Parrots!
Yesterday we spent a wonderful day in glorious sunshine taking advantage of a parrot handling experience which Alan’s parents kindly gave us for Christmas. It took place at The Parrot Zoo in Lincolnshire, the largest Parrot sanctuary in the country and an amazing place to visit, with a few friendly parrots wandering around out of aviaries (and, largely because we were with a keeper they recognised, pinching bits of our lunch - I guess that habit is as strong with larger birds as it is with our pet beasties!), collections of hundreds of aviary birds, and some free flying parrots.
There were…
it has to be said…
A lot of parrots:
Around 1700 in all, of various shapes, sizes and species. It’s an extremely well-organised place even on a standard admission, but because we were there on an Experience Day rather than as ordinary visitors we got to go inside the aviaries which aren’t normally open to the public (though the walkthrough experience, with lots of friendly cockatiels and other smaller birds, is open to everyone and very much recommended). I had an absolutely wonderful time. Being in an aviary containing well over 200 African Greys, never mind the various other smaller parrots that were also in there, was an extraordinary experience, and as for the Macaw aviary - wow! The small sample in the picture above is just the ones who happened to be on one of the feeding tables in that aviary - there were literally hundreds of macaws in that aviary, several of them on our shoulders!
I did, though, have my foot pierced in an interesting fashion by an overly curious cockatoo. It was just Randomly Nibbling Stuff, as parrots do (even little ones - we gave up and moved the bookcases upstairs at home after numerous books ended up serrated by little beaks!), not being at all agressive - they just have incredibly sharp and powerful beaks so can produce a painful nip without really intending to. My own fault for wearing ballet flats instead of Sturdy Leather Trainers - let that be a lesson to anyone who fancies going on that experience! Persons interested would also be well advised to not wear jewellery (we were wise to that one, birds tend to have a fascination with Shiny! and macaw and cockatoo beaks are powerful things which are perfectly capable of chomping through gold chains) or anything involving buttons they might want to keep - Rich wisely wore a jacket he didn’t mind about, which was fortunate since after spending the day festooned in birds he didn’t have a single button left.
All in all, a highly recommended day for anyone who likes birds, and staffed entirely by friendly, knowledgeable staff who clearly care a hell of a lot about what they do for a living. I can’t speak highly enough of it.