Diary of a Mad Plastic Surgeon

Christopher “Birdman” Driggins

How did Christopher Driggins of Vancouver, WA earn the nickname, “Birdman”? Living with more than 30 exotic pet birds probably has something to do with it.

“I won’t discriminate against a feather,” said Driggins. He spends his free time helping orphaned pet birds in Vancouver while working two jobs unrelated to bird rescue. “My average day is 4-5 hours of sleep, 7 days a week, working two jobs and taking care of 30 birds in three locations.”

“It is true, I’ve had to make a few sacrifices in my life. Thus, I’ve always been single…almost married twice. I have 32 “kids” at home at this moment that need me,“ said Driggins.

Birdman’s specialty is orphaned exotic pet birds. Owners often don’t realize the lifelong commitment an exotic bird requires. On average, domesticated exotic birds can change hands 8 times in their lifetime. Once the bird is completely rehabilitated, Driggins carefully finds an owner who fully understands the responsibility and commitment it takes to properly care for an exotic bird.

Driggins also fields injured bird calls 24 hours a day via his bird hotline. He’s visited nearly every corner of Clark County helping hawks, owls, blue herons – you name it. Driggins rehabilitates birds at his Vancouver sanctuary which also doubles as his home. He’s been doing bird rescue since 1988, making quite the name for himself. Local police and fire often rely on Birdman’s expertise in emergencies.

Recently he received a call from the Coroner’s office for urgent assistance. Animal control was in a standoff with a pet bird guarding an owner who had recently passed away. Chris swept in and quickly diffused the situation.

Chris created Northwest Bird Rescue, a not for profit business that relies heavily on volunteers to keep it running. He posts his adventures regularly on his Facebook and YouTube channel.

If you see his gold Town & Country van rolling around Vancouver with the yellow emergency light and bright yellow decals reading “CAUTION, INJURED BIRD ON BOARD,” be sure to smile and wave – he’s doing great things for our community.

Northwest Bird Rescue suffered a major loss in 2006 when a volunteer embezzled all of their funds in 24 hours. They have been trying to regain flight ever since. Northwest Bird Rescue is a not for profit business that relies heavily on volunteers.

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For more information visit: NW Bird Rescue Website

NW Bird Rescue Amazon Wishlist

NW Bird Rescue Facebook

If you see smol birbs with few or no feathers on the ground, you can safely put them back into their nest, bird parents will still care for them.

scruffy feather bird = starting to try the fly thing, not very good at it. only put in nest/branch if predators abound, i.e. you have four outdoor cats and they’re licking their chops.

[CRACKS KNUCKLES]

So, before I start this, I’m just going to say - I ADORE the Carolina Parakeet. I had the amazing opportunity to see a mounted specimen when I was 9 or 10, and it was somewhat of a religious experience. I cried. In the museum.

The Carolina Parakeet (conuropsis carolinensis) was North America’s only native parrot. They were around 10-12 inches long, and a member of the Arini tribe, which contains conures and macaws. In fact, they look very similar to a lot of conures that people are familiar with + keep as pets:

(on the left: Carolina Parakeet. On the right: Sun Conure)

Maybe that’s part of what makes their extinction so upsetting. They aren’t birds like the dodo that look like relics of a bygone era. They’re familiar; they look like a bird that would be alive today.

The Carolina Parakeet was loved by some people. Their capture for the pet trade lowered their numbers some; along with that, it seems that there weren’t many efforts made to breed them once they were in captivity, so the captive population could only go down without new captures. However, by some they were viewed as a crop pest. Carolina Parakeets foraged for fruits, seeds, and nuts, using their beaks to crack open the hulls. They could be crop pests, particularly for apple and corn crops. This led some farmers to shoot them en masse to protect their crops. It was very easy to kill large amounts of the parakeets. They traveled in large flocks, and many eyewitness accounts note that when one of the flock fell to the ground, the others would fly down, maybe to mourn.

And, slightly after both of these things had become a real problem for the parakeet, the interest in feathers in women’s fashion hats exploded. People would shoot the parakeets for their feathers on hats; sometimes entire dead parrots were mounted on the hats.

Along with these problems, logging and the introduced European honeybee taking the parakeets’ nesting sites had an impact on the population. Eventually, the parakeets could only be found in Florida. Then, they stopped showing up at all. The last wild Carolina Parakeet was shot in 1904, when a farmboy misidentified it as another species of bird and killed it for foraging in his crops. In 1918, Incas, the last captive Carolina Parakeet, passed away in the Cincinnati Zoo, in the same cage where Martha the last Passenger Pigeon had died four years earlier. His mate had died shortly before him; he was 32 years old when the species finally went extinct. Unfortunately, it is unknown where his mounted specimen ended up; there are a little over 700 Carolina Parakeet skins and 16 skeletons currently known of today, and his preserved specimen was lost.

It’s a shame we had to lose these interesting, beautiful birds out of sheer human ignorance. What’s more shameful is that we haven’t learned from our mistakes and stopped wiping species out.

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