Thor's Cape Parrot Site

DR. COLLEEN DOWNS SPEAKS ON CAPE PARROTS

By Dana Parrott & Craig Harris

September 2000

On September 13, 2000, we had the
pleasure, while in England, of attending a talk given by
Dr. Colleen Downs from the University of Natal,
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Dr. Downs is one of the
leading Cape parrot experts in the world. The talk was
arranged by our friend Mr. Les Abnett from Hadlow, Kent,
England, with the help of Mr. Michael Johnston of Hadlow
College, Hadlow, Kent, England, who provided the meeting
room for the event. The event was a great success attended by over 70 people plus Cheeky the Cape Parrot. Unfortunately due to a petrol crisis in the U.K. many Cape Parrot enthusiasts were unable to make the trip to the meeting. The following is a transcript of Dr. Downs’ presentation, interspersed with photographs from the slide show.

Please note that Dr. Downs’ presentation pertained
to Cape parrots only, Poicephalus (pronounced
poy-KEF-a-lus) robustus, also known as brown-headed
parrots. The gray-headed parrots, formerly known as
Poicephalus robustus suahelicus, and brown-necked
parrots, formerly known as Poicephalus robustus
fuscicollis, the only varieties available in the U.S., are no longer
classified as Cape parrots. The gray-headed parrots are
now known as Poicephalus fuscicollis suahelicus
(pronounced swa-HEEL-e-kus), and the brown-necked
parrots are now known as Poicephalus fuscicollis
fuscicollis (pronounced fus-key-KO-lus). These parrots
live in different parts of Africa and eat different
foods than the Cape parrots.

Also of interest to many of you who have written
to the Cape Parrot Forum asking about your underweight
birds: Dr. Downs says that in the wild, the gray-headed
parrots weigh between 200-300 grams. So it sounds like
we all have plump, pampered parrots at home!

MICHAEL JOHNSTON: This is the first day
that the students and new students to Hadlow have been
in a situation like this, but also there are a number of
guests who have come to Hadlow as well, so it’s a good
place to see everybody.

Really, really delighted to introduce to you
Colleen Downs from the University of Natal, and she is
doing research on Cape parrots, and she’s come in to do
a talk to us all about her research.

Thank you very much.

DR. DOWNS: Good afternoon, everyone.

It’s quite difficult to know what level to aim
the talk, so for those of you who know a lot about
parrots, I hope I don’t bore you, and those who don’t
know anything, hopefully we’ll teach you a thing or two.

First of all, most people know that there are
lots of parrots in Australia and South America. They
don’t realize that there are fewer in Africa; and in
South Africa, where I’m from, there’s only one endemic
parrot, the Cape parrot. And the scariest thing is is
that there are less than 500 left in the wild.

If you look at a bird book for that region, you
will see in a range of three birds, usually: the Cape
parrot that I’ve shown just now, and then this
gray-headed parrot, and then there’s a third species
whose Latin name is Poicephalus fuscicollis; and they
were all considered subspecies. We’ve recently shown,
mainly using morphometrics, that not only are the color
of the head and the bill, but the Cape parrot should be a
separate species, and it’s known as Poicephalus
robustus; that’s that green-headed one. The other two
gray-headeds we’ve put in a group together; and for
those interested, there’s a paper in the Journal of
Natural History coming out shortly with that information.

So it makes this brown-headed or Cape parrot
particularly special, because if it’s a true species,
and its numbers are so low — in 1992, we started a
project on them, and there was several reasons why the
numbers might have declined. And if you look at most
birds whose numbers have declined, it’s usually
something to do with habitat, species, the forest
species, the forest being killed. If the forest is
being killed, then there’s not much food for them.
There’s nowhere for them to nest; and if they’re not
nesting, you’re going to have low recruitment.

And then the last two are things that one’s
never too sure of. If something becomes rare, suddenly
people want to trade in it; and the more sinister
thing is to prove where there’s disease has caused a
decline of the species. So for us doing field work,
these four would be quite easy to do research on; we
could try and look at illegal trade, but it’s very
rare that you find the dead birds and actually can prove
that disease has caused the decline.

The Cape parrots’ range, I said it occurs in
South Africa, those of you who’ve never been there, we
have what we call afromontane forests. These are forest
patches, and it’s like a mosaic, so it’s not a huge, big
Amazon forest. It’s little patches of forest.

