On September 13, 2000, we had the pleasure, while in England, of attending a talk given by Dr. Colleen Downs from the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Dr. Downs is one of the leading Cape parrot experts in the world. The talk was arranged by our friend Mr. Les Abnett from Hadlow, Kent, England, with the help of Mr. Michael Johnston of Hadlow College, Hadlow, Kent, England, who provided the meeting room for the event. The event was a great success attended by over 70 people plus Cheeky the Cape Parrot. Unfortunately due to a petrol crisis in the U.K. many Cape Parrot enthusiasts were unable to make the trip to the meeting. The following is a transcript of Dr. Downs' presentation, interspersed with photographs from the slide show.
Please note that Dr. Downs' presentation pertained to Cape parrots only, Poicephalus (pronounced poy-KEF-a-lus) robustus, also known as brown-headed parrots. The gray-headed parrots, formerly known as Poicephalus robustus suahelicus, and brown-necked parrots, formerly known as Poicephalus robustus fuscicollis, the only varieties available in the U.S., are no longer classified as Cape parrots. The gray-headed parrots are now known as Poicephalus fuscicollis suahelicus (pronounced swa-HEEL-e-kus), and the brown-necked parrots are now known as Poicephalus fuscicollis fuscicollis (pronounced fus-key-KO-lus). These parrots live in different parts of Africa and eat different foods than the Cape parrots.
Also of interest to many of you who have written to the Cape Parrot Forum asking about your underweight birds: Dr. Downs says that in the wild, the gray-headed parrots weigh between 200-300 grams. So it sounds like we all have plump, pampered parrots at home!
MICHAEL JOHNSTON: This is the first day that the students and new students to Hadlow have been in a situation like this, but also there are a number of guests who have come to Hadlow as well, so it's a good place to see everybody.
Really, really delighted to introduce to you Colleen Downs from the University of Natal, and she is doing research on Cape parrots, and she's come in to do a talk to us all about her research.
Thank you very much.
DR. DOWNS: Good afternoon, everyone.
It's quite difficult to know what level to aim the talk, so for those of you who know a lot about parrots, I hope I don't bore you, and those who don't know anything, hopefully we'll teach you a thing or two.
First of all, most people know that there are lots of parrots in Australia and South America. They don't realize that there are fewer in Africa; and in South Africa, where I'm from, there's only one endemic parrot, the Cape parrot. And the scariest thing is is that there are less than 500 left in the wild.
If you look at a bird book for that region, you will see in a range of three birds, usually: the Cape parrot that I've shown just now, and then this gray-headed parrot, and then there's a third species whose Latin name is Poicephalus fuscicollis; and they were all considered subspecies. We've recently shown, mainly using morphometrics, that not only are the color of the head and the bill, but the Cape parrot should be a separate species, and it's known as Poicephalus robustus; that's that green-headed one. The other two gray-headeds we've put in a group together; and for those interested, there's a paper in the Journal of Natural History coming out shortly with that information.
So it makes this brown-headed or Cape parrot particularly special, because if it's a true species, and its numbers are so low -- in 1992, we started a project on them, and there was several reasons why the numbers might have declined. And if you look at most birds whose numbers have declined, it's usually something to do with habitat, species, the forest species, the forest being killed. If the forest is being killed, then there's not much food for them. There's nowhere for them to nest; and if they're not nesting, you're going to have low recruitment.
And then the last two are things that one's never too sure of. If something becomes rare, suddenly people want to trade in it; and the more sinister thing is to prove where there's disease has caused a decline of the species. So for us doing field work, these four would be quite easy to do research on; we could try and look at illegal trade, but it's very rare that you find the dead birds and actually can prove that disease has caused the decline.
The Cape parrots' range, I said it occurs in South Africa, those of you who've never been there, we have what we call afromontane forests. These are forest patches, and it's like a mosaic, so it's not a huge, big Amazon forest. It's little patches of forest.
