BrokenWing Chronicles
Area parrot shelter is for the birds - literally
By LAURA ARCHAZKI-PACTER (Contact)
2:24 p.m., Wednesday, February 4, 2009
When Ethel and Marvin Buchbinder brought their first parrot home to their Manhattan apartment 17 years ago, they knew they found a feathered friend for life.
Since that time, the Estates couple’s passion for parrots has turned into a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering displaced birds from far away as New York City.
“Parrots were marketed as the urban pet, but they’re not meant for apartment living,” Marvin explains. “It was a prison sentence for them. Parrots are not criminals, and they don’t belong in cages.”
Appropriately named Lucky Parrot Sanctuary, the sanctuary recently welcomed its 40th guest. The refuge is spread across four-and-a-half acres that the couple purchased before moving to Collier County in 2001.
“We try to find them homes and we don’t want to portray them as pets,” Ethel explains, as she prepares a nut salad for Max, a colorful macaw. She gently reaches up to feed each bird walnut salad treats by hand.
Macaws are among the world’s largest parrots. They mate for life and they can live to be over 60 years old. Marvin says many parrot owners don’t realize the lifelong commitment involved in purchasing a macaw.
The Buchbinders built specialized aviaries for each group of older rescued birds, which arrive from all over the United States. Their aviary offers a refuge for rescued Amazons, Conures, African Greys and Macaws, whose owners could no longer care for them. One owner died, leaving no one to care for the bird.
Ethel recalls a Wisconsin man who was dying of prostrate cancer. She says one of his last requests to his wife was, “Find a place to take care of my bird, and don’t clip his wings.”
The couple’s operation takes up most of their time, from feeding birds and cleaning aviaries to building perches and searching out low-cost food supplies.
“Some of the food is donated, like fancy nuts,” Marvin says. “The other day, we were in Sweetbay and we bought 100 pounds of fancy nuts at 59 cents a pound. It’s normally $2.99 a pound.”
The parrots consume 10 pounds of seeds and fruits and vegetables a week.
“The macaws like scrambled eggs and pasta, and they like cheddar cheese,” Marvin says of some of the staples in the birds’ diet.
Stressed by relocation, some of the parrots exhibit excessive feather-plucking, a common problem in the captive parrot population. The Buchbinder’s try to comfort the birds by landscaping their habitats to resemble a tropical rainforest.
“We rearrange perches and shake things up a bit, and modify their territory,” Marvin explains.
The couple also hosts a Web site and a phone service to assist parrot owners and answer questions about care and aviary needs. For more information, go online to
www.luckyparrot.org.