For those of you — and I’ll show you just now
on a map, these really stretch from Fort Beaufort in the
eastern Cape, through to about half an hour north from
where I’m from in Pietermaritzburg.

So this just shows us a little bit more detail.

This is South Africa here. The province of
KwaZulu-Natal is where I’m from. My university is here
in Pietermaritzburg. And the Cape parrots’ range, now
that we’ve lifted it to full-species status, it’s really
just in the forests that are found here.

Okay, our particular research areas are near a
little village called Creighton, and quite near a place
called Kokstad, near two forests that we visit once a
month and do research and try and count the birds and
look at various aspects of their biology. So everyone
knows where the birds occur from June on.

I’m just showing you what I mean by a mosaic of
forests. It’s not a continuous patch. And this is
natural. Grass under the trees. And so the birds would
have to move between patches.

And these afromontane forests are special in
that 80 percent of the trees are, as those of you who
are going to do a bit more in botany, are what we call
Podacarpus species, a very tall tree; usually there’s
one or two emergent trees, and these are the trees that
the parrots love.

The other thing about the forest is that they
have a lot of mist. For you here in the UK, mist is
probably fairly common. Where we live, it isn’t that
common, except in these forest areas, which makes
research jolly difficult. The parrots love the cloudy,
misty days. You can hear them all about. They’re very
vocal, but you can’t see them and what they’re up to.

So this is on a clear day; the tall Podacarpus
standing out of the forest exposing fruit, which was in
the early sunshine, the birds would be there.

Cape parrots, unlike most humans, are very
early risers. As soon as the sun comes up, they’re
active.

They’re jolly fussy about their food, and I’ll
explain a little bit more about that.

They always hang around in groups, except
perhaps during the period when they’re breeding, when
you’ll see pairs flying around; and they go on these
what we call feeding forays, moving between patches,
trying to find food.

In the early morning, in summer, you have to
get up at least by 3:00 a.m. if you’re going to see the
birds. First light is quarter to 4:00.

What they do is they’re active for those first
few — two or three hours after sunlight; they might
move between forests; and during this time, they’ll
feed. But the middle of the day, they’re just resting.
And if you walk under a tree and you find them, they’re
nodding off and just lazing.

Later afternoon, they might start feeding and
socializing. And often, in the last half hour before
dusk, they’ll move between forest patches and return to
where they came from.

So in the early morning, especially in cold
winter mornings, they’re trying to catch the sun just
almost like reptiles. A lot of
socializing, chatting amongst themselves.

And our one study finds there’s a water source;
and it seems the parrots have to drink every day, which
makes sense. But for them to find a patch where there’s
water all year round and also where there are no
predators is quite rare. And in this forest, there’s a
stream that comes over the edge of the mountain; so when
the birds land in the trees nearby, they have a good
view of who’s about.

The main predators that we’ve seen in this area
are things like mongooses. Raptors will often dive-bomb
the parrots, but they’ll make such a raucous noise and
just fly through the forest; and although we’ve seen
feathers fly, we’ve never actually seen a raptor kill a
bird; but in the Karkloof, one of the landowners there
reckons that a black sparrow hawk actually killed one of
the parrots. So they go down to drink, but they’re very
skittish. If you try and get near them, they fly away.

What has happened is that some of our youths
that live in the area nearby, it’s a very poor rural
area, sometimes go to catch rameron pigeons.
And so we’ve tried to say to them, “Please, don’t go
there; work elsewhere.” But if it means — it’s a food
source for these local people. We’re not sure how many
parrots they might have caught.

So the rest of the day, the birds move out into
the trees, feeding. And I said they’re fussy feeders.
Well, there are about two or three species of fruits
that they feed on; the Podacarps, with their very strong
bill, as you can see, they’re able to open the exocarp.
And what they’re interested in is this endocarp, the
kernel in this. It’s quite a large fruit. When you
mash that up, it’s like peanut butter. And so their
main food are these yellowwoods, Latin name Podacarpus.

At certain periods of the year, especially
March and April, there’s not much of that around, so
they feed on celtis, which also has a
kernel, but the berry is minute. And they can get
through about a hundred of those in a minute. It’s just
amazing the way they just use this bill and get to the
kernel.

