The thick-billed parrot is the only surviving parrot species native to the United States. These brightly colored birds once roamed across the American Southwest and as far south as Venezuela — but today, the only wild population remaining lives high in the forests of Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains. For years, conservation organizations like OVIS (Organización Vida Silvestre) and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance have been working on a multi-faceted conservation project to save these birds. Host Regina G. Barber and producer Rachel Carlson dive into the details of that project — and how tiny "bird backpacks" are helping to make it all happen. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers. Regina Barber here with producer Rachel Carlson. Hey, Rachel. Hey, Gina. Okay, welcome again to the show. I love reporting with you.
I love being here. And this time it's really exciting because we've been reporting a story together on thick-billed parrots. And you got to see these parrots in, like, real life. Yeah, I got to go to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido, California. I drove down from Los Angeles, pulled onto a dirt road, and met some parrots at the Bird Conservation Center. It looks like they're cuddling.
They're kind of looking at me. And I met their care specialist, too. It sounds like they're laughing. Maybe they're laughing at me. Rachel, they're laughing with you. I don't know. I kind of feel like they were laughing at me. But they're still so charismatic and they look really cool too. They're bright green with little red splotches on their heads near their beaks.
They have big pupils and the adults have black beaks while the babies have white beaks. They all live really high up in trees, usually pine, making their homes in abandoned nests and holes.
Yeah, and historically you could see them from the southwest United States all the way south into Venezuela, and in particular in Mexico's Sierra Madre Mountains, where you might still hear them up high in the old-growth forests. So it's very green.
And the times of the year that I've been there have been in the late summer, early fall. So sometimes you'll see a little orange and red, but it's mostly a sea of green. And some of some of these mountains are very steep. And you'll see a lot of rocky outcroppings.
That's Nadine Lamberski. She's the chief conservation and wildlife health officer for San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. And when I visited, she told me that these birds live really high up in cavities and trees. maybe somewhere like six to 8,000 feet up where it gets really cold at night.
I've spent many nights sleeping in that forest and it's cold. So they need a really big tree in order to have that dense wood to protect the chicks. Obviously the chicks don't have any feathers when they first hatch and they're very, very susceptible to cold.
A century ago, some residents say those forests were filled with nesting parrots. But over the decades, their habitat has shrunk and their population has plummeted, which is why in 1970 they were listed as endangered.
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