The Parrot Who Owns Me Quotes

“Tiko has taught me, a sometimes headstrong and often ferociously independent woman, the importance of interdependence, the importance of taking care, and the importance of being cared for. It's a necessary part of being human and being connected to the world around us that we realize and acknowledge our vulnerability and the vulnerability of all creatures, and that we act in accord with that knowledge. It is critical that we allow the empathetic and altruistic part of ourselves to be the guiding force behind the way that we conduct our lives, whether we give to those less fortunate than ourselves, take care of the magnificent creatures that share our world, work tirelessly to preserve native habitat or separate each strand of an unruly mass of hair so gently that we do not wake our loved one as she sleeps.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“But vigilance comes at a cost: a vigilant animal can't court of forage”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“Miraculously, he began to fluff his feathers and raise his wings. I slowly moved him into the shower’s gentle stream. It had been nearly two months since he’d last bathed; he was so excited that he almost fell off my hand. The water ran off his back in tiny silvery beads. He flung his wings out and rubbed his wet head against his back. He was acting in the same manner as the bathing parrots I’d seen in the Amazon.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“The clear-cuts soured all of us,”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“The big-bodied parrots (cockatoos and macaws) need large holes in large trees for nest sites. These trees are disappearing at an even more rapid rate than the forests themselves, because they are the first that loggers cut.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“One pair of Chestnut-fronted Macaws preened each other for nearly an hour. Suddenly they stopped, made eye contact, and then the male, with his head bent low, climbed onto the female’s back. The female averted her tail, and he slid his tail under hers so that cloacal contact was made. If they were vocalizing, it was so quiet I could not hear it. He dismounted, they preened, and then he mounted her again. It was almost as if the romance of the rain, the intensity of the sensual experience of bathing, had precipitated sex. After the second go-round, they moved about a meter apart, preening themselves, and then, with chattering, squawking calls, lifted off, flying over the treetops at a great speed, perhaps searching for a suitable nest site. As if stimulated by the macaws, the Blue-headed Parrots also began to court, preening and billing each other around the head. Within minutes they, too, were copulating. Their contact was brief. I felt sure the rain had signaled the beginning of the intense courtship phase of these birds, triggering ancient physiological changes inside them—increases in the sex hormone that lead to enlarging testes and ripening ova. The rains pointed them toward mating, finding a nest, laying eggs. For my entire career I had wanted to watch wild parrots in this intense courtship phase. To find two species simultaneously mating was breathtaking.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“roots. Since the demise of the Carolina Parakeet, ornithologists have discovered that playing tape-recordings of large flocks calling out to each other can sometimes induce birds to breed. We could have tried that on remnant flocks of parakeets, but we didn’t have the science. In any case, there might have been something else in their plight at our hands that was driving them toward extinction. All the science in the world might not have been enough to save them.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“The smaller, delicate Blue-headed Parrots were Tiko’s stature; indeed they are closely related to him. Instead of Tiko’s red, their foreheads were a delicate deep blue, but otherwise they were a rich and varied green—the basic parrot palette.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“The rain was warm, and it washed over my face. It was raining so hard that the ground was exploding beneath me; rivulets braided, frothed, ran away toward the river. I must have been a ridiculous sight, drenched to the bone in two seconds but still, ludicrously, holding an umbrella high above my head with one hand and grasping binoculars with the other, through which I eagerly gazed. That’s why I was holding the umbrella, you see, not in an attempt to stay dry but because it offered a modicum of protection to the binoculars’ lenses, without which I hadn’t a hope in Hades of catching a glimpse of the raucous denizens of the forest; I followed with my ears, shifting directions, adjusting my course, homing in on them in the ocean of rain as their cries became louder and louder. I scanned the treetops, teetering with my umbrella like Mary Poppins, and then, suddenly, there they were. I had found the ultimate birdbath. In the winding branches of the Ype trees above me, I counted two Scarlet Macaws, thirteen Chestnut-fronted Macaws, and two Blue-headed Parrots.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“We say that so-and-so is a loving person or a cold person; we admire, are even awed by, people who have a large capacity for compassion. I think of Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“Since the demise of the Carolina Parakeet, ornithologists have discovered that playing tape-recordings of large flocks calling out to each other can sometimes induce birds to breed. We could have tried that on remnant flocks of parakeets, but we didn’t have the science. In any case, there might have been something else in their plight at our hands that was driving them toward extinction. All the science in the world might not have been enough to save them.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“When I was a girl, the crows knew when I was on my way to chase them from the fields, and how long I’d stay once I got there. They would bide their time, keeping me in sight until I’d completed my rounds. Then they’d descend on our fields. But their feet limit them from eating foods with hard shells. They are nowhere near as dexterous, or as smart, as parrots.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship

“Sam shot off his perch and pecked furiously at the culprit’s face and hands.”
― Joanna Burger, The Parrot Who Owns Me: The Story of a Relationship