Finding a Way from Harm to Hope: A Lory Story from India

         The journey of alleviating the burden of the parrot trade is long and tortuous, but along the way there is always beauty, care, and wonderful, surprising friendships. I have the privilege of getting to know a group in India that formed following the experiences of their teachers of the beauty and tragedy of the parrot trade, and the concern shared with them for the care for lories and lorikeets now living in India far from their native home. They are:  Dr. Shankar Shivappa, Dr. Chitra Krishnan , and Dr. Prashant Koulgi.

            You will have the chance to get to know this Lory Team from India, because they will be our guests during our Transformative Parrot Conservation Conversations series in the fall (to find out more go here). Until then, please let their words speak for them in prose, poetry, and video as they relate to you the stories of lories and lorikeets in India. If you wish you may contact them here.

The teachers of this Lory Team in India, from whom they learnt so much, remain their inspiration. The poem below expresses how deeply felt was the loss of a lory by their teacher, Antony Reddy.

For a lory that escaped from its aviary, and was killed by crows

If you'd known that evils fall on the helpless, weak, and small, 

If you'd understood the planet isn't kind, 

If you'd known the harm of trust where rejection is a must, 

If you'd been bequeathed a sceptic sort of mind, 

You had then the tempting prize, of the freedom of the skies, 

For destruction, swift and certain, recognized, 

And had then, the door agape, not effected your escape, 

But the safety of your home had better prized. 

But a being made of Light cannot comprehend the night, 

Is inclined to think it joking, when he's told

That there's amplitude of ghouls that have murder in their souls, 

And a plenitude of things of evil mould. 

So escape you did, and winged to the evils round you ringed, 

That were not disposed to let you by, unhurt;

So they battered in your head and they left you lying dead, 

In a mess of blood and feathers in the dirt.

And for you was end of care, and for me of something rare;

It was Magnitude that casual evil killed;

And an era found its end, and a heart was left to mend, 

And a grief was born for joyous spirit stilled.

You were wholly joy and light, you were unalloyed delight, 

And was premature your end and wholly wrong;

But you're gone and won't be back, and have left behind a lack, 

And a memory to fashion into song.

Confessions of a Bird-Keeper. – Shared with a parrot who died March 2025 

Parrots are not little people; and I am not a parrot. Then why did I want you with me?

I have no answer. And you - so young! - are dead now, therefore I cannot ask you. 

For that matter, did you want me?

That's what I thought, when, day after day, you called to me, danced up to me, and wouldn't let me go. But did I really understand you? After your dance, were you content that I had walked to you? Or in despair, that I'd soon walk away? 

Could I have understood you? Could I have known? But then did I even want to know?  

Just as my body, made for the same existence, could be no less intricate than yours, your life, also with pains, joy, fulfillments and longings, was perhaps no poorer than mine.

How strange, then, the fact that you danced up to me while neglecting your mate of your own kind! If I were cut off from all my kind and left in a forest with only your kind for company - except for my mate, my only connection to what I am - surely I would stick to my mate! 

When you were alive, this is how I answered my doubts: you trusted in our love for you, seeing as we fed you and took care of you. But now I wonder. And I think back to those days when we took you from your parents as a chick and fed you by hand. While I saw your eager joy at the feed, why was I blind to your panting, perhaps in fear of the hand that fed? 

I remember well, the day when I shot your video (below). Your mate and you were young birds, not yet two years old.  "Health and Joy have taken form and colour", I marveled, "to, flashing, arch over leaden skies for another score years!" Only, an year later your mate died; and a further year after, you did too. 

Ever since, I have asked myself: what nurtured the seeds of so-early death? I saw nothing amiss in your bodies; was it, then, the minds?  Tearing apart, because you were parrots always becoming little people? Alienation can kill, whether it is parrots or people.  Was that your fate?  

But why should I blame myself for it all? And imagine that I was the cause and your death the effect? 

Before you get me wrong, let me explain: even caged as you were, you seemed wild and free - at least, freer than me!  For, even when you submitted, it seemed to be your choosing.  Could it then be, that you chose to give up, and die? 

If only such a free spirit freely chose to be with me ... !! Did you? I did not even know how to ask you. 

I think these thoughts, and others, in the middle of the night, when I am most alone.  I read that parrots too dream.  Did you have nightmares in your lonely sleep?