costanze, Wolfgang’s wife. Bittner gave some of the females names belonging to males and vice versa. In those instances, he came up with an appropriate name. Maybe he should have chosen appellations that were void of gender bias.
When Mandela was flying low, a cat made contact, resulting in the former screaming. Still, he battled and let the feline know that he wouldn’t get away with it, but Mandela suffered nerve damage. Bittner put him in a cage and tended to his needs. Mark brought him outside daily, but still the bird bit him, eventually realizing that Bittner was helping him so he backed off. It would take some time for Mandela to heal, but Mark took precautions to make sure his feathered friend would survive when he released him. The day came and Mandela was let go, but after a while Bittner didn’t see him. One rainy day, Chomsky flew in for a feeding. Because of the rain, identification of the parrots was a challenge but Mark looked him over. Shortly after that, he saw that the parrot was Mandela and had survived.
One day after feeding, most of the flock left, flying north toward Fisherman’s Wharf. Paco hung around for a bit but then decided to join the others. However, he flew east. Soon the mass of parrots changed directions moving southeast. In a short time Paco and the others were together. These creatures are quite intelligent. My account of Irene and Alex earlier should have convinced you that parrots were some of the smartest creatures on the planet. I’m sure Mark’s feeling about them mirrored that idea.
The former homeless individual brought other parrots into the house, but only if they needed help. Eventually he hoped to let them go and join the flock. Tupelo, named after the song by Van Morrison, was a juvenile parrot that had been assaulted by other birds and Mark brought her inside, tending to her. The two became close and Morrison’s parrot was improving, but one morning she had moved too close to the heater and perished. Bittner was deeply afflicted, realizing how attached he had become with Tupelo. He had witnessed other deaths of the birds, but this instance left him in shambles.
He recovered and felt that he had come a long way since spotting the first parrot. His knowledge was greatly enhanced by talking to veterinarians, scientists and birders. He became involved with photography and even found that computers could be friends, sort of. He became acquainted with Telegraph Hill’s history and Bohemian America. He also reduced the time and days he fed the parrots. At the same time he was also writing about Telegraph Hill. Judy Irving contacted him wanting to film the parrots. She was in a relationship but it was going sour. Mark and Judy spent a great deal of time together working on the project. With time they fell in love.
Bittner had done the same thing with Telegraph Hill, San Francisco and the parrots. One day he read Judy a statement of Gary Snyder, after she realized that he had found his place in the country.
The city is just as natural as the country; let’s not forget it. There’s nothing in the universe that’s not natural by definition. One of the poems I like best in ‘Turtle Island’ is “Night Herons,” which is about the naturalness of San Francisco.
Bittner had to find a new place to live and found one in the home of friends in Piedmont, who said he could stay for as long as it took to finish his book. After a year, he moved to a real house, part of a compound of cabins. Judy moved in with him but the compound was soon on the market. The pair figured that the solution was to buy the compound but developers outbid them. Eventually, their deal fell through and after fifteen months and three attempts, Judy and Mark got the property.
Mark wrote the book, The Wild Parrots Of Telegraph Hill: A Love Story – With Wings. Thanks to Judy, a documentary of the same name came around the same time.
I mentioned Sy and Howard earlier and their farm in New England. They live there with all kinds of animals, and love those creatures. Sy is like a veterinarian without the practice, as well as a vegetarian. There may have been some animal at the dinner table in her kitchen, but never on a platter covered with gravy. Montgomery encountered many different species on her numerous nature trips abroad. In and around her home lived a flock of chickens. Sy and Howard purchased chicks but only two roosters, so far. On occasion the newly bought batch of chicks included some of the males. They all got along although the roosters could be bossy at times. Chickens are smart creatures although they do some strange things at times. This applies even to those that are not factory farm fowl.
One of Sy’s brood was Pickles, who was somewhat challenged. After she suffered an injury she was given a collar similar what cats wear after being neutered. To keep away from the others, Pickles was relegated to the bathroom downstairs, where she stayed on the sink’s edge. This setup in the bathroom resulted in not many guests being very happy about this bird watching them.
For a while Bobbie and Jarvis were tenants on the farm. They had their own chickens, who hung out near the kitchen window. Bobbie discovered why. The birds heard the classical music on the radio in the kitchen and stayed close to the sound. With the music turned off, the chicks moved near the picnic table. I wonder if they would have hung around for the notes of Charlie Parker. Another tenant was Elizabeth Kenney who loved animals and also had her own flock. Some of the birds spoke in a voice that was only for Liz. This resulted in her being given the name of the Chicken Whisperer. She called, C’mon, Janny, c’mon boit-boit. Jan then sat on Elizabeth’s legs while the owner quietly whisped: Boit-boit-boit. The hen softly responded, Boit-boit-boit.