For those of you -- and I'll show you just now on a map, these really stretch from Fort Beaufort in the eastern Cape, through to about half an hour north from where I'm from in Pietermaritzburg.
So this just shows us a little bit more detail.
This is South Africa here. The province of KwaZulu-Natal is where I'm from. My university is here in Pietermaritzburg. And the Cape parrots' range, now that we've lifted it to full-species status, it's really just in the forests that are found here.
Okay, our particular research areas are near a little village called Creighton, and quite near a place called Kokstad, near two forests that we visit once a month and do research and try and count the birds and look at various aspects of their biology. So everyone knows where the birds occur from June on.
I'm just showing you what I mean by a mosaic of forests. It's not a continuous patch. And this is natural. Grass under the trees. And so the birds would have to move between patches.
And these afromontane forests are special in that 80 percent of the trees are, as those of you who are going to do a bit more in botany, are what we call Podacarpus species, a very tall tree; usually there's one or two emergent trees, and these are the trees that the parrots love.
The other thing about the forest is that they have a lot of mist. For you here in the UK, mist is probably fairly common. Where we live, it isn't that common, except in these forest areas, which makes research jolly difficult. The parrots love the cloudy, misty days. You can hear them all about. They're very vocal, but you can't see them and what they're up to.
So this is on a clear day; the tall Podacarpus standing out of the forest exposing fruit, which was in the early sunshine, the birds would be there.
Cape parrots, unlike most humans, are very early risers. As soon as the sun comes up, they're active.
They're jolly fussy about their food, and I'll explain a little bit more about that.
They always hang around in groups, except perhaps during the period when they're breeding, when you'll see pairs flying around; and they go on these what we call feeding forays, moving between patches, trying to find food.
In the early morning, in summer, you have to get up at least by 3:00 a.m. if you're going to see the birds. First light is quarter to 4:00.
What they do is they're active for those first few -- two or three hours after sunlight; they might move between forests; and during this time, they'll feed. But the middle of the day, they're just resting. And if you walk under a tree and you find them, they're nodding off and just lazing.
Later afternoon, they might start feeding and socializing. And often, in the last half hour before dusk, they'll move between forest patches and return to where they came from.
So in the early morning, especially in cold winter mornings, they're trying to catch the sun just almost like reptiles. A lot of socializing, chatting amongst themselves.
And our one study finds there's a water source; and it seems the parrots have to drink every day, which makes sense. But for them to find a patch where there's water all year round and also where there are no predators is quite rare. And in this forest, there's a stream that comes over the edge of the mountain; so when the birds land in the trees nearby, they have a good view of who's about.
The main predators that we've seen in this area are things like mongooses. Raptors will often dive-bomb the parrots, but they'll make such a raucous noise and just fly through the forest; and although we've seen feathers fly, we've never actually seen a raptor kill a bird; but in the Karkloof, one of the landowners there reckons that a black sparrow hawk actually killed one of the parrots. So they go down to drink, but they're very skittish. If you try and get near them, they fly away.
What has happened is that some of our youths that live in the area nearby, it's a very poor rural area, sometimes go to catch rameron pigeons. And so we've tried to say to them, "Please, don't go there; work elsewhere." But if it means -- it's a food source for these local people. We're not sure how many parrots they might have caught.
So the rest of the day, the birds move out into the trees, feeding. And I said they're fussy feeders. Well, there are about two or three species of fruits that they feed on; the Podacarps, with their very strong bill, as you can see, they're able to open the exocarp. And what they're interested in is this endocarp, the kernel in this. It's quite a large fruit. When you mash that up, it's like peanut butter. And so their main food are these yellowwoods, Latin name Podacarpus.
At certain periods of the year, especially March and April, there's not much of that around, so they feed on celtis, which also has a kernel, but the berry is minute. And they can get through about a hundred of those in a minute. It's just amazing the way they just use this bill and get to the kernel.
