ParrotAlert: An Innovative New Service To Help Find Lost Parrots

If you've ever lost a beloved parrot you know how agonizing the searching and waiting can be. A new site, ParrotAlert.com, has just launched and it uses cutting-edged Web-based mapping technology and crowdsourcing to help people report and find their lost parrots. You don't have to own or have lost a parrot to become a member (which is free). But the more members there are, the greater the likelihood that a lost bird will be spotted, geo-located, recovered, and will make its way back to its original owner.

So far ParrotAlert.com has has 882 registered "eyes and ears" in the U.S. and the more people join, the more effective it becomes. So if you care about the plight of lost parrots and the humans who grieve over them, please hop over to ParrotAlert.com and register as a lost parrot spotter!

New Hampshire Cracks Down on Quaker Parrots

New Hampshire, like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, and a handful of other states, is so fearful that wild Quaker Parrots will escape and run amok that it banned them in 1998. Apparently the ban was poorly enforced, and several stores in New Hampshire have been allowed to sell them. The result is that there are now people in New Hampshire who bought the birds in good faith whose birds are now threatened by the State's new "Get Tough on Quaker Parrots" policy. Suzanne Burke is one of these people, and she's been given a cruel ultimatum by New Hampshire's Fish and Wildlife Agency: either find a new, out of state home for the parrots or face the prospect of the state killing them.

The whole sad situation is summed up in a February 7th article in the Nashau, New Hampshire, Telegraph. Suzanne's own agonized letter to the New Hampshire Legislature describing her plight is available for viewing here.

I don't know exactly what can be done in this case, other than try to help Suzanne Burke find new homes for the little parrots that have buraucrats at the Great State of New Hampshire quaking in their boots.

And thank our lucky stars that New York State's various wildlife agencies have more pressing things to do than hassling pet owners in Brooklyn.

If you can help Suzanne, you can likely get in touch her through David Brooks, the reporter who wrote the story: dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com.