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Can anyone recommend a boarder for my bird (small parrot, dusky conure) in Eastern Massachusetts or thereabouts?

Originally posted on Dreamwidth. comments there. Comment here or there.

Driving home from the Cape today, I saw two gorgeous male goldfinches fly across the road. In case you don't know what they look like the bodies are a couple inches long, the body is bright yellow, the wings black, and they have a darting flight, wings closing to bullet short distances. They crossed right in front of my windshield from left to right and just as I swerved left just in case it was too late and I heard a tiny little -thud- as one of them hit my windshield on the lower right! I was so stunned I kept driving as my brain flashed through thoughts of stopping, where there were vets nearby, that I had a wildlife rehabber number in my phone, and then I realized I'd gone far enough that if I stopped I wouldn't be able to find the poor little thing. Even if he were still alive. He probably had babies and a mate. He was probably dead. (The poor thing -bounced-! Maybe because he was small and bounced, that means he'll sustain less injury?) If he was alive, he probably wouldn't make it. Normal vets don't usually treat wildlife. Rehabbers don't usually care about small common animals, and even if they did or the vet did and he somehow made it, his babies will still all die. I'm a horrible person.

In the future: if I hit (but not run over) something small I will stop and find it, see if it's still alive, and then decide what to do. (Calling a rehabber and describing the location of a duck might work, but not a goldfinch.)

Anyone else who drives or passengers, what do you do when you or your driver hit (but not run over) an animal?

I bought a couple cornish game hens to make a small chicken soup with. They're about the size of, oh, a nanday or mitred conure. Bigger than a cockatiel, smaller than a gray.

I wonder, when the Carolina parakeet was hunted to extinction, I wonder how they tasted? There was no reason at all for their hunters to not eat them.

How sad, Wikipedia says the Carolina parakeets tended to flock around their dead.

Also sad, the binomial name for Carolina parakeets is conuropsis carolinensis, and the genus conuropsis is today called aratinga Kappa is an aratinga weddellii (Dusky conure). Aratinga solstitialii (sun conures) were just proclaimed an endangered species within the last 2 years or so.

η: Link to some up-close photos of a Carolina parakeet and a passenger pigeon in the Duke University collection. Don't click that link if images of dead birds squick you out.

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ALL THE BIRD IN THE WORLD, every single one of them, every size and species imaginable.

Kappa would serve lots of pellets in simple foraging toys (everyone's favorite, right?), with a HUGE dessert of almonds.

I keep forgetting to change Kappa's papers as often as I should. I've also been trying to put her to sleep earlier b/c I suspect part of her behavior is hormonal. It was already past her bedtime last night when I decided to change papers before covering her. Then I found mouse poop in the papers and freaked out and washed the bottom of the cage for the next hour.

Woke up this morning to a nightmare involving trying to escape the zombie apocalypse with Kappa, except she'd caught it, and Bowser was burning I-84 so we had to go the long way to the emergency vet.

While changing Kappa's food this morning I found mouse poop in it.

T$ showed me how to use the Havahart trap I ran out to buy at the hardware store. I spent all day cleaning her cage. My bum hip hurts from so much standing.

At something like 5pm T$'s friend B came over and parked me in and T$ and B went off to a frisbee tournament in Boston for the weekend.

Around 6pm the Havahart got a mouse. I took photos of him. I'm naming him Mouse 0 for reasons that will become clear in a moment. He was very cute and very tiny and very scared.

Since I was parked in, I loaded the trap onto my bicycle and rode over to the river so I could let it go on the other side so it'd be less likely to make it back. The mouse was no longer in the trap when I stopped to check it. I'm guessing that on a bump one of the doors flipped up enough for him to escape while the catcher-thingit was also jostled so it didn't jam the door shut.

Mice: 1. Humans: 0. That was Mouse 0 b/c it didn't count. That was a practice mouse.

On the way back I got two mosquito bites and a bug in my left eye. Thankfully it was a big enough one that it bounced off rather than getting stuck in it. Ow. Ick.

Back home now. Hip still hurts. Haven't had dinner yet. Mouse 1 is in the trap. Or possibly the same mouse. I can't walk the mile to the other side of the river right now b/c of the hip. I don't want to bounce another mouse out of the trap on the bike over. I'm still parked in. I hope the stupid mouse lives until morning when I might be able to get my car out or be able to walk. It won't die overnight will it? Gawd, I'm going to hear it rattling that trap all night long, aren't I?

Anyone got a cat I can borrow for a few days?

The House of Representatives is currently working on a bill that would outlaw all non-native species of animals in captivity - that is, anything other than cats and dogs - whether as pets, for research, or for education. I urge you to contact your Representatives about this bill because it would not only decimate zoos and scientific research, but it would also severely limit the rest of my life with my bird Kappa.

Write your Legislators:
http://www.capwiz.com/naiatrust/issues/alert/?alertid=13098456

( More detail and links )

Edit: amavia, guinea pigs are not among the exempt species (despite the fact that they are domesticated), so you might want to get your networks cracking on this.

Thanks for your time!

...because I just parked my car and was picking up my stuff when a frozen dead bird hit my windsheild, and I didn't *entirely* freak out, just a little. It made a BIG clunk when it hit the window, that's how I guessed it was frozen. No chunks out of the window, so I looked at the poor little feet sticking up. And only tiny tufts of feathers sticking out. And the body misshapen. I got out of the car for a closer look, and realized it was mostly picked clean - while the feet looked normal, the rest was flesh and bone. I can't confirm the species, thankfully, since I keep a popular birdfeeder that probably had attracted it in the first place, and knowing the species might've confirmed that, but the size indicates pigeon or robin.

But so there's this mostly eaten former bird that fell onto my windshield, it's gotta come from somewhere. I looked up, and there's some sort of hawk or raptor looking back down at me! I think it was a juvenile red-tailed hawk, based on size and coloring, but I could be mistaken. I looked at it for a while, it looked at me. I looked at its feast on my windshield (maybe it wasn't entirely frozen, if it was still eating it), and I think it looked at the carcass too. I decided to leave the body there in case the hawk was still working on it, and went inside to warm up, and play with my own live little prey bird.

Who decided to hump my hair. Oh, birds!

I hope I don't have to move the body tomorrow when I drive. I hope something else decides to finish off the hawk's meal if it doesn't.

Following a conversation about training Kappa to go to the grocery store for me while sick, I ended up looking up homing pigeons, and the Wikipedia effect led me to the homing pigeon named Cher Ami, the only animal to receive the Croix de Guerre, akin to our purple heart.

As Cher Ami tried to fly back home, the Germans saw him rising out of the brush and opened fire and for several minutes, bullets zipped through the air all around him. The men of the Lost Battalion saw Cher Ami shot down, but he was soon airborne again. He managed to arrive back at his loft at division headquarters 25 miles to the rear in just 25 minutes^*, helping to save the lives of the 194 survivors. In this last mission, Cher Ami had delivered the message despite having been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, covered in blood, and with a leg hanging only by a tendon.

[Wikipedia]

*I started out a bit doubtful at this speed, as a mile a minute is 60mph, but more Wikipedia hunting says they can top 130km/h, or 80mph.

And it was to that hanging leg that the message was attached! The vets army medics gave Cher Ami amazing treatment, and his life was extended by 9 months, but he did eventually succumb to the injuries. He's now stuffed and mounted in the Smithsonian collection "The Price of Freedom".

If you think you've seen good disappearing tricks, check out this small parrot (an Indian Ring-Necked parakeet), and this cockatoo in the comments.