From November to January, there’s very little
forest fruit, and I’ll explain why in a moment. And
this is the time when the birds are having to move out.
And they’ve discovered pecan nuts are quite delicious,
as well as peaches and plums. But the saddest thing is
that, when they move into orchards, is that they’re very
easy for people to trap. And this year we’ve caught one
man who’s alleged to have caught 20 birds. And what he
had was a bird in a cage, and he put nets through the
orchards, and the bird in the cage would call the other
birds, and so the birds would fly into the nets. And in
part, it might not seem a lot, but in South African rand
they’re getting at least 25,000 rand a pair for the
birds, so it’s become particularly important when
there’s no food around.

This is a difficult chart to understand, but
all I want you to know is that the Podacarps are unusual
in terms of fruiting trees. Because they keep their
fruit on for at least six months. So if you had a
forest full of Podacarps, that were also not all
fruiting at the same time, you would have food
throughout the year. So that is perhaps why these
parrots have specialized on eating this particular food
and they’ve got the bill for getting into.

And as I said earlier, the falcatus is their favorite one, that
one that you saw just now. It’s 20 percent fat. And
what we find is this is what they feed their young
chicks. The other one, latifolius, isn’t as high in
fat, but it’s got a lot of protein. So a really good
energy source.

And so the birds would, I think in previous
years, we have found to live in one forest probably all
year round, but now we find they move between forest
patches; and during August, they even go into Protea
patches alongside of the forest and feed on the big
Protea heads, so very nutritious. But in South Africa,
often we have a lot of gum or eucalyptus and pine
plantations are planted right through these Proteas,
right up to the indigenous forest. And so this food
source is a very threatened one.

It’s my other interest, I have a number of
students working on sun birds and sugar birds, which are
nectar feeders. And we’re interested in how these birds
survive or find these localized food sources.

What’s happened over the years, although it’s
now illegal to remove Podacarps from our forest, there
is a little bit of illegal selling of trees. The actual
size of forest has stayed the same, but the quality has
changed. And in the eastern Cape, there are two
sawmills that have permission to remove dead trees. And
the yellowwood timber is highly sought after. It makes
very good furniture. And unfortunately, we don’t have
enough people to police whether these sawmills are
actually removing dead trees.

When I visited recently, they definitely weren’t just taking old, dead trees.
And we also are trying to get government not only to
stop this, but there’s another reason why these
yellowwoods are so important, and I’ll explain that
shortly.

I was talking about the afforestation; they
plant right up to the edge of the patches; and when they
cut down the trees they often hit them, so what
we’re finding is some of the smaller patches are
decreasing in size.

Also, what becomes important is the water
dynamic within these patches; and most of you are just
beginning your studies. If any of you are interested in
hydrology, there’s a wonderful thesis waiting to be done
to look at how the water dynamics within these forest
patches changes and how it affects the fruiting of the
trees, because we don’t know anything about that at this stage.

Although the timber companies are getting a lot
of flack for planting right up to the forest patches,
in other areas, especially in the Transkei, which is a
very rural area, I think the forests — they’ve planted
exotic forests, it’s actually saved the indigenous
forest.

So, what about these Cape parrots? I just
wanted to make you realize that this isn’t a Cape parrot
now, it’s a gray-headed parrot. It’s in the other
group. It’s different to the green- or brown-headed
that you see there, which we now call the Cape parrot.
This species is found northern South Africa, going into
Zimbabwe and across into west Africa.

I mentioned the other reason why
the removal of dead trees is important, to do with the
recruitment of the birds. In a way, they’re signing
their own death warrant. They’re so fussy about what
they eat. They only produce three to four eggs.
They live a long time, and I think this bird’s 30 years
old.

They only breed after four or
five years. So you’re going to have slow
population growth. And if there’s been some disturbance
or something, it would be very difficult to increase the
population numbers.

And they breed in holes in dead trees or snags,
as they’re known. And to get a nice cavity in a dead
Podacarpus is quite difficult. They usually only nest
in the higher old dead trees; and the female does most
of the incubation. Here you see the bird outside of
the nest. So a branch has broken off and caused the
cavity.

Scary thing is we’ve only found 12 nests during
the last eight years. Really low. And it’s not for not
looking.

And the babies are quite pathetic little
things.

