Swinging the budgie vote

TO THE European explorers Australia seemed an ideal location for prisons.

In due course thousands of unfortunate convicts were transported there from Britain and Ireland. Now we learn that two Australian captives have been living secretly in Portlaoise Prison.

How ironic!

The authorities, apparently, knew nothing about the covert inmates, although the prison tuck shop had been stocking birdseed for the stowaways. The intrepid budgies have ruffled a few political feathers. Who knows, they may even swing a vote or two in this week’s election.

Birds have a long association with prisons. Ravens guard the tower of London, England’s most notorious penal institution. Robert Stroud found an injured sparrow in the exercise yard at Leavenworth prison in Kansas and took the bird back to his cell. To help it, he began studying ornithology and veterinary medicine. His Manual of the Diseases of Birds appeared in 1939. The famous kidnapper and murderer was eventually transferred to Alcatraz Prison, a mini-Australia in San Francisco Bay, where he ended his days. He carried out no research there, but the Birdman of Alcatraz has a more glamorous ring to it than the Birdman of Leavenworth, and that became the title of a book and film about Stroud.

The name Alcatraz has avian associations apart from the connection with him; it comes from the Arabic for pelican and found its way into Portuguese during the Moorish occupation of Iberia. The island, when Portuguese sailors found it, was probably a haunt of pelicans.

I know nothing about jails, but I fail to see what’s so awful about prisoners having budgies for company. Keeping pets is a harmless activity. It might even be argued that caring for birds has a therapeutic and humanising effect. At any rate, it seems perverse that harmless budgies should be listed with addictive drugs and syringes as items to be confiscated from prisoners. Had the authorities in Leavenworth not turned a blind eye to rules about pets, Stroud might never have repented of his crimes, nor would his famous manual have been written. Some will argue that keeping birds in cages is cruel.

“A robin red-breast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage,” said William Blake, but this is not an argument directed specifically at jails; pet birds are prisoners in any case.

Budgies, as far as we can tell, live happily in cages whether in prison or not. That these birds are so amenable to incarceration is strange because, in the wild, they are nomads, free spirits which range far and wide. Budgies fly around in small flocks which sometimes merge into very large ones. There are reports, from time to time, of the Australian sky being darkened by enormous swarms of budgies. Presumably, the people, with whom captive budgies live, serve as surrogates for the birds’ companions in the wild flocks. But these exotic creatures are not without quirks and foibles; individuals placed together in cages don’t always get along, and arranged marriages are not necessarily successful.

Budgies were first domesticated around 1850. They are the only members of the parrot family to adapt easily to captive conditions; after cats and dogs they are the world’s most numerous household pets. Escaped budgies seldom survive long in the wild, but feral populations have become established at several locations around the world.

Tame budgies are bigger and more brightly coloured than their wild cousins. Bright green with a yellow head and neck, there is a small patch of blue on a wild budgie’s face above the bill. Breeders have exploited the yellow and blue in the plumage to breed varieties which are yellow or blue all over. Paradoxically, we don’t really know what a budgie looks like to another bird; there are colours in the feathers which we humans can’t see. Some pigments reflect ultraviolet light which other budgies are able to detect. Noisy birds, both male and female can be trained to produce a type of song. Captive birds have even been taught to speak. A Canadian budgie, named Victor, became well known when his recordings of speech were published in 2001. It was claimed that Victor had a vocabulary of over 1,000 words, and that he was capable of uttering meaningful sentences. An American budgie named Puck, who died in 1998, was said to have a vocabulary of 1,728 words. These birds are intelligent; they interact with their owners and like to play with toys.

Budgie is short for budgerigar, one of the handful of Aboriginal words which have been incorporated into English. The name, apparently, roughly translates as “good creature,” presumably meaning “good to eat.” This, the most famous of Australia’s birds, is a fairly unique member of the parrot tribe, being the sole member of its genus. It’s found throughout the dryer parts of Australia, in open and scrubby areas where it feeds on the seeds of grasses. Drought can force budgies to move into woods. The nests are made in tree holes, where up to a dozen eggs are laid at two-day intervals.

Captive budgies seldom live beyond the age of eight, although one reached 15. This is a short life-span among the parrots, a family which includes some of the most long-lived birds in the world. Macaws, one of the larger species from South America, have been known to reach the age of 65. Vote budgie on Thursday.