I have a friend in Fort Worth, Texas, who has found a Great Billed Parrot.  She is trying to find the owner but is not having much luck.  I have found two breeders of this species in Texas and have emailed them, but neither are close to Fort Worth. Does anyone know of any breeders or owners of Great Billed Parrots in the Fort Worth area?  We want so much to return this bird to its proper owner.

Cindi Eppers
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I would recommend you call Kookaburra bird shop in North Dallas and talk with them.  Also there is a store in Dallas named Tree Top Bird Store. They may be able to help and put up a found poster….

http://www.911parrotalert.com/

We did manage to find the previous owner of the bird.  It was a woman who had Alzheimer’s Disease and she turned it loose, along with an Jardine’s Parrot.  She’d had the GB parrot for 11 years; I don’t know how long she had the Jardine’s.  The children of this woman have just recently placed her in a nursing home, but they were too late to save the parrots.  Their mother had turned the birds loose before they realized how bad her Alzheimer’s really was.  The children gave us full permission to re-home the GB parrot and the Jardine’s, too, if we found it.  So far it has not turned up.  Both were clipped and I believe the reason the GB parrot survived was that his large beak posed a fair threat to any predators.  The Jardine’s wouldn’t have had that advantage, poor thing.  The Great Billed Parrot’s tail feathers were in shreds. I presume he was “holed up” somewhere in a tree hollow or some predator attempted to have him for lunch.  Here’s a link to see him:

http://cynthus32507.multiply.com/video/item/7/Introducing….._Madison

We flew him from Fort Worth to Atlanta, GA., where he was vet checked (clean bill of health) and is in quarantine.  Once the quarantine is over, he will fly to Pensacola to be with his new family.  The new family I speak of also has a Great Billed Parrot and is a member of the Tanygnathus Society. 

Feel free to look at my website when you check out the video.  I have 18 parrots currently, most all of them are adoptees.  However, I’m considering obtaining a rare amazon parrot in the near future, so #19 may be here soon.

Cheers, Cindi.

A Jardine’s Parrot was released around January 22nd, 2009, in Fort Worth, TX., by an elderly woman who had Alzheimer’s Disease. She’d had the bird for something like 12 years, and released it along with a Great Billed Parrot which was found 3 weeks later by Mary in Fort Worth while out hiking. (YOU ALL REMEMBER MADISON, THE GREAT BILLED PARROT, DON’T YOU?) The Great Billed Parrot had clipped wings but survived, probably because of its intimidating-looking bill. It now enjoys life in Florida, along with two other Great Billed Parrots. The Jardine’s was never found & I assumed it’s wings were clipped too. The hiker who found the GB Parrot searched for 2 months in the same general area for the other bird. She was not working at the time, just having moved to Fort Worth, and was able to visit shelters in the surrounding area frequently, but no Jardine’s Parrot had been found. We had assumed that, by this time, the bird had been the victim of a predator. Mary didn’t give up, however. She continued to check in with shelters and even had workers at those shelters check in with outlying shelters too far for her to regularly visit.

After all this time, she finally got a call around the end of June from a lady at a shelter telling her that one of the outlying shelters had a Jardine’s Parrot which they had had there, “for a long time.” So Mary visited the shelter. The leg band was the right color; the bird kept repeating, “Jar-Jar, Jar-Jar!” THIS IS TRULY UNBELIEVABLE!

It turned out that the Jardine’s Parrot had been flighted although the Great Billed Parrot wasn’t. This probably saved Jar-Jar’s life. Jar-Jar was found 50 miles from where he had been set loose!

The people at the shelters knew Mary had been looking for this bird all along so she adopted Jar-Jar right then and there for no charge and brought him home to live with her flock of 2 Congo African Greys, 1 Sun Conure, 3 dogs, (and I don’t remember how many more critters. Sorry, Mary, my memory is sometimes on vacation…)

Mary is still settling in and looking for a job and has been offline for awhile; that’s why it took so long for me to find out about this. I called her immediately when I got her email and we chatted for over an hour.  This has been such a positive experience for me! 

GOD BLESS MARY FOR BEING SO PERSISTENT IN KEEPING UP THE SEARCH FOR JAR-JAR AND HAVING FAITH THAT JAR-JAR WAS STILL ALIVE!