Original subtitles

(wind blowing)

(ship horn honking)

(upbeat music)

(all talking)

(bird cawing)

(birds chirping)

(birds chirping)

(speaking French)

Wow.

(birds chirping)

You're not Fannie either, where's Fannie?

Come on Fannie, where are you?

There you are, yes.

(chuckling)

(speaking French)

Excuse me?

Is it your parakeets?

No, these are wild.

(chirping)

(chuckling)

(speaking French)

How many are there?

Around 45.

You know all the names of the birds, and.

I gave them their names.

Yes, so you see a difference.

Yes.

For us, they all look the same, but.

Well, each bird is a little different than the others.

Like, this is Gibson.

I know Gibson because he has grooves

down the side of his beak,

and he has orange on top of his head,

where the red feathers are.

I see that.

Usually some little marking I recognize,

or a particular behavior.

Hey Flap, you want to do your trick?

Can you do your trick, Flap?

Come on.

Want to look at a menu?

You want the daily special?

(squawking)

You a flap doodle.

(chuckling)

Special today on seeds.

Yes, okay, there you go.

You silly bird.

Why doesn't anybody else do that?

How come you're the only one that does that?

What does that mean,

you have like, a distinct personality or something?

How long have you owned these?

I don't own any of them actually,

they're all wild.

(talking)

Do they ever go into your house?

I take the sick ones into the house,

but they won't go in voluntarily, no.

What type of parrots are they?

Cherry-headed conures.

If you stopped feeding them,

would they like, move,

I mean, go someplace else or?

Yeah, they wouldn't have any problem at all.

They eat a lot of fruit, and they eat little nuts,

and they eat.

- Hey, Mark. - Hi.

They eat pine cones.

Most of their day is spent eating and playing.

So they'd be alright.

If you weren't feeding them,

if you weren't taking care of them,

they could exist by themselves in the wild?

Exactly, yeah.

Okay.

Do you get paid, does the city pay you

to take care of them like this?

No, no. (chuckling)

The city ignores... well, no, actually,

the city's been very helpful,

but supportive in a spiritual way.

That is a parrot.

You're kind of like the St. Francis

of Telegraph Hill, huh?

(chuckling)

(birds squawking)

Do you have names for them?

[Mark] Yeah, I have names for them.

Most of them have names, at least.

They're not really wild if you have

names for them, I think.

I mean, if you don't mind my saying.

You feed them out of your hands,

and you have names for them,

and they come up to you,

like they're you know, your pets.

No, actually, see, originally they were somebody's pets.

Some of them were somebody's pets.

They were originally wild birds

that were caught down in the wild,

shipped up here to be sold as pets,

they were pets, and they were either

deliberately released or escaped.

But all these others that you're seeing here

were born here in the city.

They're actually wild, wild birds.

They're their own birds,

they're just like the robins or the scrub jays,

or any of the others around here.

They're wild.

Yeah, but you don't take care of the,

any of the other robins or scrub jays or whatever.

No, that's true, I don't.

You only take care of the parrots.

Just the parrots, yes.

Alright.

(birds chirping)

Well, whatever.

Good luck.

- Okay, thank you. - Yeah, see you later.

(birds chirping)

Hey Mingus.

Want to dance?

(acoustic guitar music)

♫ Well, I got me a roof

♫ And I got me some clothes

♫ And I eat real good

♫ Man, I overdose

♫ When it gets dark

♫ You know I turn on the light

♫ Put on my shades when the sun's too bright

♫ Every comfort for every climb

♫ I still can't get me no peace of mind ♫

(chirping)

I don't think of myself as an eccentric.

(chuckling)

As for all these wild parrots,

they were a big mystery to me,

and I wanted to find out who they were.

Mingus, for example, is a really strange bird.

Every single bird I've ever had in the house

is always looking for the means to escape.

Mingus is just the opposite.

He's a bird that I can't keep out.

One day I was out doing a feeding.

One of the cherry-heads was in this bush

with bright blue flowers,

and he was just ripping them to shreds.

It's very odd behavior.

It was a cherry-headed conure, but I said,

this is not one of the birds from the flock.

I knew right away that this was a new bird.

Here you go, Mingus.

He was desperately hungry.

I started offering him seeds,

and he took them right away.

