Giving Tuesday for the Parrots’ Umbrella

The Parrots’ Umbrella has never had more requests for help than this year. We’ve been in motels, homeless shelters, abandoned buildings, and smoke filled houses. We’ve climbed trees, tromped through swamps and forests, and hidden in bushes to catch abandoned birds. We have driven thousands of miles. We stopped counting the numbers of emails, messages, and calls. One month, there were thousands. 

We have seen the terrifying results of an explosion in breeders, pet stores, bird mills, and bird fairs. People calling with baby birds they bought or got as “rehomed” on Facebook or Craigslist with no education on nutrition, safety, noise volume, behavior, lifespan, enrichment, veterinary needs, or even a cage. Hundreds of birds were thrown outside just this year. And those were just the ones were sighted and captured. People have come to us with birds they acquired with diseases the country hasn’t seen in decades due to lack of disease testing, inadequate knowledge of disease, nutrition, and husbandry. 

The economy and housing crisis slammed the bird world right on the heels of the pandemic. We had more calls in three months than in all our previous years combined for families facing homelessness or already homeless. 

Many people who acquired birds in the parrot trade of the late 90’s and early 2000’s are retiring, aging, or dying, and we’ve seen a huge increase in calls from their families. Often, they have multiple birds with numerous health problems due to a decline in care, lack of vetting, and isolation. 

We spent our funds on veterinary care, medications, disease testing, food, and enrichment. All of these costs have drastically increased in the last year. 

We’ve cheered when our birds are adopted, because appropriate families are not easy to find with all the obstacles people are personally facing. After months of assessments and work, we have transferred some of our birds who choose to be with flocks or are too traumatized by humans to our partner rescues and sanctuaries where they can live their lives without fear. Many of those birds are still with us, as it can take years to overcome and stabilize their personal and medical trauma. We have taken in birds from other rescues, shelters, and animal control when it was determined their behavioral, emotional, and medical needs could not be met, and they were in danger of euthanasia. 

This was the year that took so much from so many birds: their families, their safety, their homes, their health, and their hope. 

$5.00 helps. $100 helps. Everything and anything will help us help them. Always,

Love life.

Love ,love ,love birds.