From November to January, there's very little forest fruit, and I'll explain why in a moment. And this is the time when the birds are having to move out. And they've discovered pecan nuts are quite delicious, as well as peaches and plums. But the saddest thing is that, when they move into orchards, is that they're very easy for people to trap. And this year we've caught one man who's alleged to have caught 20 birds. And what he had was a bird in a cage, and he put nets through the orchards, and the bird in the cage would call the other birds, and so the birds would fly into the nets. And in part, it might not seem a lot, but in South African rand they're getting at least 25,000 rand a pair for the birds, so it's become particularly important when there's no food around.
This is a difficult chart to understand, but all I want you to know is that the Podacarps are unusual in terms of fruiting trees. Because they keep their fruit on for at least six months. So if you had a forest full of Podacarps, that were also not all fruiting at the same time, you would have food throughout the year. So that is perhaps why these parrots have specialized on eating this particular food and they've got the bill for getting into.
And as I said earlier, the falcatus is their favorite one, that one that you saw just now. It's 20 percent fat. And what we find is this is what they feed their young chicks. The other one, latifolius, isn't as high in fat, but it's got a lot of protein. So a really good energy source.
And so the birds would, I think in previous years, we have found to live in one forest probably all year round, but now we find they move between forest patches; and during August, they even go into Protea patches alongside of the forest and feed on the big Protea heads, so very nutritious. But in South Africa, often we have a lot of gum or eucalyptus and pine plantations are planted right through these Proteas, right up to the indigenous forest. And so this food source is a very threatened one.
It's my other interest, I have a number of students working on sun birds and sugar birds, which are nectar feeders. And we're interested in how these birds survive or find these localized food sources.
What's happened over the years, although it's now illegal to remove Podacarps from our forest, there is a little bit of illegal selling of trees. The actual size of forest has stayed the same, but the quality has changed. And in the eastern Cape, there are two sawmills that have permission to remove dead trees. And the yellowwood timber is highly sought after. It makes very good furniture. And unfortunately, we don't have enough people to police whether these sawmills are actually removing dead trees.
When I visited recently, they definitely weren't just taking old, dead trees. And we also are trying to get government not only to stop this, but there's another reason why these yellowwoods are so important, and I'll explain that shortly.
I was talking about the afforestation; they plant right up to the edge of the patches; and when they cut down the trees they often hit them, so what we're finding is some of the smaller patches are decreasing in size.
Also, what becomes important is the water dynamic within these patches; and most of you are just beginning your studies. If any of you are interested in hydrology, there's a wonderful thesis waiting to be done to look at how the water dynamics within these forest patches changes and how it affects the fruiting of the trees, because we don't know anything about that at this stage.
Although the timber companies are getting a lot of flack for planting right up to the forest patches, in other areas, especially in the Transkei, which is a very rural area, I think the forests -- they've planted exotic forests, it's actually saved the indigenous forest.
So, what about these Cape parrots? I just wanted to make you realize that this isn't a Cape parrot now, it's a gray-headed parrot. It's in the other group. It's different to the green- or brown-headed that you see there, which we now call the Cape parrot. This species is found northern South Africa, going into Zimbabwe and across into west Africa.
I mentioned the other reason why the removal of dead trees is important, to do with the recruitment of the birds. In a way, they're signing their own death warrant. They're so fussy about what they eat. They only produce three to four eggs. They live a long time, and I think this bird's 30 years old.
They only breed after four or five years. So you're going to have slow population growth. And if there's been some disturbance or something, it would be very difficult to increase the population numbers.
And they breed in holes in dead trees or snags, as they're known. And to get a nice cavity in a dead Podacarpus is quite difficult. They usually only nest in the higher old dead trees; and the female does most of the incubation. Here you see the bird outside of the nest. So a branch has broken off and caused the cavity.
Scary thing is we've only found 12 nests during the last eight years. Really low. And it's not for not looking.
And the babies are quite pathetic little things.