And this is the other thing that I
mentioned in their decline, the possibility of disease.
In Pietermaritzburg, where I live, there’s two good
breeders of these birds. There’s another one about half
an hour away. But the total number of Cape parrots in
South Africa that are in captivity are less than 50.

And so if we’re going to stop illegal trade, I think we
have to try and get these captive birds breeding; and
the one breeder in particular is very successful, but
what he found one year or two years ago was that the
birds were dying at the time when they were starting to
leave the nest. And he had them checked, and they had
what we call the beak and feather virus. It’s similar
to AIDS. The birds don’t die because all their feathers
are falling out, they die because, especially at that
time when they’re flying off looking after themselves,
they suddenly get a lot of respiratory problems, gut
problems; and traditionally, if birds were found with
that virus, you euthanized the whole lot, which is what
this particular breeder did.

The disease came into South Africa with the
Australian birds. We’re not sure at what point;
probably at least 30 years ago. The Australians and the
Americans are working on a vaccine; but because it’s a
windborne virus, you might check birds today but
tomorrow they have it. So that’s another area of
research, is to look into this disease side of the
decline of Cape parrots.

Recently, some little guys caught wild birds
and were selling them on the side of the road. There
were four female birds, and they were all tested
positive. So the wild birds do have the virus. But it
tends to be in the southern part of the range.

Previously, eight other birds from the similar
area also were caught and had this virus. But at this
stage, they haven’t died. So what we’re doing is we’re
keeping them isolated from other birds, in quarantine,
and we’re hoping that maybe the disease has been in the
population long enough that maybe the birds are
developing their own immunity; and also, there’s a vet
coming out from Australia to do some work and test the
vaccine that they’re developing.

All right. So you can see this large bill for
getting to that food.

I said earlier on that there are less than 500
left in the wild. As our studies found, you’re never
guaranteed, and that’s the worst thing, of seeing
parrots; and usually it’s when you’ve got a visitor with
you that you don’t see any at all. But at certain times
in the year, and that tends to be often around Christmas
time, the numbers are very low. And earlier on, I said
the food in the forest is low at that time of the year.
Other periods of the year, the numbers are very high.
So what we’ve got is a very mobile population. And it
really becomes very difficult to actually work out,
using typical census techniques, how many birds there
actually are.

If we’re just going to look at one forest,
we’re not going to get any idea of how many birds there
are. So I’m going to go into just now what we’ve
initiated.

What we have found is there has been habitat
degradation. They’re removing the yellowwoods. It’s
causing food shortages. There’s definitely a nest-site
shortage, so we’re getting very few young chicks or
recruitment.

There is illegal trade. There tends to be
syndicates that are operating. The man that I
mentioned, earlier on in the year, we charged him twice,
and both affidavits have gone missing. So he’s
obviously got someone in the police who’s helping him
out.

And then the worst is this beak and feather
virus, which we’re still trying to find out more about.

Some people say we should capture all the wild
birds and bring them into captivity. I don’t think that
will achieve much, because some birds will infect
others; and I think if a vaccine could be developed,
that would be the best, but perhaps the birds are
developing their own immunity.

So how are we making South Africans aware of
conservation, looking after their parrots? Very few of
them actually know that we’ve got an indigenous and
endemic parrot.

This is a board up near the Hogsback Forest.

We’re trying to make people aware that if they
see birds in cages like this, they might find out
whether they’re wild-caught birds; and we’re trying to
get a studbook together, to work out exactly where the birds are.

We’re trying to get the conservation people
involved. Education, we’ve produced a whole lot of
posters; and most important is to get a studbook of
exactly which birds are in captivity and to keep some
control of the interbreeding that is going on.

The other thing, and I’m just saying it, it’s
very difficult to work out the numbers of birds. We’ve
initiated a Cape Parrot Day; and if any of you aren’t
doing anything on the 13th, 12th and 13th of May next
year, you’ve got enough time to save money till then,
what we do is we try and cover all the forest patches
from just north of Pietermaritzburg in the Karkloof
right down to the southern end of the birds’ range. And
we always need volunteers.

