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Just Cruisin’

by Nikki Buxton

This month we had the absolute pleasure of a visit from the World Parrot Trust “Parrot Lovers” Cruise.

I have to confess I was more than a little nervous. We have never really had visitors before and especially not visitors with sufficient knowledge and experience of parrots to be critical of the way we operate. I imagine it would be like running a humble little restaurant and having the International Convention of Food Critics turn up for dinner.



Having sweated about where to serve lunch, whether or not to get a tent, the presentation, the poster-board etc etc, in the end I think we got everything almost right. Even the not-so glamorous location of the impromptu visitor centre (our garage) seemed to work well enough. The weather was perfect: not too hot, but dry and bright. The parrots were on their best behaviour – apart from the yellow-heads, but then I expected little else from them, and we had some great friends helping us out with the day. I just wish everyone could have stayed longer, but there was some talk about missing a boat…? Don’t ask me what that was all about.

So, thanks to the amazing generosity of those who visited, we are going to be dedicating the next upgrade to the rehab facility to the cruisers. We haven’t quite decided what it will be, but we have a few possibilities in mind, such as nesting boxes and breeding enclosures for my crazy yellow-headed friends, or the much-needed re-wiring of the long-stay aviary for those who are too tame for release or have physical handicaps.



Whatever we decide, it will be another wonderful and necessary addition to Belize Bird Rescue. We find it hard to believe ourselves how much the facility has grown. If someone would have told us where moving to Belize would have taken us… well, you know…

A final huge thanks to everyone, it was truly amazing to meet so many like-minded people and hopefully we have made one or two new friends along the way.
Hope we get to see you all again next year!

Posted by Nikki Buxton on 11/17 at 08:17 PM
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It’s days like these…

by Nikki Buxton

Reading an article about Foster Parrot’s Marc Johnson today, I had one of those wonderful moments. I felt sorry for Marc, then I sympathised, then I empathised. And then I thought – hang on a minute: there’s poor Marc struggling like crazy to place captive-bred birds in far too few homes, and look at me - my birds already have a home. And it’s a pretty big one: almost 9 thousand square miles. I have a potential home for each and every one of the birds that will ever pass through our gates. How unbelievably, amazingly lucky can you get?

Of course, you’re all saying ‘well, duh’! But seriously, I hadn’t struck me exactly how fortunate I was to be in this situation. I cannot imagine taking in bird after bird with no hope of release, reprieve or advancement. Instead, we have the perfect objective for these hapless creatures: freedom in their natural environment. I have several critics that say I shouldn’t be releasing these birds, and I suppose when something inevitably goes wrong, they are justified in their annoying, tutting head shake.

But when it goes right, and it so often goes right, it’s like no feeling on earth to witness the sheer joy these birds experience. I adore their first head-tilt as they gaze at unbroken sky for the first time in their lives. I can’t get enough of the cacophony that accompanies their first flight. I wish I knew exactly what they were thinking in those moments, but I can probably give a good guess.

So on those days when I really, really don’t want to get out of bed, on the days when the rain comes down and the money stops coming in and my favourite bird bites me for no good reason, on those days when I feel like I could just lock the gates and change my phone number… I will think of Marc and the scores like him who struggle to provide the best home they can for far too many beautiful, smart creatures, and look out of my window at what I have to offer the captive birds of Belize: and I'm ready to face the day again.

Posted by Nikki Buxton on 09/29 at 08:03 AM
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No news is good news…?

by Nikki Buxton

Seven months later I am still churning out the excuses and apologies for being an erratic blogger. I guess I have been called worse and can live with that title, but I really will try harder from now on.
Since the beginning of the year I have sat staring daggers at the rusting heap that should have been a usable aviary. It wasn’t until the British High Commission enabled our ‘Night Out for the Birds’ fundraiser that we managed to actually finish the project. The new occupants are reasonably happy, although rather taken aback at the amount of sky they can now see. Their previous home was buried under the canopy of the orange trees, whereas their new palace is still recovering from Hurricane Richards’ handiwork. Even so, they are flying, and that’s what they need to do in order to fly free, which will hopefully be sometime in December.
Speaking of which, we have made 14 releases in the first half of the year, most of them on site, with 6 birds still returning regularly for the home cooking. Future releases will be at our new soft release site on a privately owned property about as far away from villages and towns as you could ever ask for. Next up will be 2 yellow loreds and two white-fronts, the last remaining release candidates in the old flight aviary. Unfortunately, they are presenting us with something of a problem. The aviaries were never designed to catch the birds, only to open little doors and let them out when they were ready. Now I actually want to move them elsewhere the little darlings won’t come any where near me. I know this is exactly what we have trained them to do, but knowing that doesn’t help my predicament. I have decided we will have to resort to some very clever trapping mechanism. All we need now is someone very clever to design one…
I’m keeping this short and sweet as most of the recent updates are in our lovely new Newsletter. I am aiming to put one out every quarter, but my aim has not been so great lately. You can find the masterpiece on the Belize Bird Rescue website