Some chickens hatch and immediately know how to walk, scratch, run and peck. They also follow the first moving object in their vision. You could just turn out to be a mother. Studies have shown that an average chicken can recognize more than a hundred others of its kind. Yeah, but can they remember their names? In one experiment, chickens were given a reward if they pecked at a certain button. They received more if they waited with their pecking, which they did. This behavior happened 90 percent of the time. One thing that is not missing from chickens is smarts.
At six foot and 150 pounds, you won’t find a bigger bird than the cassowary. Found in North Queensland, Australia, it won’t win any beauty contest despite its brilliant color. No other bird murders more humans, thanks to its three pronged feet. Each has a dagger-like claw that can kill. Despite this, Sy was on a trip hoping to spot one. That wasn’t an easy task since the cassowary is so elusive. You can be in an area with the monster a few feet away and not even know it’s there.
Not unexpectedly, Sy saw plenty of wildlife but no cassowaries. It was the last day of her trip, so she gave it another try. She hiked up Bicton Hill and once again failed to see a cassowary. There may have been one nearby, but those beasts are sly. Around noon she tried once more but had to be on a bus that left at 3:30 in the afternoon heading to the airport. Again there was no cassowary sighting so Sy had to admit that her search was over. Maybe someone was smiling down on her since the bus departure was delayed until 5 pm because of skydivers who weren’t through with their exercises. This gave her a few more minutes. This time she came almost face to face with Clyde the cassowary. Her trip was a success.
Hummingbirds are infinitesimally smaller than Clyde. From the family Trochilidae, they are among the smallest birds, usually about three to five inches in size. The smallest is a species from Cuba, the bee hummingbird, which is almost weightless. Sy helped her friend, Brenda Sherburn take care of a pair of chicks on the west coast. At birth they were about the size of a kidney bean. One was two days older than the other, and that’s how they identified them. Names weren’t meant to be given to hummingbirds since people thought that doing so would result in caretakers becoming too close to the birds.
Brenda was saddled with the task of feeding the two young birds every twenty minutes. The meals consist of fresh or frozen fruit flies, which her husband, Russ, handled. The only break came when the hummingbirds were sleeping. If a feeding cycle is missed, the birds can expire. Too much food and they can explode. After a few days, the birds were doing so well that Brenda and Sy agreed to name them after all. The older became Maya and the younger Zuni. Once the two were older, they’d have to catch their own fruit flies and gather nectar from blossoms.
Full-grown hummingbirds can fly backwards, upside down and they can hover. They also have to eat often since they beat their wings at 60 times per second, which requires great amounts of energy. Diving out of the sky, some of these birds can move at over 60 miles an hour. Based on their size, the Allen’s hummingbird is the fastest bird in the world, diving at 385 body lengths per second compared to 200 for a peregrine falcon and 207 for the space shuttle.
A mother hummingbird must depart the nest for food for her young ten to 100 times a day. She has to get tired. A hummingbird needs fifteen hundred flower visits and about 600 insects daily. If a human were as active as a hummingbird, he would require 155,000 calories a day. Consuming those calories would result in the human’s body temperature reaching 700 degrees Fahrenheit. I mentioned the shuttle earlier and ignition comes to mind, just like what would happen to the man. It may be a good idea to stay away from the buffet.
Because of the energy demands, a hummingbird must eat every fifteen minutes or so. They have to store up enough fat to be able to fly 500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico. If these birds still don’t impress you, consider their trips south. They need food so they fly to Central America and South America in winter. Those who reside in the tropics or friendly confines of the American south may not move south of the equator. Some species travel to southern Alaska or the Yukon in spring. Anyway you see it, that is some journey and they do it without GPS.
Montgomery wrote about her experiences with all the mentioned creatures in her book, Birdology: Adventures With A Pack Of Hens, A Peck Of Pigeons, Cantankerous Crows, Fierce Falcons, Hip Hop Parrots, Baby Hummingbirds, And One Murderously Big Living Dinosaur.
Stacey O’Brien inherited her love of animals from her father, who worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. She went to school at Occidental College, attending classes at Caltech and received a degree in biology from the former school in 1985. She and her sister, Gloria, were actors as children and also sang on numerous record albums, in commercials and movies. Most likely you heard them but didn’t realize it was the duo.
Before graduating, Stacey had a part-time job at Caltech’s Institute of Behavior Biology concerning primates. This was followed by a full time job, studying owls. One day a young owlet needed a home and she was offered the chance to be a foster parent. The little guy was only a few days old and she accepted the mission. She could study owl behavior for some time since the owl couldn’t be released into the wild since he had an injured wing. She brought the critter home on Valentines Day and called him Wesley.
She discovered that owls lived to the age of about fifteen or twenty years in captivity. Then she heard about feeding. Owls survive on one and only one source of food: mice. The father hunts for them and has quite a job since each child needs six rodents per day. Don’t forget that he also needs some for himself and his mate. If there are five babies, he has to catch over three-dozen mice, no easy task.
