Thick-Billed Parrots: Mexico's Colorful Mystery

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ebony Money and I'm Rick Schwartz. Welcome to Amazing Wildlife, where we explore unique stories of wildlife from around the world and uncovered fascinating animal facts. This podcast is a production of I Heart Radio in Sandy Go Zoo Wildlife Alliance in international nonprofit conservation organization behind the San Diego Zoo and Sandy Go Zoo Safari Park. Today we're talking about a colorful green and red bird. The thick billed parent is known for its loud call, in v shape flying formations. They were once widely reported in the US, but thick billed parents are now considered locally extinct from their US range. The endangered species is endemic to Mexico. So what caused the population decline and what role has climate change plane We'll ask San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Chief Conservation and Wildlife Health Officer Dr Nadine Lamberski those questions, plus we'll find out what's being done to save the thick bill parrot. Rick looking at images of the thick billed parrot, its color immediately stands out. It's almost like a lime green with hints of yellow and red accents. What other physical characteristics. Would would you say stand out? Well, I mean, I mean it's it's in the name, really, I mean that thick build it's a it's a hooked bill, and it's pretty pronounced. It's a very dark gray, almost black in color, and it really contrasts with those bright green and red feathers you were talking about. And one of the things that always catches my eye is the bright yellow skin around their eye, offering up this unique accent of bright yellow right there on their face. And here's a little fun fact for you about their coloration. The chicks when they're hatched, their beaks are white, and over the course of about two years, that turns into that beautiful black, hooked beak of theirs. Wow. So rick parents are known for being vibrantly colored. Does this serve any purpists in nature? Oh? I know what you mean. I mean, in general, parrots are so colorful, and most of them they have these bright, vibrant colors that really seem to stand out and they become very obvious. But believe it or not, a lot of those bright colors help them camouflage or blend into their native environment. So, in the case of our friends here, the thick billed parrots. Well, that bright green works really well as camouflage in the pine forest, where they spend a large portion of their time. Now, it's believed that red highlights on the head and shoulders of the thick billed parrots help visually break up the shape of the body, making it more difficult for a predator to see them in the trees. Okay, that's interesting because I would have thought that bright colors have the opposite effects. So that's very interesting. Yeah, one thing we have to remember, a lot of predators don't have the same acuity of color, or they can't see the same spectrum of color you and I see. So what looks red and green to us might be different shades of gray to a predator. Interesting. So, the thick bill parrot has an interesting nickname. It's nicknamed the snow parrot. And it didn't immediately make sense to me because I don't think of snow when you think about northwest Mexico, where the birds now live. How did it get its name? Well, you and just about everybody else does not usually think of putting the words snow and parrot together, Because you're right, we think tropical bird and when you look at where the ranges, you think Mexico. So you know it's warm. People go down there at the vacation in the wintertime, right I do, Yes, see there you go. But the thick build parrot, it does make sense for them because they live at higher elevations in pine forests. They rely heavily on eating pine nuts from pine cones. They have a unique style of eating and surviving this environment, and there are these high altitude pine forests in Mexico. In fact, they tend to reside at elevations around three thousand nine feet to almost nine thousand feet, and this makes them one of the few parrot species that doesn't mind the cold weather. You might even say to them the cold is snow. Big deal. So thick build parrots are just bribed as social birds. What's known about the makeup of their communities? Well, I think we can go to the old phrase, have you ever heard birds of a feather flock together? Of course? Okay, So thick billed parrots, like many parrot species, are social and they take advantage of living in a flock for safety and survival. Records from the past tell us that sightings of thick billed parrot flocks numbered in the thousands. Unfortunately, current flock sizes are tremendously smaller. But the dynamics of the flock are are just as important no matter the size or the number of birds in the flock. So within a flock of parrots, you have several mated pairs and possibly their offspring from the most recent breeding season. Think of it like a community where everyone has their own family, but they also live amongst other families. This offers up a better chance to survival for everyone in the flock. For instance, let's say you know there's a predator flying overhead, a hawk of some sort. With all those eyes together looking around, someone's bound to see at first and let out that loud alarm call that they have. Or you know, if a member of the flock finds a food supply somewhere, they're going to call out to the group and the group can benefit from that as well. Rick, Is there a difference between um parrots and macaws? Oh, I'm glad you asked this question, Ebany, because it's one that I often get at the zoo. Macaws are a type of parrot, just like a thick billed parrot is a type of parrot. In fact, there are over three hundred species of different parrots in the world today and they come in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes. The macause they're very very big, long tails considered the longest from beak to tail of all parrot