And this is a bunch of students from our
university; they go out. The other people that have
really helped are farmers, birders, and just often
people who’ve never really been interested in birds
before, just feeling that they can do something, for
something that’s rare in their own back yard. For
years, South Africans have been mainly interested in rhino
and big and hairy things. And they go out to these
forest patches; most of them in very nice areas. You
don’t only see parrots, but many other interesting
birds. But sometimes you don’t see any parrots at all;
and that’s a difficult part, to try to convince people year in
and year out that they’re still helping in the
conservation effort. And if they do see parrots, we ask
them to record how many and when; and often, if the
parrots are flying, they fly very similarly to the
rameron pigeon, which is also shown in these forests.
But unlike the ramerons, the parrots are very raucous
and call a lot when they fly.

And what we do is we have observers at all the
different patches, usually on the tops of the hills,
counting the birds; and the Creighton area has been
fantastic. Most of the farmers have got involved, and
they’re all in radio communication with one another, and
they’ve ended up getting data that I as a researcher
would never have done. They’ve been able to work out
exactly where the birds are moving to; because they say,
“There are five flying towards your home,” and that
person then watches out and can time exactly how long
the birds have taken to fly. And they fly very rapidly;
they’re strong flyers.

We’ve tried to get that kind of data, because
it’s really important to know how the birds are moving
between the patches. But with the strong bill, they’ve
bitten through any radio collar that we’ve put on them.
We’ve tried to put tags on their feathers so that we can
identify them, but again they just chew those off. And
so if any of you is an electronics buff — and I think
our next option is to use satellites, where we’re going
to have to actually implant the birds, to work out
exactly where they’re moving.

The other area that we’re trying to improve the
numbers or increase the number of birds is to put up
artificial nest boxes. Our breeders that have got
captive birds are hand rearing and trying to get double
clutching.

Predation I don’t think is such a problem.
It’s more human predation, so just to make people aware.

This was a dead tree, a snag. So what we’re
trying to do, and you can’t really see it, is, 15 to 20
meters up, is put this new nice accommodation. And we
had to get people in to help us put up the nest boxes.
But the parrots, although we’ve got over a hundred nest
boxes up now, they’re showing no interest in this new
five-star accommodation. The boxes are very similar to
what we use in captivity, and still the birds haven’t
chosen them. They are flying around them, and so I’m
hoping that in the new year we might have some success.

So really, these birds are very specialized in
their type of diet. Also, they like forests. So they
move a lot. It makes conservation of them very
difficult, because it’s not like a lion or an antelope or a
rhino, where you can just put a big fence around an
area.

They’re found in these forests, which are one
of our least protected areas. It doesn’t attract
tourists, except more recently, birders. We must conserve the forests
to conserve the parrots.

ALAN MANNING (POICEPHALUS SOCIETY): You’ve
obviously done a lot of research on what they feed on in
the wild, but could you tell us what to feed them in
captivity.

DR. DOWNS: We haven’t actually done that much
research on the foods that you should feed them in
captivity, but William Horsfield is our most successful
breeder; he produces nearly 20 chicks a year. And he’s
using those American pellets as well as a mixed diet where
he’s boiling up various things, including sunflower
seeds, maize, and then fresh greens and fruits every day.
And if anyone is coming out to South Africa and wants to
find out more about the diet, he’d be very willing to
let you see his particular work. I think the protein
and fat are very important. This chap not only feeds
the birds in a very special way, this successful
breeder, he also has all sorts of incubators. Every
bird is monitored, every gram, as it grows, is all
connected to computer; he has not only a great success
with Cape parrots, but he breeds Palm cockatoos. In the
wild, Protea heads are full of beetles, so they might
eat the beetles, though I haven’t seen that.

Regarding the number of birds and their
endangered status: In some species now, we’re finding
that it isn’t following the trend, but it has been
suggested 200 or less and you’re on your way out. In
certain species, it seems that they can recover, but I
just think their numbers are low enough that we’ve got
to get everyone aware and just try and get the numbers
up. I think they’re really at a danger point. Especially
if a disease comes.

We have two pairs that have bred every year,
and we’ve never had any of them breed twice in a year.
They don’t seem to breed at a specific time. Often
depends on what’s available food-wise.

