Penguins, parrots, bears, and humans
The parrots
The Wild Parrots
of Telegraph Hill
Directed by Judy Irving
Pelican Media
Released 2003
83 minutes
Mark Bittner's
web site
I knew a little bit more about parrots going into The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill than I did about penguins. My brother Vinny has several birds and he also provides a foster home for birds who have been neglected or mistreated. In fact, Vinny sent me a copy of Mark Bittner's book of the same title for my birthday this year. The book and the documentary describe Bittner's discovery of a wild parrot population in San Francisco, his efforts to make friends with some of the birds, and his relationship with the flock.
There was a lot I didn't know, though. For example, San Francisco is not the only major city that has a group of wild parrots. No one's sure exactly where San Francisco's parrots come from, although there are several stories. Some cities have populations near the airport; perhaps the birds escaped from a shipment destined for a pet store. Parrots are smart and resourceful enough to find food and make their way in a strange environment. (As a matter of fact, I blogged a story awhile back about how brain size is inversely correlated with a tendency to migrate: the bigger the average brain size, the less likely a species of bird is to be migratory. This might be related to the ability to find food without having to travel somewhere else.)
Many birds migrate to warmer places in the winter not because they can't deal with the cold, but because their food sources are not available during the winter. So they evidently do all right in Chicago because they can find things to eat. In fact, some cities have parks that use plants that are native to where the birds are from, so they can eat what they're used to. I was intrigued by the idea of both the birds and their food being imported to the city for different reasons and then meeting up again, so to speak, on strange new turf.
For all the legitimate concern about invasive species of plants and animals, I was glad to hear that these transplanted birds are by and large doing all right, especially after I learned about the sometimes brutal and destructive practices that people have used to catch birds to sell.
Bittner was a lonely, somewhat rootless "dharma bum" of middling years when he discovered the wild birds in his San Francisco neighborhood. He was fascinated and tried to learn more and to get to know them. He succeeded so well that they would flock to his balcony for feedings, climbing all over him, sitting on his head or his arms. He got to know individual birds and gave them names based on their personalities or physical characteristics. In the movie they were sometimes like a large rowdy group of kindergarteners, mostly silly, one or two of them more reserved or shy or dignified or aggressive. A number of them were clowns, doing goofy stunts evidently for the sheer joy of it. I knew from my brother that birds have distinctive personalities, and even from my relatively short exposure to the birds in the film I could see that they were not all the same.
The subtitle for the Wild Parrots book is "a love story with wings". Bittner found companionship with the birds, forming individual friendships. He also learned a great deal as he became more and more involved with the birds, from the history of his own neighborhood to the natural history of the birds. Eventually his involvement with the birds led him to the human companionship he sought. The birds led him toward, not away from, other people.
His relationships with the birds were fascinating and often charming. He wrote in the book that while parrots "aren't exactly like human beings", he believed "that each bird is no less an individual personality than I am." They were social creatures, and it's obvious that many of them felt trust and affection for him. There is a delightful moment in the film where Bittner is playing the guitar and singing the blues and a bird called Mingus is listening interestedly and bobbing with the music. It was a great example of two species finding some common ground. As he formed emotional bonds with some of the birds, though, Bittner worried sometimes about whether he was anthropomorphizing them and assuming they were more similar to humans than they really are. He also wrestled with questions of how to help a sick or injured bird, recognizing that it's important both to preserve their lives and to preserve their spirits as wild creatures.
As with any relationship with other animals, not all the stories are happy. Several of the birds died. Toward the end of the movie Bittner described the death of a young bird called Tupelo after an illness, in particular the emotional bond he felt with her and the feelings that he felt she was expressing at the end: sadness, a wistful desire to be comforted, resignation. I was not the only one crying by the end of that part of the film.
In a chapter of the book called "Consciousness Explained", Bittner describes what he learned from the birds. It's a wonderful, thoughtful, moving meditation on his beliefs about the nature of consciousness and life, and our relationship to other creatures. He articulates a Buddhist philosophy that accepts scientific explanations for the origins and workings of life, and seeks beyond science for spiritual meaning. The chapter concludes with Bittner's realization that humans and parrot alike are finite pieces of a larger consciousness.
A story that came late in the movie illuminated more or less the same truth for me. An older bird, Connor, was killed by a red-tailed hawk. This kind of thing happens in nature all the time, of course. Birds of prey have to eat too. (Bittner wrote in the book that he wasn't mad at the hawk.) What struck me was that although you can understand the food web and the way ecosystems work all you like, it still hurts that that bird died that way. He had a name; he was an individual. You miss that one, that particular bird. It's exactly the same realization that led me to the idea of thinking meat in the first place, years ago. We are prey to large predators and small bacteria and the imperfections and vulnerabilities of our own bodies, just like other living things. I can understand the way death is woven inextricably into the fabric of life, and try to accept that fact. But because we are conscious beings who are aware of each other as individuals, we can't just fold our hands philosophically and talk about the web of life or survival of the fittest when someone close to us dies. What I didn't realize is that all this doesn't apply only to people. You can have that same complicated set of feelings, recognizing the necessity of death but protesting each individual loss, for other living creatures, like these birds.
