Menlo Park Resident Helps Rescued Birds Take Flight to New Homes

They can be friendly, affectionate, chatty, noisy, curious, clownish, enchanting, playful, shy, and maybe even a little exasperating at times—they are companion birds, and thanks to the dedicated Bay Area volunteers at Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue, thousands of parakeets, parrots, cockatiels, cockatoos, macaws, and others facing neglect or an early demise are finding new homes.

The volunteer-run Mickaboo (a combination of two birds named “Mick” and “Aboo” belonging to the group’s founders) rescues and places a few hundred birds every year, with estimates of helping a total of up to 1,000 birds with its programs. At any given time there are more than 300 birds in the “foster flock”, cared for in volunteers’ homes dotting the region, according to board member Pamela Lee.

The nonprofit is not as well known as dog and cat rescue groups, but for about 17 years it has consistently offered a safe place for San Francisco Bay Area residents to relinquish birds, adopt, and find much-needed advice and guidance.

“People don’t realize that something so intelligent and beautiful would be given up for adoption,” said Jaime Bodiford, a Menlo Park attorney who serves as a foster parent and coordinator of rescues from the Poicephalus species from Africa.

Yet the birds are sometimes surrendered after owners suffer unfortunate circumstances like loss of a job, illness, or even death, or the birds pose a higher commitment than people initially realized. Companion birds can live 20, 30, and in some cases up to 50 and 65 years, depending on the species, far beyond the average dog or cat. Without a rescue organization like Mickaboo, some birds face euthanasia.

Bodiford currently is caring for Tango, a southern African Meyer’s Parrot, given up due to biting and screaming. After five months of working with the beautiful gray and turquoise bird on behavior modification and socialization, as well as providing a proper diet (her previous diet of too many seeds and not enough balanced nutrition made her hormonal), Tango is ready for a new home.

“She wants to be pet, is cute as can be, is not an overly loud bird, and she likes humans,” Bodiford shared. “She talks; she says ‘Hi, Tango!’”

The driving force of Mickaboo is a group of about 200 volunteers like Bodiford and Lee, including around 100 foster parents, who give many hours of service, all for the love of birds.

Lee said she is inspired daily by the “unselfishness of so many of the volunteers—they give up their weekends, they give up hours during the day, they go on emergency ‘go pick up that bird now’ (calls), answer the phones…deal with medical issues that would tear one’s heart apart…It takes a special kind of person to do this.”

To learn more about how the volunteers of Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue help birds and owners, and to find out how you can help, see the original full version of this story on Good Neighbor Stories.

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