The Osprey and the Parrot

I say goodbye to Shanti the African Grey Parrot, assure him that I’ll be back soon, and head out for a walk at Lake Casitas.

Although Shanti is a wild creature, we have a relationship of habits, expectations, memories and routines. We are always on each other’s mind; we enjoy each other’s company; we remember and anticipate. Shanti knows me like he knows no other being; and I know him like I’ve known no other bird. He is an undomesticated animal, but ours is a domesticated, familial relationship—-a mix of human and bird traditions, human and bird love.

A relationship with a unknown wild creature in its natural habitat, however, is very different.

Every few days I have been visiting an osprey who perches high in a dead oak above the lake. Osprey are diurnal raptors. They mate for life, and they may live 25 years or more.

I see the osprey at a distance of 100 yards, through an open field rounded by woodland. A crow is perched on a lower branch of the oak, and a solitary young doe stands halfway between the osprey and me. There is a quick and silent communion of contemplation among the deer, the crow, the osprey and the person. A twig may break at any moment, and all three wild creatures will vanish, leaving the bemused human to his loneliness, his schemes and his mental perturbations.

I meet the osprey’s gaze. I know that afterwards I will reflect on our delicate and stunning field of awareness, and I know the osprey will not. She is a fisher, supremely unconcerned with the lives of crow, deer and people. She is undistracted by my presence, yet not oblivious to the bridge of white light between raptor and person.

There’s a palpable bond of awareness between us that feels to me like love and wonder. It must feel like something to the osprey too. But what? A quality of sentience unstored in memory, pure of all reflection, perhaps indistinguishable from that sense of love and wonder, perhaps its essence.

Our Better Nature

Photo: members of a ranibow lorikeet flock


I see wild birds every day. All I have to do is look out the window. Crows, sparrows, mockingbirds, and hummingbirds abound. I also try to spend an hour a day among the native species at the beach in Ventura or at Lake Casitas, our local reservoir.

Walking along the shore, looking out to Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands, I see scores of gulls, terns, sandpipers, pelicans and cormorants. At the lake, there are colonies of black vultures in the eucalyptus trees, redwing blackbirds in the reeds; herons, ducks, grebes, geese and hawks on the water and in the skies.

On the day we brought Shanti home I saw a Great Blue Heron flying westward with a pair of egrets. A moment of great natural beauty. Superstitiously, I took it as a good omen. More profoundly, I took it as an opportunity to ponder the legitimacy of keeping a wild animal as a human being’s companion.

I’ve always had serious reservations about taking an animal from the wild. What was the point? What was the justification? I had no need to own a bird, a gorilla or a tiger. Nature’s not for owning or leasing; nature’s not for sale. The very essence we value in animals is their wildness, their freedom. Sticking a wild bird in a hominid’s house—or worse, in a cage— seemed too much like taxidermy, self-indulgence and pretense.

Parrots—unlike dogs, cats and farm animals—are not domesticated species, bred over the centuries to serve and gratify people. Parrots are still wild— just a generation or two from the forests of Africa.

“I’m not a poodle,” says the ferociously passionate Shanti. The racoons, owls and coyotes in my neighborhood second the motion.

The only justification for taking a parrot from its perfect wilderness, for separating it from its kindred flock, lies in the sanctity of the relationship between parrot and person. The closer the bond, the more we may justify and legitimize our imperfect intrusion on their lives. Failing to love our parrots, then, defiles nature. But we needn’t fail. Our better nature is to love.

Are Parrots Persons?

Pictures: A mating pair of African Greys and a mother chimp with her 1-month old son


Since we humans are moral animals, every relationship we take seriously forces us to grapple with questions of right and wrong. We have moral relationships with our parents, our life partners, our children, our peers, our government, our earth and —hopefully— our companion animals.


When we treat people like objects and see them as an alien other rather than as a brother or a mother, we fail morally. We stereotype and prejudge, empathy atrophies, and our worst xenophobic, sexist and speciesist sentiments emerge. We abandon creation and become “monsters.”

Taking Shanti seriously as a fellow being raises moral questions I’ll explore on the blog from time to time.

My point of departure—the first item of serious business—is to ask myself if Shanti is an object.

If my answer is yes, there is "nobody home" inside Shanti, then I suppose I might as well cook him for dinner. If animals are mere objects of our dominion designed for our recreation, experimentation and commercialization, they why not hunt the foxes, dissect the chimps, chain up the circus elephants, militarize the dolphins, and use all the spare parts for feathered hats, fur coats and perfumes?

But if my answer is no, somebody is home, I also have to ask the question. Who? And how shall that somebody be treated?

I wonder about that sacred quality of animal someoneness. (A sense of wonder is, I think, a good start. That’s where children start with animals and where I —a half century from childhood— have ended up.)

The philosopher Thomas Nagel explored animal “someoneness” in his essay, “What is it like to be a bat?” He concluded that although we can’t really know what it’s like, it’s like something: Somebody is home.

Peter Singer, who co-founded the Great Ape Project, suggests our fellow apes – the bonobos, gorillas, oraguntans and chimpanzees – deserve the status of “persons.”

Spain recently passed legislation protecting the rights of great apes to life and liberty, a giant step toward recognizing our primate cousins as persons.

All subsequent questions about ethics and animals are, I think, derived from the fundamental one that someone else is home. Not just us humans.

In my short relationship with Shanti, hard ethical questions have already come up. Should a bird from the African rain forest ever live in captivity in California? Should I acquire a baby bird from a parrot breeder when so many unwanted adults parrots need rescue and rehabilitation? Do breeders do good by discouraging the illegal poaching and smuggling of endangered species of native birds? Or do breeders do harm by marketing birds they know will often be mistreated, abandoned or neglected?

I don’t have the answers. But sometimes just asking the right questions helps us do the right thing. What do you think?

How And Why Shanti Came Into My Life

I’ve always been fascinated by the beauty of birds. Penguins or pigeons, herons, woodpeckers, hummingbirds or coots, I love them all. They bring me joy, often suddenly and unexpectedly. Birds are among life’s greatest gifts of healing, restoration and peace. They reward contemplation with healing, restoration, peace and awe.

I’m also a lifelong student of languages; I’ve always earned my living with words--as a teacher, a writer and a translator. And I’m a passionate student of philosophy.

An avid birder, a linguist and an amateur philosopher? You might think the confluence of these passions would make me the perfect match for an African Grey parrot—an extraordinarily intelligent and emotive bird that has surprisingly advanced linguistic capabilities.

But I won’t kid you (or myself.) I didn’t bring this Congo African Grey (Psittacus erithacus) into our home because birds are beautiful, parrots talk, and I’m interested in philosophy. I got Shanti because of my own emotional needs. I’m 61, my two daughters are grown up, I've retired from classroom teaching career, and I miss nurturing the young. My wife and I want grandchildren someday, but in the meantime, I spend a lot of time at home alone during the day. I’m lonely.

Living with a companion animal is something I need spiritually and emotionally, but I am also committed to Shanti's physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

Shanti isn't a pet, and he isn't a surrogate human. He's a fellow being. I'm part of his flock, and he's part of mine.