Posted by Nikki Buxton on 08/03 at 06:30 PM
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End of year catch-up

by Nikki Buxton

My apologies for my absence. Loads of excuses, all of them pathetic.
After much fundraising we began construction of the new aviaries. The rain made the task extremely tiresome, but eventually we were done. Much celebration and leaping about. A few days later we piled into the bush bearing perches and swings, when we noticed to our horror that half of the wire on the large aviary and all of wire on both smaller ones was rusty. We had been sold un-galvanized wire! In desperation, we took advice and scrubbed the wire clean and painted it with copious quantities of Hammerite metal paint (child-safe, rust-resistant, especially for metal toys apparently) Guess what – within a week the rust was back and within a month we could punch a hole in the wire. All of that fundraising and all of those weeks of construction, not to mention the wasted paint…. It didn’t bear thinking about. So that’s where we are at right now: battling with the hardware store over 9 rolls of wire at $320 each, thank you very much, and picking up the pieces –literally.
With huge thanks to the generosity of friends and supporters, we now have enough donations to get wire for the two smaller pre-flights, so I can at least begin using those. He doesn’t know it yet, but good old Jerry will be funding the remainder, so by the New Year we should be back where we were 6 months ago, except with useable aviaries.
Because of the setback, I have not been pushing for more yellowheads. We only have 3 right now and I have a horrible feeling they are all girls. One is ‘in heat’ and enjoys getting rather inappropriate cuddles from humans, the other shows no signs of similar behaviour and totally ignores the randy one so she’s either too young or too old to be ‘in heat’ or he’s gay. The third is in a separate cellblock at the moment – she is a total psycho when it comes to humans, so much so we call her Norman. I don’t know what the previous owners have done to her, but she flings herself at the wire with murder in her eyes whenever we go close. It takes two people and a lot of ingenuity to clean her cage as there is no way anyone can get in there with her. She’s had a series of neighbours, several of them I can say for sure are males – none of them yellowheads - and she seems to have fallen for all of them. I shall be braving the possible loss of several fingers and move her close to the other oratrix this week to see her reaction to them. Wish me luck.

Another setback was the total destruction of my faith in human nature. I can’t name names, but someone not awfully far from me who definitely does not practice what he preaches finally made me realise that releasing the birds in this area is not the best option for the birds. It’s a crying shame, as monitoring is so much easier with an on-site release, but I have secured a great alternative release site. It’s a 350 acre reserve owned by a couple of wildlife photographers. It backs onto a protected area and is surrounded by several other private reserves. They live on-site and are going to set up cameras and do continuous monitoring and hopefully get some fabulous photographs, so it’s a great option all round. We plan to release a healthy flock of the red loreds in January.

I have also, at long last, admitted to myself that I need help (please, no comment). Next year I want to recruit another crazy person to join me, particularly one familiar with passerine and raptor care. We are offering virtually no money, no holidays, no days off, a tiny wooden cabin with an outdoor kitchen … have I won anyone over yet?

And finally, in an effort to make BBR self-sustaining, I have taken the lease on a 6-room hotel unit in town, 50% of the proceeds of which will go toward these darned birds that have taken over our lives. So if anyone is ever in Belmopan and needs a room, it’s called the Hibiscus Hotel. We should be up and running by mid-January and with any luck I will have mastered Dreamweaver and will have a lovely new website to go with it (yeah, yeah, yeah)
On that hopeful note, I would like to wish all of my friends, supporters, donors and fellow parrot-lovers the very best of Christmases and every good wish for the New Year.

Posted by Nikki Buxton on 12/19 at 02:03 AM
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