At this stage, I’d be against reintroductions.
They’re very expensive. You don’t know what you’re
reintroducing to the wild, because you’ve got to really
quarantine the birds. And then there’s such a demand
from the avicultural market. I think any captive-bred
birds, we should rather try and flood the aviculture
market, because what I find is the second-generation
birds breed very easily in captivity. The wild-caught
birds are very tense. They take a long time to settle
down. You often have to keep them in an aviary right
away from everything else so they don’t get disturbed.
But that’s a personal feeling. The expense of
reintroduction is huge; and I think Mauritius has been
successful in some of their reintroductions; but most of
the rest of the world, not only just for parrots, most
other birds, it’s fairly low.

I’ve worked in South America, and what we found
there is when we’re reintroducing the animals, not just
birds, monkeys, the locals were recapturing them and
reselling, and it was like a vicious circle.

One of my students, Craig Symes, is working on
the gray-headeds now, finishing a Master’s thesis. They
don’t feed just on forest trees. And they go for a
whole range of foods; and there are a couple of people
who live in Zimbabwe and Zambia, things like marula,
which is a really hard-cased seed they’re able to get
into; there’s a wild plum that occurs in that area. The
birds again have got the bill to get in. And they also
feed on the wild figs as well. And Craig’s doing
nutritional work on all those.

CRAIG HARRIS: You mentioned the separation of
the subspecies so the robustus robustus is now a species
on its own. What was the reasoning behind that?

DR. DOWNS: First of all, Philip Clancy put
that forward in ’97, and he’s one of these old chaps
who’s been working in museums for — I think he’s 88.
And we have always known him to be the separatist,
because he split up all sorts of different species. But
with the Cape parrot, he suggested we split the robustus
separately, but he never really quite defined why or
gave any reason. What we did was to do morphometrics on
all the museum specimens on Cape parrots the world over.
And what it came out, the two gray-headeds are different
statistically to the Cape parrot. And so in
morphometrics. And also in distribution now. This
species is north into Zimbabwe. And ecologically, this
species isn’t in forest, where the other is, so that’s
the initial thing. We’ve got another paper coming out
now on the DNA, which confirms the separation.

CRAIG HARRIS: Because what we’ve found, in the
United States, to my knowledge, there are no
robustus, no true Capes. There are quite a number of
the other two subspecies, owned as pets and breeders.
And there’s a lot of people that would really be into
contributing towards conservation and what have you, but
when you separate the Cape off from the birds that
they’re associated with, it’s almost like it’s hard to
then get them interested in it. It seems like a step
backwards in actually the benefit toward saving the
birds, for any conservation efforts, at least in that
respect.

DR. DOWNS: Except now that it’s got out,
conservation work is really concerned and realizing that
they have to do something.

The other thing is that the separation — the
birds still can interbreed, and we’re not sure whether
the hybrids can breed. So although we’ve put them in
separate species, and those of you who go on and study
zoology, the whole concept of a true species is
something that’s very debatable, when is the cutoff
time. And to actually get something recognized as being
a true species is quite difficult and controversial.
So, yeah, there’s different ways.

I think over time, I actually think that within
the Cape parrots now, which I showed you their
distribution, we’re actually getting separation of their
nests. Because we’ve got a northern, middle and a
southern region. The southern one is the one where we
found that they’ve got the virus. The vocalizations
between the three, they’re also different. So what we
have is actually evolution taking place within the one
group.

CRAIG HARRIS: You’ve done a lot of studies
counting the robustus. The other two subspecies are
also listed as endangered, but has anybody been actually
keeping track of the numbers of what their status is?

DR. DOWNS: Craig’s been working on the
gray-headed in Zimbabwe, southern Zimbabwe and northern,
and Transvaal. But his was only a Master’s study, and
he’s been doing two years field work. And the numbers
seem much higher than the Cape parrots. Still, there’s
more illegal trade with the gray-headeds than with the
Capes. And all the nests that he was monitoring, nearly
all of them had birds removed from them.

One of our students has been working on the
smaller brown-headed parrots, and he says that different
individuals do have different voices. But with the
Capes, we haven’t done this, and that brings me to
another point. With the gray-headeds and with these
little brown-headed parrots, what we found is that
they’re vocalizing at a normal frequency that all of us
can hear, and we’ve just published something on those
vocalizations. But in working on the brown-headed,
we’ve found — and they’re a much smaller parrot, and
they go right through to Zimbabwe, they’re actually
producing a sound which is an ultrasound, which is
absolutely rare in birds, other than the cave — oil
birds found in caves in South America. And he’s –
they’ve only done that analysis in the last three
months. The reason why the birds are vocalizing at
frequencies beyond us, one wonders why. It’s a whole
new area of research. Because previously, birds were
considered only to vocalize at 10,000 kilohertz, and I
think these birds are vocalizing at 17-18,000. So the
whole vocalization pattern is another whole area.