species alive today. Then we have some that are all white, like the cockatoos that they can be found in Australian the surrounding islands. But there are some cockatoos that are pink and much smaller. Then you have lord keats. Again, all sorts of shapes and sizes, of colors, of different parts from all over the world. And when introducing this species, I mentioned it's noisy call. It's one of the things that I here repeatedly mentioned by people who have worked closely with this species. I personally have only heard this call via recording. Have you been able to hear it in person? And if so, can you describe it? Oh? Yeah, yeah, easy to describe. Don't want me to try and replicate it, but I can describe it in one word loud, well maybe actually a noo. I think about three words, very very loud. Like many parrots species, thick billed parrots have a variety of different calls that mean different things to the flock and the surrounding family. But a fun fact for everyone here, they have a call that can be heard up to two miles away. So when I say it's loud, it is loud. So it's so loud, I would think it would create an obstacle for the birds. What do we know about the thick bill parents history? As we know they were hunted in in the US. Did the loudness did that contribute to that? Or well? I think you bring up a good point avenue. So within the natural ecosystem of the species, these loud calls are important. So even if they're over the other side of a hill or a mountain and you know in the pine forest, they could still hear each other. But I think the loud calls may have also been an opportunity for hunters and poachers to locate them, which would definitely be a challenge for them moving forward. So unfortunately, many parrot species, including the thick billed parrot, were hunted for their beautiful feathers. There was a time in our culture where having brightly colored decorative feathers on a hat or approach was all the rage and men's and women's fashions both. So it's kind of one of those things where because they're bright coloration, that was something attractive for people to hunt. Now, the last confirmed sighting of a naturally occurring flock in the United States was in nineteen thirty eight in the mountains of Arizona. Excessive unregulated shooting and hunting that started in the late eighteen hundreds and into the ninetreds is most likely what is a liminated thick billed parrot from occurring in the United States. Rick, that's really unfortunate. Um and with the populations on the decline, what void does that present a nature? Well, parrots, like all species, really play a very important role in the ecosystem that they live in. In short, it means that the food that they eat, the waste that they make, and even possibly being food for other animals creates a balance in the environment where they live. And a balanced environment is a healthy environment and that benefits all life. What do we look at the thick billed parrot a species that lives in the pine forest, surviving off of pine nuts and pine cones. We see a species that also helps disperse or spread out the pine cones further from the trees, then if they were to just naturally fall. When we see see dispersal, we see the opportunity then for these plants, these trees to have other opportunities to grow in new areas, and maybe you can help solve this mystery. So the thick billed parrot was one of the only parents native to North America. But then I also read that the US is home to many types of feral parents, which seems to be contradictory. What's going on, what's the distinction between a native in a feral parrot? Ah? Yes, the feral versus native parrot issue here in the United States. You know, Ebony, You are correct. The thick build parrot is the last surviving parrot species that was once native to the United States. Currently not only found in Mexico like you mentioned, but at one time they were also found then in Arizona and New Mexico. The other species was the Carolina parakeet, although parakeets in the name, it was a true parrot sometimes called the Carolina conyer, which again conyor's our type of parrot, but that species when extinct in night. Now, all of that said, there are many places around the United States, including here in San Diego, where you can find flocks of parrots living in urban environments in large city parks. These parrots are what we call feral parrots. That means they were once in human care, like being kept as a pet in someone's home, and then have gotten away from human care and managed to find out a way to live on their own in the local environment. That brings me to the subject of the illegal pet trade. How big of a problem is poaching of wildlife for profit um with the intention in this example, to capture a wild parrot and maybe take it in or a pet. Yes, this is one of the more difficult things to talk about ebony, especially when we're talking about our parrot friends here, but it's definitely important to talk about the subject. We have to acknowledge the fact that wild animals are taken from their habitats and sold in the illegal pet trade. In fact, that is one of the things that has caused a decline in population of the thick billed parrots and many other parrot species. We've discussed the impact of hunting um rick what other obstacles to thick build parents faith well? As you mentioned in the opening. The thick billed parrot is an endangered species, and like we see with many species, this isn't just because of one thing. Threats to the thick build parrot population include hunting an illegal pet trade like we discussed, but along with logging and wood harvesting of their natural habitat, agriculture, livestock farming, and climate change. Well, any one of those things would be challenging for a species to deal with, but the combination has led to the species population to drop below three thousand mature individuals in the wild. Now, the good news is there are a lot of people doing some amazing