Wildlife

A SECOND CHANCE FOR DORKO

Dorko huddled on his perch, fluffed against the white-winter chill of the Chiricahuas, and shivered at the screech of a goshawk somewhere out in the pine forest beyond the wire-mesh safety of his cage in the clearing. Something out there was dying. But not Dorko, a very lucky Mexican thick-billed parrot perched at the center of an ambitious effort by a handful of determined humans and colorful birds to mend what was broken. Next door, another of the four surviving parrots, resplendent in emerald plumage with bright red shoulder patches, emitted an alarm cry.

It should have been the signal for the tattered flock to explode into a flurry of yellow-barred green wings designed to frustrate swooping hawks.

But the flock merely cackled and squawked and eyed the skies fearfully safe for the moment behind the wire mesh of their haven, which had been built complete with an electrified fence to discourage wandering black bears and inquisitive ringtails.

Biologist, hawk expert, parrot lover, and keeper of the flame Noel Snyder paused with his load of parrot pine cones and scanned the trees around the clearing for the invisible goshawk.

Then he sighed.

These weary parrots have been an important part of Snyder's life for six years. They are the focus of a $35,000-per-year effort directed by the Arizona Game and Fish Department to bring Mexican thick-billed parrots back to the pine-scented forests of Arizona where they cackled, fluttered, and thrived for a millennium before they were swept away in a few decades by heedless hunters and eager loggers.

North America's only surviving native parrot once flapped across Arizona in the thousands. Spanish explorers in Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona were pelted with pine cones by the foulmouthed birds with a terrible bite. The parrots boast thethickest, sharpest beak in parrotdom, capable of exerting 1,500 pounds of pressure per square inch and easily slicing through the toughest cone to reach its seeds.

But they were hunted to near extinction by the 1930s. Biologists have pictures of whole wagon loads of thick-billed parrots headed for the stewpots in Arizona's booming mining towns. Unfortunately, the vicissitudes of the efforts to reintroduce the parrots have demonstrated once again, it's easier to keep Humpty-Dumpty balanced on the wall of his habitat than to piece him back together again.

"It takes a lot of learning for a parrot to make it in the wild," said Snyder, the bird expert who heads up the years-long effort to return the pine-cone-chomping parrots to the wilds of Southeastern Arizona. "They have a culture, a social structure. An introduced flock has to learn that from scratch. What we're doing here is what you do when you don't have other options."

You have to forgive Snyder if he sounds just a tad defensive.

His team of state, federal, and private biologists has struggled since 1985 to reestablish the colorful parrots in the Chiricahuas, the rugged mountains where Cochise and Geronimo played their deadly game of tag with the U.S. Cavalry in the late 1800s. That first flock of some 29 birds lasted for nearly three years before it fell victim to patrolling hawks, hungry ringtails, and a mammoth wildfire.

Most of those parrots had been confiscated from smugglers at the U.S.-Mexican border. The parrots cling to survival in the mountains of Mexico, and smugglers readily bring them across the border to supply a black market in which the endangered birds bring hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars.

The flock migrated seasonally from the Chiricahuas to the Payson area and back again. Two of the life-long monogamous pairs had chicks. But a ringtail cat stole into the nest high in the snag of a pine tree and killed two of the chicks and the defending father. Another set of nestlings starved to death. The last survivors of the original release apparently perished in the 1990 Dude Fire near Payson.

The biologists scratched their heads and compared notes. They observed that the birds seized at the border survived best, apparently because most of them had been born and raised in the wild. But many of the birds they had released were hand-reared by humans. Those birds never learned to be wary of hawks or to act like a flock.

The second batch of 17 birds lasted about a month after their release in November of 1991. About half of these parrots had been seized from smugglers, which means they probably were born in the wild and raised by free-living parrots. The rest of the birds had hatched in captivity, including Dorko, who was born in that cage in the clearing. Researchers who released that second flock, outfitted with radio transmitters, had high hopes, since the birds were strong fliers who had lived together for months so they would develop the social structure necessary to survive in the wild.