LES ABNETT: Can you explain to everybody,
looking at Cheeky, exactly what the differences are
between the birds you’re talking about and Cheeky.

DR. DOWNS: This is what I’m saying is a
gray-headed Poicephalus. We’re calling it fuscicollis
suahelicus now. And it’s a close relative of
Poicephalus fuscicollis fuscicollis.

The main difference is the head is gray. The
bill is slightly different to the robustus. But if you
haven’t looked at them and you only caught a glimpse of
them in a while, you wouldn’t — I think it would be
very difficult to tell them apart. This one is only
found in riverand bush woodlands in the northern parts
of South Africa, going through into Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, where their numbers are very low, and then
into Angola; because of the war there, we’re not sure of
numbers. But again, there’s a lot of illegal trade, not
just in parrots, but other species as well, out of
Angola. And what’s interesting about these parrots is
that in most birds, the male is the one that’s really
attractive. But in most of our parrots, it’s the female
that’s more attractive. And the female normally has red
above the head, a red bar. But juveniles would also
have that. And then there’s also this red on the wings
and red –

LES ABNETT: Red socks.

DR. DOWNS: Yeah, red socks. But weighing
about 200 to 300 grams. And so when we put radio
collars on them, we’ve had to put them around their
neck. We’ve even put chili peppers into the radios, but
they still chew them off.

LES ABNETT: They love chili peppers. I know
from history my two females used to eat chilies.

ALAN MANNING (POICEPHALUS SOCIETY): How would
you describe the head color of the robustus?

DR. DOWNS: It’s much more of an olive color.
And I don’t know if it was clear in the slides, but it’s
really much more of an olivey color.

CRAIG HARRIS: On the Psittacine beak and
feather disease, I know there’s research being done
in Australia. Is that research applicable to what’s
going on in Africa?

DR. DOWNS: Definitely. Because if they can
come up with a vaccine, especially for breeders, because
I just think it’s such a waste to euthanize when there’s
so few in captivity.

CRAIG HARRIS: So there’s no separate research
being done on African birds, or are you just relying on
research that’s going on in Australia?

DR. DOWNS: Mainly.

CRAIG HARRIS: On conservation, you mentioned
getting a vaccine for beak and feather disease, you
mentioned deforestation, you mentioned captive breeding.
Where should the effort be focused to really make a
change, make a chance to actually help the survival of
the birds?

DR. DOWNS: I think we have to have a
multifaceted approach, because the birds are so low in
numbers, and I don’t think one any particular way will
guarantee success. So I think if we can get the captive
breeders to really getting up to double clutching and
stuff like that, there won’t be such a demand on the
wild birds. And then if we can get our conservation
bodies also more aware.

And just making local people aware that they’ve
got something special. Due to the longevity of the
parrots, I think in the end, there’s a chance. And the
birds that are there, if we could just guarantee that
they don’t get caught, that there are nest boxes
available. There are a lot of young yellowwoods coming
out, especially in Natal, where they’ve stopped the
logging. I don’t know; I feel positive at the moment.

DANA PARROTT: The money that is raised for
Cape conservation, where is it actually spent?

DR. DOWNS: Field trips once a month, our main
expense. We’re trying to get students to come out.
Just really mainly a lot of it goes on transport, fuel,
and student food and stuff, when they volunteer to come
and work. The other money has gone into the Cape Parrot
Day, just organizing the logistics in that; and again,
it’s the transport cost, getting the students out to the
more rural areas, we often have to hire vehicles, four-by-fours. And then we’ve got these nest boxes up in
different forests, and just checking on those once a
month if possible. I’ll go out and give talks to a lot
of different conservation, farmers and things like that.
And we’ve had a student, Craig Symes, working on the
gray-headeds, and that’s the main area.

MICHAEL JOHNSTON: Thanks ever so much.
Anybody who’s interested can stay around and talk
informally. We’ve been very, very privileged to have
you here.

DR. DOWNS: Thank you.

Craig Harris – Dr. Downs – Dana Parrott