So, he'd obviously, was used to human beings.

And I started encouraging him to come

into the house a little bit,

just so that I could check him out.

And just over the next few weeks he started coming

in more and more, and then I started thinking,

well, I don't need another bird.

So, I started trying to make him stay out.

But he started coming in every chance he got.

I couldn't keep him out.

He's the only wild bird I've had

that didn't want to be wild.

His right leg was broken once,

and it hangs when he flies.

That might be part of the reason

he doesn't fly with the flock.

He might not have the endurance to.

He was abandoned bird,

and it was a quarantine ban,

so I knew that he was a wild caught imported bird.

Sometimes, what they did to catch birds,

is they chop down a tree that had a nest in it.

So, it's possible that when the tree landed,

if that's the case for Mingus,

that his leg got broken then.

I mean, it could have happened in a lot of different ways.

(squawking)

Mingus.

(squawking)

There's this milk crate that holds up my refrigerator.

And that's his nest,

he's really protective of the nest area.

He's sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

He's got one really sweet, sweet side of him,

and there's this one really nasty side of him.

He'll withdraw into his nest,

and this sort of transformation takes place.

And then it's like the evil twin is taking over.

(squawking)

Mingus.

(squawking)

Mingus, stop it.

(squawking)

Okay, Mingus, I warned you, come on.

We're going outside, come on.

Come on, come on, come on.

Alright, come on.

Alright, got you, I got you.

Alright.

I'm going to go outside.

Mingus is one of those type of critters,

it's like a lot of people,

you might fight with them constantly,

but you really love them.

That's how I feel about Mingus.

When Mingus is a bad bird,

rather than putting him in the cage,

I throw him outside.

He wants back in so badly,

he's utterly terrified of being forced to leave.

(squawking)

(sirens wailing)

(birds cawing)

(hawk crying)

(squawking)

Come on Mingus, let's go in.

(peaceful music)

This is one of the classic stairways of San Francisco.

We're in a garden that is essentially

a bunch of little habitats on a hillside.

But these trees harbor a lot of the birds,

the parrots will land here,

they'll land in this strawberry guava here.

Which is unusual.

It's a very unusual thing,

it blooms very lightly and then it gets fruit way late,

into October.

And the parrots and will come,

and they'll come early, and they'll wait,

and they'll keep checking and checking.

When is this fruit coming in?

And they're tiny little things,

they just love them to death.

And we have these fabulous lemons and bananas.

I've always been surprised

that the parrots don't go for the banana trees,

because I actually have three bananas.

They're not in very good shape right now,

they're rather. Not ripe yet.

See the balcony through the tree,

that's exactly where he was standing.

Up on that fire escape.

He'd stand up there for hours at a time,

and he had the bowl in the corner,

just like does now on his deck.

He had it sitting on the corner,

and they would come and sit on the edge of the bowl,

and like I said, he'd just be standing there,

and then eventually his hand was out,

and eventually he was standing right next to the bowl,

and they were on his shoulders and arms.

I think it took a year to really get them to be

familiar enough to really touch him.

I've been tempted to grow a beard

and wear a jeans jacket.

I thought maybe that was the trick.

It's only the denim and the beard

that's attracting the birds.

(birds chirping) (peaceful music)

Hi.

One of the most interesting things to me,

right at the start,

was when I realized that they're actually paired up.

Now, it's not always lifelong.

It's not always monogamous, I guess you'd say.

They do break up occasionally.

There was this pair, Scrapper and Scrapperella.

They were together for several years.

She's a feather plucker.

She pulls out all her feathers.

That's unheard of in a wild bird.

Pet birds get into it.

So, maybe she was somebody's pet,

and got started there.

She was plucking herself,

and she was plucking Scrapper, her mate.

To this day there's an area around Scrapper's neck

that's never grown back.

They broke up.

I always like to think

it was because she was plucking him

and he was getting tired of it,

and he kept asking her to please stop,

and she kept promising she would,

but she was obsessive and couldn't.

(upbeat music)

Hey, Connor.

You're a beautiful bird, Connor.

(chirping)

You know, it's funny,

because I can make jokes about the other birds,

but I don't really make jokes about Connor.

That's something about him that really stands out.

It's not just because of the blue head.