But about half of the birds simply scattered when released from their home in the clearing. Only three of the ones born in captivity, younger birds like Dorko, stuck with the main flock. The others fanned out over a wide area - all too ignorant of the lurking dangers.

They were quickly picked off, mostly by goshawks and ringtails. Goshawks are the premier winged predators beneath the forest canopy where the parrots spend their time.

The goshawks sit for hours on high perches, watching for unwary birds or squirrels that venture onto the forest floor or abide too long on an exposed limb. Ironically, many biologists believe the goshawks themselves should be added to the list of endangered species, victims of the intensive logging throughout the Southwest that has decimated the oldgrowth forests, their preferred habitat.

In any case, Snyder and his assistants spent weeks tracking the dwindling number of radio signals, finding one transmitter after another among a scattering of feathers.

The eight birds that remained together survived better. That's because birds in flocks often post sentries to watch for danger while others feed. Many beady eyes make it harder for a hawk to catch a parrot unaware. Once the parrots take wing, they generally can outmaneuver the hawks.

Birds in a flock also have a better chance of finding food. They can search a wide area and call one another when they find a fruitful tree.

They also benefit from the accumulated experience of the older birds, who lead the flock from one ridge to the next in search of whatever variety of pine has the best cone crop. Most species of pine produce a big crop only once every two to four years.

Unfortunately, the crop proved insufficient in the area where Snyder released the second batch of the parrots. The trees bore a lot of cones, but most of the seeds were puny. Snyder and his cohorts discovered this after they noticed the birds kept coming back to the cage in the clearing where they'd received ample meals for so long. Reluctantly the biologists began to put out trays of cones to keep the parrots from starving.

An observant female goshawk noticed the arrangement after about a week. It took to stopping by the feeding sites almost every day. After it picked off four parrots, the biologists bowed to reality and recaptured the four survivors, including Dorko.

The parrots seemed delighted to be back in the safety of their cages. Freedom, it seems, has its drawbacks.

Nonetheless, Snyder expects to try another release this fall. He's hoping that border patrol agents will seize more birds reared in the wild. State and federal officials also have mounted a publicity campaign to induce people who have made pets of thick-billed parrots to turn them in to Game and Fish. Biologists believe that thousands of such smuggled parrots are being kept illegally throughout the country.

In addition, thick-billed parrots are being raised in Florida and St. Louis in programs that should provide about 30 young birds annually to augment the reintroduced flock.

All this may seem like a lot of trouble for small gain. But not if you've ever seen thick-billed parrots flying free, a disconcertingly tropical touch in a pine forest.

I did, during the second flock's brief sojourn in the wild. It's a crystalline memory.

They sat on a limb in the cold sunlight, gossiping, telling stories, and disassembling pine cones like master craftsmen. One suddenly dropped from its branch, plunged toward the ground, spread its emerald wings, climbed abruptly, then flashed above the treetops. It shouted something in parrot from high overhead.

The rest of the flock answered in a cackling chorus, a parrot peanut gallery shouting encouragement, or advice, or derision.

Not speaking parrot, I couldn't tell which, and Dorko was no help. But I wanted to shout back. Maybe an apology. Maybe an attaboy. Maybe just a brotherly squawk.

Instead, I just watched, and memorized the sounds, and the feelings.

Every so often, we do get a second or even a third chance.

And so do parrots.

The parrot reintroduction project has been supported, in part, by private funds.

If you wish to contribute, contact: Nongame Donations Fund/Thick-billed Parrot Program, Arizona Game and Fish Department, 2221 W. Greenway Road, Phoenix AZ 85023; or Thick-billed Parrot Program, Wildlife Preservation Trust International, 34th Street and Girard Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19104; or Thickbilled Parrot Program, Raptor Rehabilitation and Propagation Project, Inc., Tyson Research Center, P.O. Box 193, Eureka, MO 63025.

Project scientists hope anyone who has a thick-billed parrot will donate it to the project because many birds in private hands probably were born in the wild and therefore would be especially valuable.