work to event the thick build parrot from going extinct. Coming up, we're talking to a leading scientist about how conservationists are trying to tip the scale to help the endangered thick billed parrots survive. But first, this solitary, elusive, and often nocturnal jaguars have proven difficult to study, especially in DNSE or remote habitats. Traill cameras not only allow San Diego Zoo while Life the Lions scientists to document the presence of jaguars, but also allows us to identify individuals by their unique cope patterns, allowing us to count them. GPS satellite collars gives us more detailed information on their movements and interactions among individuals, and fun fact for you, we have great news to share about results of this work. Our research shows that jaguar populations in Peru are doing well and that important jaguar habitat exists even outside of protected areas. This gives our scientists the opportunity to establish proactive conservation plans to maintain the population rather than scrambling to save a species at the brink of extinction. Today we've been talking about the colorful green and red thick billed parent. We've covered the bright coloration in some of its natural history. Now let's talk more about how they became locally extinct in the US and the bird's overall population decline. We have Dr Nadine Lamberski joining the conversation. Dr Lamberski has been working with partners including OVIS from Mexico and the Arizona Game and Fish Department on thick billed parent conservation work. Hi. Dr Lemurski, Hi, Abony, nice to be here. So the thick billed parent is found in Mexico. More specifically, the Sierra Madre a occidental, a mountain range in the northwestern part of the country. Is the location difficult to access? How does this impact efforts to study the bird? The Sire Madre Occidental is a high elevation pine oak mountain forest. It begins just south of Arizona and runs between the states of Sonora and Chihuahua in northern Mexico. These are really rugged mountains. There's very few paved roads and only a handful of dirt roads, so there's very limited access to the nesting areas. The birds build their nests in tree cavities, which can be very high and difficult to access. The parents are very gregarious, like was mentioned earlier, and fortunately they're easy to find due to the loud vocalizations. But just because you can hear the birds doesn't mean you can see them. So once you hear the vocalizations as you're driving slowly on the dirt roads the forest, you do need to get out of your vehicle and hike quite a way up some steep mountain faces to get closer to the nest and then use binoculars to better observe what's going on the nest that the birds build can be twenty to fifty feet or more from the ground, and so they can only be accessed by expert tree climbers. So after going through these great lengths to access these bird colonies, what is it like to see the thick filled parents in their natural habitat. It's really beautiful just seeing those parrots fly overhead and hearing those loud vocalizations, It's an amazing experience. I love to watch the birds fly and navigate between the pine trees. They also feed exclusively on pine cones, and there are particularly adept at holding one of the pine cones just in one foot and then tearing these sturdy cones apart in order to pull out the seeds on the inside. They're very social, they're very loud. They have this squawking sound that sounds like a chatter or almost a giggle, so they're they're really enjoyable to watch and from your years of research, what makes the thick billed parent different from other bird species? Both thick billed parrots are only one of two parrot species that are native to the US. The other is the now extinct Carolina parakeet. As just mentioned, thick built parrots feed almost exclusively on pine cones, and this makes them very dependent on the pine oak forest for food as well as for those nest cavities. But my work in zoos has shown that thick billed parrots are extremely sensitive to the West Nile virus, which is carried by mosquitoes, and infection often leads to death. This is not true for all birds species, but is particularly true for a New World parrot species. And the reason why thick bill parrots are susceptible is because they've evolved at high elevations where mosquito populations are really low, as are the environmental temperatures, and when the temperatures are cool, this prevents the virus inside of the mosquitoes from replicating and therefore it can't transmit the virus to birds. So this unique susceptibility to this virus is what makes them a little bit unique. What are some of the major findings regarding thick bail parrots and their status in nature. In the i u c N read List of Threatened Species listed the thick bill parrot as endangered, with only eight hundred hundred individuals estimated to be remaining in the wild. My personal experience is that the remaining birds numbers are really at the low end of this range, and popular aations continue to decrease. Wow. Can you talk about what you've learned about the threats specifically to the thick bill parents nest. Some of my early work was on the disease threats. Particularly, I've found that ectoparasites were invading the nest cavities and harming the chicks. It's really difficult to predict when the infections are going to occur, and it seems like the parasite life cycles are related to weather patterns such as rainfall, but it's really hard to document those types of things. But what we did learn is that we needed to be really careful when monitoring the nest cavities. So we had to be very careful to disinfect the equipment that we used and also our clothes and the people that we're working with the birds again, to make sure we didn't carry parasites from one nest cavity to another. So we learned how to mitigate the threat of of spreading that infectious parasite. You mentioned that the parasite and the infections are