Cast:  RGV Birding Festival, Arroyo Colorado Audubon Society, Red-crowned Parrots, Green Parakeets. Supporting cast: Golden-fronted Woodpeckers.

The RGVBF has a long history of Giving Back.  It was instrumental in the preservation and acquisition of forty acres of native thornscrub within the Harlingen city limits, called The Thicket, which is now in the parks system with a conservation easement upon it.

These days, our focus has been on Red-crowned Parrots and Green Parakeets.  The Valley has the only accepted established and countable wild populations of these immensely entertaining species.  With our February Freeze and our overeager development, the parrots and parakeets are losing their roosting, nesting, and feeding trees at an alarming rate.

So a plan was hatched, but then the hatchling quickly grew three large and important heads:  1) increase nesting sites 2) foster an ordinance protecting these species and 3) conduct surveys to better understand distribution, populations, and behavior.   The ordinance is currently being drafted (grass roots government involvement! Way to go Fest President Danny Hoehne!) and the survey is being implemented (Citizen Science! Headed up by get-‘er-done Fest Secretary and ACAS President Norma Friedrich, with the helpful guidance of ornithologists-biologists Tim Brush and Mark Conway).

But the exciting, visible, tangible product of our efforts was our first installation of a dead palm bundle – a “psittacidae condo”.  The site was offered by a sympathetic landowner, the trunks were salvaged and stockpiled, and supplies, equipment, and support came from various directions.  Here’s the process in pix:

First trunk going up alongside the cemented support post.

Hooking up the second trunk.

Trunk Number Two up.  Rope was used temporarily, then stainless steel banding secured all the trunks and support post together.

At any good barn or palm-raisin’, the womenfolk provide vittles.  Time for a break.  Thanks Sue Griffin, Trade Show Chair and Joyce Hamilton, Fest volunteer and ACAS Secretary.

Four trunks.  Five trunks complete the job.  One even already has a hole in it.  The woodpeckers will start the holes (they were nearby ready to swoop in) and the parrots will then enlarge them to their own liking.  That morning, a Red-crowned sat squawking at us from a nearby tree.  An anxious condo-dweller, we hope.  The process and science of providing parrot and parakeet homes is a bit of an experiment, with some unknowns and assumptions.  However, we believe we’re on the right track and plan on more installations around Harlingen.  There’s much to be learned from this project.  And we predict that the people of the community will gain awareness and become more proprietorial about their avian neighbors.

Here’s the landowners, the Harveys.  A big thanks to you.

And here’s the workforce – all RGVBF volunteers and all great, giving folks.   Special hat tips to Billy Snider and his palm trunk salvaging skills, Bob Binney and his trusty bucket truck, plus Stan Sterba and his on-the-spot photo journaling prowess.

SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK        (That’s ‘THANKS’ in psittacidae).