And this is the other thing that I mentioned in their decline, the possibility of disease. In Pietermaritzburg, where I live, there's two good breeders of these birds. There's another one about half an hour away. But the total number of Cape parrots in South Africa that are in captivity are less than 50.
And so if we're going to stop illegal trade, I think we have to try and get these captive birds breeding; and the one breeder in particular is very successful, but what he found one year or two years ago was that the birds were dying at the time when they were starting to leave the nest. And he had them checked, and they had what we call the beak and feather virus. It's similar to AIDS. The birds don't die because all their feathers are falling out, they die because, especially at that time when they're flying off looking after themselves, they suddenly get a lot of respiratory problems, gut problems; and traditionally, if birds were found with that virus, you euthanized the whole lot, which is what this particular breeder did.
The disease came into South Africa with the Australian birds. We're not sure at what point; probably at least 30 years ago. The Australians and the Americans are working on a vaccine; but because it's a windborne virus, you might check birds today but tomorrow they have it. So that's another area of research, is to look into this disease side of the decline of Cape parrots.
Recently, some little guys caught wild birds and were selling them on the side of the road. There were four female birds, and they were all tested positive. So the wild birds do have the virus. But it tends to be in the southern part of the range.
Previously, eight other birds from the similar area also were caught and had this virus. But at this stage, they haven't died. So what we're doing is we're keeping them isolated from other birds, in quarantine, and we're hoping that maybe the disease has been in the population long enough that maybe the birds are developing their own immunity; and also, there's a vet coming out from Australia to do some work and test the vaccine that they're developing.
All right. So you can see this large bill for getting to that food.
I said earlier on that there are less than 500 left in the wild. As our studies found, you're never guaranteed, and that's the worst thing, of seeing parrots; and usually it's when you've got a visitor with you that you don't see any at all. But at certain times in the year, and that tends to be often around Christmas time, the numbers are very low. And earlier on, I said the food in the forest is low at that time of the year. Other periods of the year, the numbers are very high. So what we've got is a very mobile population. And it really becomes very difficult to actually work out, using typical census techniques, how many birds there actually are.
If we're just going to look at one forest, we're not going to get any idea of how many birds there are. So I'm going to go into just now what we've initiated.
What we have found is there has been habitat degradation. They're removing the yellowwoods. It's causing food shortages. There's definitely a nest-site shortage, so we're getting very few young chicks or recruitment.
There is illegal trade. There tends to be syndicates that are operating. The man that I mentioned, earlier on in the year, we charged him twice, and both affidavits have gone missing. So he's obviously got someone in the police who's helping him out.
And then the worst is this beak and feather virus, which we're still trying to find out more about.
Some people say we should capture all the wild birds and bring them into captivity. I don't think that will achieve much, because some birds will infect others; and I think if a vaccine could be developed, that would be the best, but perhaps the birds are developing their own immunity.
So how are we making South Africans aware of conservation, looking after their parrots? Very few of them actually know that we've got an indigenous and endemic parrot.
This is a board up near the Hogsback Forest.
We're trying to make people aware that if they see birds in cages like this, they might find out whether they're wild-caught birds; and we're trying to get a studbook together, to work out exactly where the birds are.
The other thing, and I'm just saying it, it's very difficult to work out the numbers of birds. We've initiated a Cape Parrot Day; and if any of you aren't doing anything on the 13th, 12th and 13th of May next year, you've got enough time to save money till then, what we do is we try and cover all the forest patches from just north of Pietermaritzburg in the Karkloof right down to the southern end of the birds' range. And we always need volunteers.
