[texbirds] The Issue of Origin (LONGER)
- From: "Collins, Fred (Commissioner Pct. 3)" <Fred_Collins@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 19:33:34 +0000
For the record, I agree with everything Ted so eloquently stated.
I would like to make a point about the bird trade. I have kept parrots since
1975 at least and have raised parrots since about 1978. At one point is was an
important portion of my income. I had, at one point, more than 175 parrots and
an occasional other exotic bird or two. There are others on this list that
have even more experience than I, but I do know a little about the bird trade.
Certainly prior to the 1990s and I believe the same trend continues today, all
import birds are either driven across the Mexican border (probably more
smuggled than legal) or flown legally into US airports. Those airports have
quarantine facilities for birds and all birds are held in quarantine near these
airports for 45 days. Houston intercontinental is a port of entry for birds.
These facilities are tight and monitored to prevent any bird escaping or being
removed prior to the end of the quarantine period. There are well documented
instances of crates of birds being dropped or damaged before and after
quarantine that would allow birds to escape. Escaped birds would more likely
turn up in the Woodlands and other neighborhoods in north Houston rather than
at Galveston or any coastal location. The bird trade in the US peaked in the
1980s and has dwindled to a current trickle. I won't belabor why this is the
case but there are only a fraction of the wild birds brought into the US either
legally or illegally compared to 1990. Birds are fragile and the less time in
transport the more likely the survival. Shipping them by a slow boat from where
they come is just not an economical option. The vast majority of imported
birds under any time or circumstances are parrots and finches. Other species
are very low ( a few hundred if the best years) in number and frequency.
I am unaware of any birds being imported into the Port of Houston via ships
with a rare exception which I will mention. I have known a man, a Greek sailor,
who lives in Houston and for about the same span as my activity with parrots
has brought birds into the US. He did bring them all by ship because they
stayed in his cabin on a tanker and he took care of them. He was able to export
them through a loophole in the law that allows one to bring in their personal
pets. He also used the same loophole to export them from their country of
origin, usually a European county. Bird keeping is still very popular there and
most species including US species are actively traded there. He once had a pair
of Painted Buntings he had bought in Italy, I asked him if he knew they were
Pained Buntings and illegal to keep and he said they were not but Parisian
Finches and had the bill of sale. Obviously the customs official at the Port of
Houston did not know a Parisian Finch from a hole in the ground. The inspector
that would have known such a thing was at the airport.
My point with this diatribe is this, any bird could be an import, maybe the
Painted Bunting you counted as a lifer, but the chance that someone imported a
Tropical Mockingbird and it then escaped or was put at liberty and it found its
way to Sabine Woods is less than your Lotto numbers for the 500 million
jackpot. And the chances of this happening in 2012 are only about 10% of it
happening during the 1970-1990 period. Have we seen other species with any
frequency at all that suggest we are seeing a portion of escaped imports? In
the 1980s I would catch about four parrots a year in my backyard that were
attracted to my other birds. In 20 years of that type of activity I never had
one non-parrot show up. There was one pair of Laughing Thrushes nearby but
that's it. I did have the first House Finch in Harris County show up about
that time. Maybe we shouldn't have counted it. They too are in the pet trade.
Our current influx of cage bird escapes and establishments are Nutmeg Manikin
and Orange Bishop. Apparently large numbers of these birds are being released
instead of throwing rice at weddings of some ethnic groups. The steady release
of these inexpensive finches imported from Puerto Rico from where they do not
have to go through quarantine is the source of these birds. They are
established and free flying there and are trapped and exported to the US. Other
more unusual finches are sometimes with them and we see these reported from
time to time. They are centered in SW Houston where most are released, but no
Tropical Mockingbirds will be found among them, nor Bahamas Mockingbirds
because those would be illegal to export since they are protected in Puerto
Rico, not so the invasive finches.
To conclude, my opinion is that the odds of the bird being an escape are
lottery like, since only a handful would ever be imported or near imported to
start with. We would likely be seeing one bird of two, four or ten. The chances
of a native wild bird being one of 5000,000 or a million or ten million flying
to the north Gulf Coast are highly likely. I always go with the most probable
scenario.
Fred Collins
(281) 357-5324
Director: Kleb Woods Nature Center
Cypress Top Historical Park
Commissioner Steve Radack
Harris County Precinct 3
www.pct3.hctx.net<http://www.pct3.hctx.net>
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