Dale R. Thompson

Dale first had the Eclectus Parrot under his care in 1971 at the Los Angeles Zoo. This pair was a wild-caught Red-sided Eclectus pair that was housed in the quarantine section, not because it needed to be quarantined, but because there was not enough room on exhibit. This pair parent-reared its chicks and their ratio of males to females was ten to one. Having read the existing literature stating that there was a great discrepancy in how many females were reared compared to males, I thought this was true. Many years later, this was proven to be false.

In the early 1970's, an enormous number of Eclectus of a different subspecies, vosmaeri, was housed at the Los Angeles Zoo. (This group of birds was a confiscated group of newly imported Eclectus that had problems with their import papers and thus were housed at the Zoo until a court date was set to make a judgment on this problem.) The vosmaeri Eclectus, to me, was a much larger bird than the Red-sided Eclectus that were reproducing there. This vosmaeri subspecies was simply stunning with its velvet purple vest and the blaze of brilliant yellow on its tail and vent. This group of vosmaeri Eclectus was housed together in large pens.

In 1997, when I left the Los Angeles Zoo and built an enormous Psittacine reproductive facility in Newhall, CA (Aviculture Institute), I purchased six pairs of the above vosmaeri Eclectus from the importer. The court had awarded him his own birds at great expense. For those who know of Grandma and Grandpa, an ancient pair of vosmaeri Eclectus, still producing for Dale Thompson and Susie Christian, this pair came from this confiscated group of birds. They are still reproducing after 28 years.

In 1985, the International Foundation for the Conservation of Birds put on the first of two seminars. They were undoubtedly two of the very best efforts in recent years to gather the very best ornithologists, avian researchers and biologists, avian veterinarians, zoologists and aviculturists under one roof. One of the speakers was Roy Mackay who organized and ran the Bird-of-Paradise facility outside Mount Hagen in the highlands of New Guinea. I was determined to visit this sanctuary not only for the Birds-of-Paradise but for the many parrots, insects, and plant life.

With George Dodge, my photography partner and fellow traveler, we visited Australia for six weeks. The last week was destined for the Cape York Peninsula but due to the enormous floods we could not travel there in a 4-wheel drive vehicle. So with a little over one week to spare I wanted to go to New Guinea, only a few miles away. With a calamity of errors and successes we obtained our visas and flew from Caines, Australia only a few miles over the sea to Port Moresby in New Guinea. From there we went to the Highlands around Mount Hagen and observed more birds, insects and wildlife than one could believe. This included 27 Eclectus parrots in and around the Bird-of Paradise Sanctuary. With Orb Weaver Spiders that had bodies the size of a chicken egg......but that is another story.

Having over 40 trips to the tropics, mainly in Central and South America, I decided to go back to Australia to just visit the Cape York Peninsula. There along with the Galah, Palm Cockatoo, and a flock of over 3000 Red-tailed Black Cockatoos, I discovered two Eclectus nests in a "Smuggler's Tree."

During almost 30 years of rearing Eclectus Parrots, they have never stopped fascinating me. In 1985, our facility, Aviculture Institute, was awarded the AAZPA, now the AZA Gold Propagators Award. This was for a minimum of 100 successful clutches of Eclectus eggs. This was not for single chicks, mind you, but for complete clutches. After reaching the 600 Eclectus chick mark, it seemed academic and so I stopped counting. It could easily become an ego trip and I did not want that to happen.

It was during the Aviculture Institute years that we did temperature readings using thermocouplers on Eclectus eggs. We found out how often they were turned in the nest and what their average internal temperature was during the incubation process.

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