And this is a bunch of students from our university; they go out. The other people that have really helped are farmers, birders, and just often people who've never really been interested in birds before, just feeling that they can do something, for something that's rare in their own back yard. For years, South Africans have been mainly interested in rhino and big and hairy things. And they go out to these forest patches; most of them in very nice areas. You don't only see parrots, but many other interesting birds. But sometimes you don't see any parrots at all; and that's a difficult part, to try to convince people year in and year out that they're still helping in the conservation effort. And if they do see parrots, we ask them to record how many and when; and often, if the parrots are flying, they fly very similarly to the rameron pigeon, which is also shown in these forests. But unlike the ramerons, the parrots are very raucous and call a lot when they fly.
And what we do is we have observers at all the different patches, usually on the tops of the hills, counting the birds; and the Creighton area has been fantastic. Most of the farmers have got involved, and they're all in radio communication with one another, and they've ended up getting data that I as a researcher would never have done. They've been able to work out exactly where the birds are moving to; because they say, "There are five flying towards your home," and that person then watches out and can time exactly how long the birds have taken to fly. And they fly very rapidly; they're strong flyers.
We've tried to get that kind of data, because it's really important to know how the birds are moving between the patches. But with the strong bill, they've bitten through any radio collar that we've put on them. We've tried to put tags on their feathers so that we can identify them, but again they just chew those off. And so if any of you is an electronics buff -- and I think our next option is to use satellites, where we're going to have to actually implant the birds, to work out exactly where they're moving.
The other area that we're trying to improve the numbers or increase the number of birds is to put up artificial nest boxes. Our breeders that have got captive birds are hand rearing and trying to get double clutching.
Predation I don't think is such a problem. It's more human predation, so just to make people aware.
This was a dead tree, a snag. So what we're trying to do, and you can't really see it, is, 15 to 20 meters up, is put this new nice accommodation. And we had to get people in to help us put up the nest boxes. But the parrots, although we've got over a hundred nest boxes up now, they're showing no interest in this new five-star accommodation. The boxes are very similar to what we use in captivity, and still the birds haven't chosen them. They are flying around them, and so I'm hoping that in the new year we might have some success.
So really, these birds are very specialized in their type of diet. Also, they like forests. So they move a lot. It makes conservation of them very difficult, because it's not like a lion or an antelope or a rhino, where you can just put a big fence around an area.
They're found in these forests, which are one of our least protected areas. It doesn't attract tourists, except more recently, birders. We must conserve the forests to conserve the parrots.
ALAN MANNING (POICEPHALUS SOCIETY): You've obviously done a lot of research on what they feed on in the wild, but could you tell us what to feed them in captivity.
DR. DOWNS: We haven't actually done that much research on the foods that you should feed them in captivity, but William Horsfield is our most successful breeder; he produces nearly 20 chicks a year. And he's using those American pellets as well as a mixed diet where he's boiling up various things, including sunflower seeds, maize, and then fresh greens and fruits every day. And if anyone is coming out to South Africa and wants to find out more about the diet, he'd be very willing to let you see his particular work. I think the protein and fat are very important. This chap not only feeds the birds in a very special way, this successful breeder, he also has all sorts of incubators. Every bird is monitored, every gram, as it grows, is all connected to computer; he has not only a great success with Cape parrots, but he breeds Palm cockatoos. In the wild, Protea heads are full of beetles, so they might eat the beetles, though I haven't seen that.
Regarding the number of birds and their endangered status: In some species now, we're finding that it isn't following the trend, but it has been suggested 200 or less and you're on your way out. In certain species, it seems that they can recover, but I just think their numbers are low enough that we've got to get everyone aware and just try and get the numbers up. I think they're really at a danger point. Especially if a disease comes.
We have two pairs that have bred every year, and we've never had any of them breed twice in a year. They don't seem to breed at a specific time. Often depends on what's available food-wise.
At this stage, I'd be against reintroductions. They're very expensive. You don't know what you're reintroducing to the wild, because you've got to really quarantine the birds. And then there's such a demand from the avicultural market. I think any captive-bred birds, we should rather try and flood the aviculture market, because what I find is the second-generation birds breed very easily in captivity. The wild-caught birds are very tense. They take a long time to settle down. You often have to keep them in an aviary right away from everything else so they don't get disturbed. But that's a personal feeling. The expense of reintroduction is huge; and I think Mauritius has been successful in some of their reintroductions; but most of the rest of the world, not only just for parrots, most other birds, it's fairly low.
