World's smallest parrot caught on film

If you've read this week's issue (September 17) you will have seen our news story about the world's smallest parrot being caught on film for the first time.

You can watch the footage via the BBC Earth News website. 

On the plinth: parrot lover's time of reckoning inches closer

Remember our news story (September 3) about Richard Fisher, a primary school teacher, who's to spend an hour on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth -- dressed as a parrot?

Well, Mr Fisher's 60-minutes of fame is inching closer: he takes to the plinth as part of Antony Gormley's One & Other exhibition tomorrow night between 10pm and 11pm.

He's doing it all in the name of a good cause: raising funds for the National Parrot Centre, a rescue centre based in Lincolnshire.

To sponsor Richard you can visit his website and you can watch him perform his daredevil stunt tomorrow evening via the official webcam.

How the US papers got ‘parrot fever’ all wrong

The way in which an outbreak of parrot fever in 1929-30 was reported in the press should serve as a cautionary tale to the media and the scientific community, a historian has claimed.

Jill Lepore, chair of the History and Literature Program at Harvard University, says that the public is “easily confounded” by messages about public health and that the scientific community and media have a duty to act responsibly.

Writing in the June 1 issue of The New Yorker, Ms Lepore traces the history of the furore over a psittacosis outbreak that gripped the USA in January 1930.

She says it began when one Simon S. Martin bought a parrot for his wife for Christmas. The bird died, and soon Mr Martin, his wife and daughter became seriously ill. They were diagnosed with “parrot fever” and within 48 hours, epidemiologists from across the USA had arrived on the scene, and newspapers were running the story.

On January 6, Dr Charles Armstrong, from the Hygenic Laboratory in Washington, was appointed head of the investigation. Lepore claims that, for the sake of Armstrong’s research, it was a case of the bigger the outbreak the better; a nationwide sweep was conducted to find purchasers of recently imported parrots. But by January 15 newspapers had grown sick of the story and had turned it into a national joke.

In a radio interview last week, Ms Lepore said: “They sold lots of newspapers by blaring headlines that reported deaths that turned out to actually have been due to pneumonia, for instance.

“And [they] reported death counts and issued post mortems where no autopsy had been conducted. But within days, newspapers suddenly turned around and were telling parrot jokes.”

Ms Lepore says a pro-parrot lobby formed which insisted that the parrot fever had been brought about by the imagination of a journalist. But, in late January, scientists too began dying and Charles Armstrong himself was admitted to the hospital with a fever – although he later recovered.

Later, in a report, he wrote that there had been a total of a 169 cases of psittacosis nationwide and 33 deaths.

“It’s a great cautionary tale about how easily confounded the public is about messages that are sent by the scientific community and public health community and from the media,” said Ms Lepore.

“The parrot fever outbreak made a good story, the parrot fever jokes made good jokes, but neither of them actually bore much resemblance to the facts of the matter.”

Click to listen to the radio interview.

A very sporty parakeet

A parakeet who plays golf and basketball has supposedly become a hit on video-sharing website YouTube. 

Owner Dave Cota, of Florida, USA, an entrepreneur who has worked in the sports industry, told The Telegraph: "It seems that he can play anything I show him. I have had him since he was very young and he just loves to play sports. I have had no trouble training him at all - he is very special."

Judging by the bird's performance, he might have a thing or two to teach Tiger Woods!

How birdkeepers are helping to save the orange-bellied parrot

The orange-bellied parrot is a small grass parrot found on the south-eastern coast of mainland Australia and the island state of Tasmania. It is listed on the IUCN Red List as Critically Endangered.

There are less than a hundred orange-bellied parrots left in the wild, down from an estimated 180 as noted in the Action Plan for Australian Birds 2000. 

But now, thanks to the efforts of birdkeepers in Tasmania, a further 50 could be released later this year.

You can find out more about the planned mainland recovery project via the Birds Australia website.

This Wikipedia page (where we sourced the picture above) also has a good summary of the bird's current situation.

Wildlife authorities combat trade in African grey body parts

In our January 29 issue, I wrote a brief story about a man who was arrested in Cameroon when police found him to be in possession of an astonishing 353 parrot heads and 2,000 tail feathers. He claimed that he had to collect them for a witch doctor who was treating his mentally ill brother. It was an explanation so far fetched that not even his brother would have believed him. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says the birds had been illegally trapped and their body parts were to be smuggled out of the country and sold. It's a gruseome thought, but it got me wondering just how big a problem this parrot trapping is - this surely wasn't a one-off incident. According to the WWF, the damage a new trade in African grey parrots is causing can't be underestimated. Another two men have now been arrested in Cameroon. Wildlife authorities say these men have been capturing and killing African greys for ten years, and have slaughtered more than 1,000 of the birds. It is not yet know where exactly the parrots heads and feathers are being taken, but there are obviously people out there who want them. A quick search on ebay finds hundreds of parrot tail feathers for sale but, fortunately, no parrot heads. Heaven forbid. One seller is offering more than 200 macaw and cockatoo wing and tail feathers, though. Of course, these could simply be the results of wing clipping of tail feathers naturally falling out over time, but this one sale is just the tip of the iceberg. So who is it that wants these parrot parts? It's a clear case of supply and demand. As soon as people stop demanding them, the criminals will soon stop trying to supply them. If only everyone realised that parrots are only beautiful when they are alive and well.