A bird in the hand

Apparently there are people who live here and remain unaware that there's a flock of wild parrots in our midst. I have no idea how this is possible, honestly, unless they're just that incredibly self-absorbed, unobservant, and unaware of their surroundings.

Ok, I mean, I'll be the first to admit that there are certain things that I remain completely oblivious to, no matter how obvious to someone naturally attuned. Like cars, for example. Or boobs. A whole fleet of the things may pass me by and I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about the make, model, color or size of any of them. While my roommate would immediately pick out the 2007 BMW 6-Series 650CIC Convertible containing the double-Ds.

But still. Those birds are hard to miss. I'd lived in San Francisco for all of maybe 3 weeks before I heard this crazy squawky out-of-place cacophony pass overhead and wondered what the hell sort of bird it was. And in all of 30-minutes of research (remember, this was the late 90s, before the internet encompassed every imaginable piece of information and certainly before you could find it easily even if it was out there... in other words, pre-wikipedia) I had discovered that there was a small errant group of cherry-headed conures cheerily waking the City's dead year-round with their raucous yammering.

Anyway, no one really knows how they got here, but the stories bear a striking resemblance to the explanation for where the wild parrots of Brooklyn came from, variously a busted open crate at the airport or aboard a cargo ship, smugglers, unhappy pet owners, a closing pet shop, and such. And, interestingly, there seem to be feral populations of a variety of non-native parrots in several US cities besides NYC and SF. However they got here, they seem to be thriving (rent the movie!)

I mentioned before that the flock descends on a little park downtown before sunset every evening. So tonight I popped in again on my walk home, armed with a petstore mix of sunflower seeds, peanuts, pistachios, and other seeds and nuts. After a minute or two of summing me up, a few brave parrots edged over to me and nabbed a few bites from my hands while hanging upside down from the branches of the tree I stood next to. Once deemed a non-threat, I was promptly mobbed with several parrots on each hand, a few on my arms, and one chorus leader on my head. I'm not sure why I found this so entertaining -- there's no way I'd want a pet bird, but experiencing their distinctive personalities first-hand was a hoot. (Ahem.)

That said, my finger is still sore from the little troublemaker shown here. He'd periodically give me a little nip and it took me a few minutes to notice that he only liked the black sunflower seeds from the mix. Whenever he'd eaten them all (he'd brush the rest aside with his beak in my palm to be sure), he'd look at me and clamp down on my finger until I'd replenished the supply. The one time I had both hands filled with birds and couldn't get more seeds, he stared at me with a twinkle in his eye and I immediately knew what he was up to. "Don't even think about it," I said, yet he clearly had and he grabbed onto my sleeve and crawled, beak over claw, up my arm to my shoulder where he proceeded to try to bite my ear. All I could do was turn my head and try to keep my ear out of reach. It was then that he went back to my hand and chomped on my finger as hard as he could. The little fucker. I unceremoniously transferred him back to the tree branch and he got the idea, squawking loudly in my face and flying off.

Yeah, hard to miss.