THE BOOK

●   My book has finally been published. I no longer have any author copies available, so to secure a copy you need to go to either the Avian Publications or Amazon websites. 

     With the publication of my book, I took down the online Caique Manual. My book contains all the the information that was in the online manual plus much more. You can take peak inside it at the Amazon website. I want to thank all the reviewers on that website for their kind comments .

WHAT'S NEW

●   Update on Ripley!! There is a picture of Ripley, an unusually colored caique, in the Picture archives. We assumed Ripley was a male. Well, this year Ripley laid an egg! She is now 20 years old, so this was a bit of a surprise to her owner Scott Blum.

●   I have added another site in the Emergency Links. It may be helpful for those suffering bereavement from the loss of a pet. It was brought to me attention by Marylyn Brooks. It is a page from a the Safenet Company's website.

●   There is a new addition on the arts and crafts page. I received a Christmas present of two felt caique Christmas tree ornaments. They were made by Carla White of Distinctive Avian Designs.

●   Floss, who bought a caique from me many years ago, pointed me to a website that sells a jigsaw puzzle of birds that includes a Black-Headed Caique. To find it on the web, go to the Ravensburger website, click on the U.S. flag and then type "jungle" into the search window of the new page. 

OTHER

●   This is a link to something completely unrelated to caiques. This link takes you to a set of technical science papers I wrote that never got published in the peer reviewed literature. I did have many papers published, but I was never afforded the opportunity to battle to get these few published. 

●   William T. Cooper, who painted all the parrots for Forshaw's Parrots of the World, has a very good website showing much of his recent work. I highly recommend a visit.

CONFERENCES

●   The next annual Convention of the American Federation of Aviculture will be held August 7-10, 2013 in Raleigh, NC.

●   The next World Parrot Congress will be held September 22-25, 2014 in Puerto de la Cruz, on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain.

REPORTS

●   Haiwei Yin et al. has published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reporting that the iridescence in Scarlet Macaw feathers is due to photonic crystals. the  title is "Amorphous diamond-structured photonic crystal in the feather barbs of the scarlet macaw." This is a completely new mechanism to explain parrot "color" if we include iridescence as a form of color. This type of iridescence is similar to that seen in opal gem stones. 

●   There was a major drought in Amazonia that may be associated with the world wide climate change (The 2010 Amazon Drought, S.L. Lewis et al., 2011, Science vol. 331, p.554.). Millions of trees have died and if the drought persists, it threatens to affect the rest whole world's climate by eliminating a major CO2 sink. See this report from the National Geographic.

●   The Ring-necked Parakeet has naturalized a bit too well in England according to this report in the New York Times 

●   On the American Society for Microbiology website is a study of bacterial feather degradation. The bacterium Bacillus licheniformis can degrade a feather in only 24 hours!

●   The New York Times had a recent article entitled "New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rainforests" suggesting that some jungles are recovering. I find it hopeful, but is contrary to what I observed in Brazil.  

●   I have discovered another antique print of the black-headed caique. It was painted by John Frederick Miller in 1775. The only one I know of that is older is by George Edwards and dates from 1751. This bird was a present to a Miss Ray, beloved of the Lord Sandwich. I do not have an image that I can post, but you can see it and buy a print of it at the Science and Society Website. 

●   The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, England had an exhibit entitled "The Parrot in Art." It ended on April 29, 2007 but the website is still up.

●   The New York Times has published an interview with Joseph Forshaw, author of many books on parrots including Parrots of the World, on September 5, 2006. This is a man who truly loves parrots.

●   The late Alba Ballard was famous for dressing up parrots. The New York Times presents a slide show from Arne Svenson's book "Mrs. Ballard's Parrots." Alba dressed up her parrots in stylish clothes and photographed them. Her menagerie 

●   While mucking about in Google archives I found this. It is a story about Maj. Gen. Arthur Brown. He saw service in the Philippines and later became the President of the "Administrative Committee for the Leticia Trapezium." This is the southern most point in Columbia and was the site of a war between Columbia and Peru that ended in  June 1934 when General Luis Sanchez Cereo, President of Peru, died. The League of Nations formed this committee to mediate the end of the dispute. He brought a caique back with him after that service, and it was still living with him in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1943. 

       [That the General was enamored of caiques is clear from an ad he placed in the magazine Aviculture in 1938 that read "WANTED--two Black-headed male caiques. Major General A. W. Brown (Retired). Judge Advocate General's Office, War Dept., Washington, D.C.]