A Visit to Time Magazine and the Zoo

Yesterday we visited with Andrew Purvis of Time Magazine – he serves as the Bureau Chief here in Berlin.   He and his intern, Laura, spent time discussing with us the different types of stories going on in the world, how to succeed in freelance journalism, and some project ideas for Berlin.

After this adventure, the group visited the dealership home of Mercedes, and then we did a trip to to the main Zoo. I always check out zoos for the parrots, and the ones at the Berlin Zoo were not in great shape. Parrots can become easily stressed in captivity, and several of the macaws we saw had started self-mutilating behavior – feather plucking. Once a parrot starts to do this, it is nearly impossible to get them to stop, even if the bird’s environment drastically improves or it is freed into the wild. I hope that these birds were taken in with this problem already present, rather than it being caused by the zoo environment. Many zoos will take in illegally captured birds or birds that owners no longer want to keep. There are also many charities who do this (I donate to 4 of these in the US and one based int he UK) and who work to stop the smuggling of these birds from countries within South America and Africa, among others. It is really a sad story – the birds usually are drugged and stuffed into carboard tubes to try to get them through customs – and usually customs officers are bribed if the birds are discovered.

Seattle, San Francisco and New York all have wild parrots populations from abandoned or escaped birds – surprisingly, many of these populations are doing well. I hope to document the Seattle parrots this summer.

As you can tell, I could easily do a story on the Berlin parrots and their caretakers.