I've worked in South America, and what we found there is when we're reintroducing the animals, not just birds, monkeys, the locals were recapturing them and reselling, and it was like a vicious circle.
One of my students, Craig Symes, is working on the gray-headeds now, finishing a Master's thesis. They don't feed just on forest trees. And they go for a whole range of foods; and there are a couple of people who live in Zimbabwe and Zambia, things like marula, which is a really hard-cased seed they're able to get into; there's a wild plum that occurs in that area. The birds again have got the bill to get in. And they also feed on the wild figs as well. And Craig's doing nutritional work on all those.
CRAIG HARRIS: You mentioned the separation of the subspecies so the robustus robustus is now a species on its own. What was the reasoning behind that?
DR. DOWNS: First of all, Philip Clancy put that forward in '97, and he's one of these old chaps who's been working in museums for -- I think he's 88. And we have always known him to be the separatist, because he split up all sorts of different species. But with the Cape parrot, he suggested we split the robustus separately, but he never really quite defined why or gave any reason. What we did was to do morphometrics on all the museum specimens on Cape parrots the world over. And what it came out, the two gray-headeds are different statistically to the Cape parrot. And so in morphometrics. And also in distribution now. This species is north into Zimbabwe. And ecologically, this species isn't in forest, where the other is, so that's the initial thing. We've got another paper coming out now on the DNA, which confirms the separation.
CRAIG HARRIS: Because what we've found, in the United States, to my knowledge, there are no robustus, no true Capes. There are quite a number of the other two subspecies, owned as pets and breeders. And there's a lot of people that would really be into contributing towards conservation and what have you, but when you separate the Cape off from the birds that they're associated with, it's almost like it's hard to then get them interested in it. It seems like a step backwards in actually the benefit toward saving the birds, for any conservation efforts, at least in that respect.
DR. DOWNS: Except now that it's got out, conservation work is really concerned and realizing that they have to do something.
The other thing is that the separation -- the birds still can interbreed, and we're not sure whether the hybrids can breed. So although we've put them in separate species, and those of you who go on and study zoology, the whole concept of a true species is something that's very debatable, when is the cutoff time. And to actually get something recognized as being a true species is quite difficult and controversial. So, yeah, there's different ways.
I think over time, I actually think that within the Cape parrots now, which I showed you their distribution, we're actually getting separation of their nests. Because we've got a northern, middle and a southern region. The southern one is the one where we found that they've got the virus. The vocalizations between the three, they're also different. So what we have is actually evolution taking place within the one group.
CRAIG HARRIS: You've done a lot of studies counting the robustus. The other two subspecies are also listed as endangered, but has anybody been actually keeping track of the numbers of what their status is?
DR. DOWNS: Craig's been working on the gray-headed in Zimbabwe, southern Zimbabwe and northern, and Transvaal. But his was only a Master's study, and he's been doing two years field work. And the numbers seem much higher than the Cape parrots. Still, there's more illegal trade with the gray-headeds than with the Capes. And all the nests that he was monitoring, nearly all of them had birds removed from them.
One of our students has been working on the smaller brown-headed parrots, and he says that different individuals do have different voices. But with the Capes, we haven't done this, and that brings me to another point. With the gray-headeds and with these little brown-headed parrots, what we found is that they're vocalizing at a normal frequency that all of us can hear, and we've just published something on those vocalizations. But in working on the brown-headed, we've found -- and they're a much smaller parrot, and they go right through to Zimbabwe, they're actually producing a sound which is an ultrasound, which is absolutely rare in birds, other than the cave -- oil birds found in caves in South America. And he's -- they've only done that analysis in the last three months. The reason why the birds are vocalizing at frequencies beyond us, one wonders why. It's a whole new area of research. Because previously, birds were considered only to vocalize at 10,000 kilohertz, and I think these birds are vocalizing at 17-18,000. So the whole vocalization pattern is another whole area.
