Quote:
Originally Posted by flourbug
Spectacular! We spent a week east of Moab, on the banks of the Colorado River, just as the Aspen were turning gold. It was like being on another planet.
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The Moab expedition was a blast. I went by myself for a couple of days just to get away and add some shots to my collection.
The first day there I had gone to the top of a pass via a four-wheel drive trail and planned to get off the trail before it got dark and back down into a valley to take some shots of the sunset. I found a likely spot and got out of the vehicle to set up.
When I exited I heard this amazing shrieking from above and turned to look just in time to see this bird with a broad wing span in a downward spiral headed close towards me. As it descended I noticed the underside of its wings and belly were an odd color -a brilliant yellow. As it banked, the top of the wings were a brilliant blue. I thought to myself, "what in the hell am I looking at or is the light playing tricks on me?"
All of a sudden, whoosh! The thing lands on the roof of my Jeep! It's a macaw! The first words out of my mouth were "dude, you are so f*cked!" He was very calm -just kept shrieking. I had no cage obviously, no box or any kind of container to transport him to safety. He stayed with me for about five minutes -long enough for me to take some pictures and flag a passing vehicle to show them. Mostly because I knew nobody would believe it.
Fast forward a couple of days.... I got back home and started doing some research because the bird was banded. In my Internet browsing I noticed his markings were those of a blue-throated macaw. This particular species is very rare with only 350 - 400 known to live in the wild. They're native to Bolivia.
Long story short... I contacted an endangered bird conservancy and wrote and submitted an article to the newspaper in Moab trying to find out if someone's pet had gone missing.
I got confirmation of the species from the conservancy and ended up getting a reply from the editor of the paper saying the bird probably belonged to a fellow in Moab who trains parrots to fly in the wild. This contacted me and confirmed it was his bird and it, along with two others, had been out flying and had become disoriented during a wind storm and lost their way. Fortunately, all birds have been recovered and all are doing well.
I'd like to introduce you to Dreadful -the wayward macaw.
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