Abstract
Dr. Richard Baer has often said that it should be the responsibility of every aviculturist to take on the challenge of attempting to breed one species that is known to be difficult and to make it a personal project to learn the requirements of that species so that we might one day establish that bird in aviculture even if there is no monetary reward and especially if that bird is likely to become extinct in the wild.
Happily there are some aviculturists today who are doing just that. One of them is AFA member Ray E. Myers and his wife, Mary, of 7807 Chestnut Ave., Bowie, Maryland. Their special project is the Thick-Billed Parrot, an endangered species native to Mexico in highland areas where the pine forests afford abundant pine seeds that make up a large part of their natural diet. They formerly occurred as far north as northern Arizona but the clearing of the pine forests has. apparently, prevented these birds from venturing into the U.S. since 1935 or earlier.
The Myers' successful breeding of this rare and lovely bird is being reported for two reasons. First to make available information on the breeding and rearing of Thick-Bills so that others may compare experiences and hopefully raise more of these birds each year. Secondly, it stands as an example to us all that limited space and cold climates do not preclude the successful breeding of the larger (or indeed the rare l) psittacines. Although Ray and others in the area are experimenting with housing birds outdoors through the winter (temperatures sometimes drop to 9° F or lower for days at a time), the Thick-Bills have always been keep indoors.
The pair of Thick-Bills was acquired in July 1973 from a couple in Washington, D.C. who had kept them as pets for eight years. These people originally purchased the birds as young birds from Bob Busenbark and Henry Bates at the Palos Verdes Bird Farm. Ray and Mary had them for a year and a half before the first eggs were laid, thus making the birds at least ten years old.
It came as a surprise. The birds had acted like a pair for some time but Ray, like so many of us, was cautious with his optimism about the birds being of opposite sexes. The new breeding flight was not yet ready on that day in February when the hen laid her first egg. Right on the bottom of the cage! The literature says that Thick-Billed Parrots breed May through August. Not February. The egg was removed and an attempt was made to incubate it. The embryo progressed nicely for ten days or so and then died. Five more eggs were laid ( one every other day) and removed for incubation before the hen stopped laying. Artificial incubation was unsuccessful al though all the eggs proved to be fertile.
The dilemna was clear. A large flight was needed. but large nights have to be outdoors and Maryland in February is too cold to risk valuable birds outdoors. The answer was a large cage in the attached garage which already housed eleven cockatoos, five macaws, and a wide assortment of Amazons, Greys, Caiques, Lorys, Love Birds, Cockatiels, Budgies, and Finches.
As February approached the next year the Thick-Bills began their expected chewing of everything that didn't move out of their way. This seems to be characteristic behavior at nesting time. They literally turn logs into toothpicks. Three inch perches cut from oak or elm trees disintegrate in a matter of days.
The breeding cage measured five feet long, three feet wide and three feet high. It was located close to the floor so that the birds could not climb higher than about four feet above the garage floor. The nest box was located outside the cage on one end horizontally at the bottom level of the cage and measured three feet long, one foot high and 15 inches deep. A square entrance hole of approximately IO inches on a side was cut at the end nearest the garage wall and on the front of the box. The end of the box opposite the entrance hole had an inspection door. The box was filled with rotten logs and wooden debris taken from nearby wooded areas to a depth of 8 or l O inches. The box itself was made out of old, weathered, wood. The temperature of the room was about 55°F.
Ray believes, contrary to much of the current avicultural theories regarding the amount or space necessary for the successful breeding of the larger psittacines, that large flights are really not necessary. To support his contention he points, not only to the Thick-Bills but. to a pair of Greater Sulphur Crested Cockatoos (true Greaters) and a pair of Molluccan Cockatoos that he put up for breeding for the first time in April in flights that measured 7' high by 7' long by 4' wide. The Greaters were on eggs in early June and the Molluccans in July!
During the month of February the Thick-Bills turned the rotten wood inside the nest box in to woodchips and sawdust. They spent most of their time in the nest box, coming out only to eat and destroy their perches and all wooden parts of the cage. They were not observed carrying pieces of the perches in to the box but it was almost as if that was their intent. Oddly enough they did relatively little damage to the nest box itself.
February passed and no eggs. Then, when Ray and Mary had almost given up, the first egg was laid on March 21th. Two days later a second egg was laid. The hen began incubation with the first egg and was never observed outside the box for....