February 10, 2006
Study For The Look Of Intelligence
Nature Photography by Catherine King, February 10,2006. [Slightly larger than life-size.] All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form.
by The Tears Of Things
The little flock has fledged, we think, so we're working up a kind of portrait gallery of the ones we can distinguish, since they allow us to get quite close. Here's an example. This juvenile is about eighteen inches from the camera. It stuck around for quite awhile, eating and looking, eating and looking.
The title comes from Mark Bittner. In his book The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill he writes somewhere, "The look of intelligence is intelligence."
Looks that way to us, too.
It's helpful to remember also that just about any parrot you are lucky enough to see in the United States is an escaped captive, or the free, wild descendant of one, hallelujah. Every time you see that green-blue blur zip by like a little torpedo, or watch them watching you, you are witnessing the triumph of a persistent need for freedom --freedom at any cost-- over the shrink-wrapped trap of human greed and selfishness, and some twisted desire to domesticate wild beauty. The captive parrots, traumatized from being shipped up drugged in a cardboard tube from Peru, scream and scream and pick at themselves and flap and flap and flap until the "owners" set them free.
No cages for birds is best.
[See also "Wild Birds Are Lean."]
Posted by Jerome at February 10, 2006 01:20 PM | TrackBack