Wesley’s hunter would be Stacey but fortunately, she could buy them, dead or alive. She killed some and discovered a way to end their lives so the victim wouldn’t suffer. Rats were another option. Because of their size, they had to be cut up. This could be done on frozen rats as they could be sliced into owl-sized morsels. If an owl is fed any other diet, he won’t survive. Wesley would need all the nutrients supplied by the mice, which he swallowed whole. His saliva did the trick of digesting his prey, and quickly – say in an hour. Certain parts such as the bones and fir became part of a pellet that owls expelled.
Humans rely on visual means for observation; dogs have a remarkable sense of smell; owls had a keen sense of hearing. They don’t use echolocation like bats or dolphins, but hone in through a sound picture of all the other animals and nature’s sounds. This is done though the conjunction of the satellite-dish face of the owl, brain involvement and ear placement: one ear is high up and the other lower. A mouse beneath three feet of snow can’t hide from an owl if the former has a heartbeat.
Besides the unusual placement of ears, owls can do some strange things. They can manipulate their skin and create different looks, which has to be kind of spooky. With their long necks, they have the ability to rotate their head a bit more than 180
. As you guess, this can freak people out. One time Wesley faced Stacey over his back. When she realized the situation, she admonished him, Wesley, don’t scare me like that! He must have seen The Exorcist too many times.
O’Brien managed the task of mouse management for Wesley, but she had plenty of adventures. Even though she wasn’t thrilled about the butcher business, she picked some live mice and put them in the back seat of her car in a paper bag. She needed gas so she pulled into a station and was about to talk to the attendant, when she noticed the expression on his face after he gazed into the car. She knew what was happening. The mice were running around and she had to capture them. She didn’t round them all up and some wrecked havoc on her car. One died in the car and Stacey had to put up with the stench for a while, driving with the windows open.
Stacey lived with her friend Wendy, renting a room. The house was soon to have stately visitors so they cleaned, prepared for their guests and cleaned some more. Naturally, the owl lady had concerns because of Wesley and his food. Again she had some live ones and she put them in the bathroom. She went to help Wendy for a while and returned to notice that two had escaped. The guests arrived and Stacey found one of the escapees in the drier, whom she rescued and released. The other was still AWOL. On the second day, Stacey found some black poop outside the guest room. Before long the lady visiting opened the door and inquired of her, Excuse me, have you lost a mouse? Stacey replied that she had but then realized that he was in the guest’s room. This visitor wasn’t bothered at all and said, You know, many people keep owls in England. There was a great deal of concern for naught.
Owls are so dedicated that they mate for life. If one of the pair dies, the other is deeply affected by it. He or she may get depressed and soon die as well. Stacey had her feathered friend but dated a few guys – or at least met them. The names aren’t important. One wasn’t crazy about nature so that didn’t last. Another was jealous of the bird, so that one didn’t work out, either. If it wasn’t Wesley, it had to do with what nourished him: the mice. In a way, her owl guided her to choose someone who he approved of.
Stacey went to the hospital and had emergency surgery. In her absence, Wendy looked after Wesley, who accepted his temporary caretaker. This can be attributed to how smart Wesley was, realizing that Stacey was ailing. He may even have known she was in the hospital. When she returned, she was homebound for two months of recuperation. She didn’t mind as she would be with the owl and could use the rest. Wesley was happy, too.
Stacey never trained Wesley to talk, but spoke to him just like a parent did to a child. After a while, her pet knew what she was saying and responded accordingly. If she offered him a mice – she didn’t use the singular because owls are bad with grammar – he understood. If Wesley was starving, he showed it by his response. When he was full, he would turn his head and she knew he had enough to eat. If she said they would play in two hours, he sensed when it was playtime. If she forgot, he reminded her. They communicated and did it well even though he didn’t speak. He made plenty of noises, some quite alarming.
Stacey would later learn that her grandmother also had a barn owl. Weisel, whose name was really similar to Wesley, also couldn’t survive in the wild so both grandparents were caretakers. Her grandma died and Stacey found out about Weisel from her grandpa, who was some kind of cousin to Stacey’s pet, obviously.
This isn’t the end of the story. For more insight about owls, Wesley and Stacey, read her book, Wesley The Owl: The Remarkable Love Story Of An Owl And His Girl. It’s very entertaining. I will relate one other incident about Wesley. As he aged, his talons needed to be trimmed – they were bothering his master. His beak grew as well and was a concern, needing filing. Of course, Stacey’s animal friend wasn’t thrilled about what this involved. She talked to him, mentioning what she would do and assured him that it was necessary. She would not hurt him. Stacey conversed this way for a few days. When the day of the trimming occurred, Wesley accepted the process, trusting in Stacey. The talons and beak were filed down. The two of them had a very special relationship.
I’ll talk more about an incredible eagle later, but for now mention that the bald ver