MOLLY MINTA | JUNE
5, 2018 | 8:00AM
Every morning for the past 25
years, a flock of blue and gold macaws has flown into Daria Feinstein’s
backyard in Coral Gables. They swoop between surrounding homes and over boats
docked on the nearby canal to perch on Feinstein’s royal palms and poincianas
or maybe have a bite to eat on the artificial nests she’s set up for them.
In 2010, one of Feinstein’s
favorite wild parrots, Scruffy — an old blue and gold macaw she named for the
bird's frayed feathers — began showing up in her yard with a youngster she
named Fuzzy for a fluff of red fuzz on his head.
“He was a character,” Feinstein says of Fuzzy.
The baby would always disobey Scruffy and swoop down to eat before he
was given the signal. “I was afraid he’d never get airborne because he’d eat so
much.”
A year later, Fuzzy disappeared.
Feinstein thought perhaps he’d grown up and found a mate in a different place.
"But," she says, “one by one, more birds just kept
disappearing.”
Feinstein began to hear similar
reports from fellow members of the Bird Lovers Club, a nonprofit dedicated to
South Florida’s avian population. A professor at the University of Miami told
her someone came on campus with a net gun and took six birds. One of the other
feeders in her neighborhood said the macaws were flying at night. “Parrots
don’t fly after nightfall,” Feinstein says. “Something scared them.”
Feinstein realized the parrots
were being poached. Since 2010, she says, the number of blue and gold macaws in
her neighborhood has gone from 44 to 12 because of legal poaching. Parrots can
sell for thousands of dollars each on local and national websites,
which is significant motivation for poachers.
No comments:
Post a Comment