LES ABNETT: Can you explain to everybody, looking at Cheeky, exactly what the differences are between the birds you're talking about and Cheeky.
DR. DOWNS: This is what I'm saying is a gray-headed Poicephalus. We're calling it fuscicollis suahelicus now. And it's a close relative of Poicephalus fuscicollis fuscicollis.
The main difference is the head is gray. The bill is slightly different to the robustus. But if you haven't looked at them and you only caught a glimpse of them in a while, you wouldn't -- I think it would be very difficult to tell them apart. This one is only found in riverand bush woodlands in the northern parts of South Africa, going through into Zimbabwe, Mozambique, where their numbers are very low, and then into Angola; because of the war there, we're not sure of numbers. But again, there's a lot of illegal trade, not just in parrots, but other species as well, out of Angola. And what's interesting about these parrots is that in most birds, the male is the one that's really attractive. But in most of our parrots, it's the female that's more attractive. And the female normally has red above the head, a red bar. But juveniles would also have that. And then there's also this red on the wings and red --
LES ABNETT: Red socks.
DR. DOWNS: Yeah, red socks. But weighing about 200 to 300 grams. And so when we put radio collars on them, we've had to put them around their neck. We've even put chili peppers into the radios, but they still chew them off.
LES ABNETT: They love chili peppers. I know from history my two females used to eat chilies.
ALAN MANNING (POICEPHALUS SOCIETY): How would you describe the head color of the robustus?
DR. DOWNS: It's much more of an olive color. And I don't know if it was clear in the slides, but it's really much more of an olivey color.
CRAIG HARRIS: On the Psittacine beak and feather disease, I know there's research being done in Australia. Is that research applicable to what's going on in Africa?
DR. DOWNS: Definitely. Because if they can come up with a vaccine, especially for breeders, because I just think it's such a waste to euthanize when there's so few in captivity.
CRAIG HARRIS: So there's no separate research being done on African birds, or are you just relying on research that's going on in Australia?
DR. DOWNS: Mainly.
CRAIG HARRIS: On conservation, you mentioned getting a vaccine for beak and feather disease, you mentioned deforestation, you mentioned captive breeding. Where should the effort be focused to really make a change, make a chance to actually help the survival of the birds?
DR. DOWNS: I think we have to have a multifaceted approach, because the birds are so low in numbers, and I don't think one any particular way will guarantee success. So I think if we can get the captive breeders to really getting up to double clutching and stuff like that, there won't be such a demand on the wild birds. And then if we can get our conservation bodies also more aware.
And just making local people aware that they've got something special. Due to the longevity of the parrots, I think in the end, there's a chance. And the birds that are there, if we could just guarantee that they don't get caught, that there are nest boxes available. There are a lot of young yellowwoods coming out, especially in Natal, where they've stopped the logging. I don't know; I feel positive at the moment.
DANA PARROTT: The money that is raised for Cape conservation, where is it actually spent?
DR. DOWNS: Field trips once a month, our main expense. We're trying to get students to come out. Just really mainly a lot of it goes on transport, fuel, and student food and stuff, when they volunteer to come and work. The other money has gone into the Cape Parrot Day, just organizing the logistics in that; and again, it's the transport cost, getting the students out to the more rural areas, we often have to hire vehicles, four-by-fours. And then we've got these nest boxes up in different forests, and just checking on those once a month if possible. I'll go out and give talks to a lot of different conservation, farmers and things like that. And we've had a student, Craig Symes, working on the gray-headeds, and that's the main area.
MICHAEL JOHNSTON: Thanks ever so much. Anybody who's interested can stay around and talk informally. We've been very, very privileged to have you here.
DR. DOWNS: Thank you.