related to weather patterns. Does global warming make it worse? It very well. Could global warming definitely affects mosquito populations by allowing mosquitoes to exist at higher and higher elevations. With these types of parasites that invade the nest cavities, they seem to be more related to rainfall, but that's also part of the climate crisis that we're experiencing. We're having more rain when we're not supposed to and less rain when we're expecting rain. So these upsets and weather patterns can make parasite populations increase or decrease in unpredictable ways. And Dr Limberski what happened to the thick billed parent and Arizona and in New Mexico? Could any of the parents currently living in northwestern Mexico? Could they be descendants of the birds that once lived in the US? Thick bill parrots were persecuted by farmers in Arizona and New Mexico in the early nineteen hundreds, probably because they were thought to be raiding their crops, especially corn. They were also trapped and kept as pets. So it's very possible that descendants from the Arizona birds live in Mexico today due to the long migration routes that we've documented. We know who that thick billed parents in just a matter of weeks can fly a distance the same as a distance between San Francisco and San Diego. Conservationists attempted to reintroduce thick billed parents to the US in the nineteen eighties and again in the nineteen nineties, but it didn't go so well. Can you tell us what went wrong? Well, Ebany, several things happened. Many of these birds were acquired through confiscations at the border during smuggling attempts. The strategy that was used at that time was one of a hard release. That means that birds were not acclimated to each other or to their release site. They were just brought and let go into the mountains. And I've been told that at least several times, the pine cone production during the time that those parrots were released was not very good, and that meant that there was not a lot of food available for those released parrots, so some birds may have starved to death. Obviously, there were people monitoring the situation and they did provide supplemental food in the way of seeds. But the story goes that the seeds that were introduced to feed the parrots also attracted squirrels, and when the squirrels came to feed on the seeds that attracted hawks. Well, the hawks started predating on the parrots and many of the parrots were killed by hawks. That is an awful scenario and it brings me to my next point, which is how practical is it to release parents into an environment where threats still persisted. Well, there's been a lot of research over the past several decades in regards to conservation translocations, and I believe things would be done very differently today than we're done two to three decades ago, and we've really learned a lot along the way. So one example would be that the strategy used would be a soft release versus that hard release, and that means that we would construct an aviary in the area where the birds are to be released and then allow them to acclimate to each other, to the habitat, to the weather, and even to feed them the natural foods so they have some exposure to that as well. This is how California condors are prepared for release into Baja and it's been very successful, and that would be something that I think would be worth while trying and in one of your reports published in two thousand and two, it stated that more than a quarter of the world's parents species was threatened with extinction. What's the situation now, Well, sadly, I would estimate that this percent is in ease. To one third of the world's parents are now threatened with extinction. Wow, that's unfortunate. But there seems to be an ongoing tug of war between the demand to develop and the need to preserve and protect nature so that wildlife can thrive. What can people do at home to help that's a great question, Ebony, But first let me add that wild birds do not make good pets. Be sure that if you feel like you want a parrot and they are amazing animals, you understand that parents can live twenty to forty years or more depending on the species, and that's a huge commitment. Parents need room to fly and express their behavioral diversity, and they're not going to do well cooped up in a confined space. Always confirmed that a parent was bred to be a companion animal, and you can tell that because it should have a closed metal ring on its egg. Now, to get back to the tug of war question, there's a current movement to protect the forest by and by. This is necessary to fight climate change and preserve the forests that produce the services and benefits that people and wildlife rely on, such as clean air and water, erosion control and soil retention, shelter, and even food. So we need the forest just as much as the birds do, so there's not a tug of war. We are all interconnected. If we protect the forest for the birds and other wildlife, we also protect the forest for ourselves. Dr Nadine Lamberski, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Cheap Conservation and Wildlife Health Officer, It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks so much for talking to us. Thank you, Ebany. So that wraps up this episode about the thick Bill parents, be sure to subscribe and tune into next week's episode, in which we bring to the story of a hairless mammal that lives underground in a social aspect that acts more like bees and termites than they do any other mammal. I'm Ebony Money and I'm Rich Schwartz. Thanks for listening, and if you'd like to find out more about San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, please visit sdz w a dot org. Amazing Wildlife is a production of I Heart Radio. Our producer is Nikia Swinton. Our executive producer is Marci de Pina. Our audio engineer and editor is Amina Ganatra. For more shows for my heart Radio, check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.