Connor's a different species

than the other birds in the flock,

he's a blue-crowned conure.

His personality is a lot different than the cherry-heads.

They're really hot, feisty birds,

and Connor's really cool, and quiet.

He's also kind of cranky.

Actually, he's very cranky,

aren't you, Connor?

But that's because he doesn't have a mate.

He's not treated well by the others.

But it's interesting because he's been

out in the flock longer than any of them.

There was a small group of four birds

that started this flock,

and he was in that group.

I think only one of those others is still alive.

So, Connor's at least 13, 14 years old.

He's always been friends with the outcasts.

He's befriended several parakeets.

There was a bird I called Smitty,

who used to eat the crumbs that fell out of Connor's beak.

Little bits of apple would drop,

and then the budgie would get

to eat those crushed bits of apple.

I don't think Connor really liked Smitty,

he was just tolerant.

He was a parrot, so he needs some company.

Every now and then he'd get a little snappy with the budgie.

Like a little brother, but a little pest.

(squeaking)

(chirping)

Connor is really regal,

but he's also disgruntled.

He's unhappy, clearly unhappy being with this species.

He'd much rather be with other blue-crowned conures.

(peaceful music) (seagulls cawing)

[Voiceover] I've been making films half my life,

but I got started young as a bird watcher.

That's my grandfather.

He's letting me look through his spotting scope

at some ducks.

(birds chirping)

When I started filming Mark,

I realized, hey, wait a minute,

he reminded me of my grandfather.

Not his age or anything,

but my grandfather used to feed the birds

out in the back yard,

and one of the things he did was,

he would stand there with his hand up

with sunflower seeds in his hand,

and these little chickadees would come down

and eat out of his hand.

And he taught me how to do that when

I was about eight years old.

It was the same thing with these birds.

Time stopped.

There was another thing I noticed about Mark right away.

He has a lot of time.

I've been wanting to do a project

that was more individual than the

environmental films I'd been making,

but I never seemed to have the time

to figure out what that was.

Mark has time to feed the birds,

take care of sick birds inside the house,

keep a detailed flock diary,

all with no visible means of support.

No money,

but all the time in the world.

How does he get away with that?

(chattering)

(speaking Italian)

4.50 for you, please.

No, no. (speaking Italian)

Ah, thanks, geez. (speaking Italian)

If a few years ago, somebody had said

you'll be spending all your days, every day

being absorbed with a flock of birds,

it would have sounded completely absurd.

When I arrived in North Beach,

while I was heading off to try to be a rock and roll star.

(chuckling)

(speaking Italian)

Those Italian women, you know,

they really kept a lot of people alive.

And there was this one bakery,

that if you bought anything at all,

like just a French roll,

if you could get enough money to buy a French roll,

they'd load a bag up with pizza bread.

They were really nice.

(speaking Italian)

For my Bella Bambina,

Julie, and my boy Chris.

May God bless you.

(upbeat music)

[Mark] When I came down from Seattle,

and I wanted to make it in music,

and my idea was to do it in San Francisco.

Nick, how are you, man?

I'm alright.

[Mark] And North Beach was something

I'd been reading about for years.

You know, the beats.

And when I was there it was the tail end of the hippies,

but there was still, I mean,

you'd seen Alan Ginsberg walking

up and down the streets sometimes,

when he was in town.

Gregory Corso, he was there.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

You know, all those people.

It was a legendary place.

I liked the beats,

but I thought they were a little bit too down,

and I liked the hippies,

but I thought they were a little too airy.

I mean, at the extremes of both of those movements.

(ferry dinging)

I read a lot.

Gary Snyder used to live on Telegraph Hill in the 50s,

before we he went to Japan.

There was that time honored American tradition of

going out on the road.

In the pan, bitches.

[Mark] I just wasn't out on the highway,

I was on the streets.

(playful music)

♫ In the evening

♫ Ain't we got fun

♫ Sweet little baby

♫ Ain't we got fun

♫ Don't you know

♫ Everybody's happy

There was this guy walking up and down the street,

and he said, "oh, you ought to go sleep"

on the roof of this hotel,

"that's where everybody else is sleeping."

And there was this big rope

that went from this hut that was on top of it to this pole,

and there were all these carpets

laying around on the roof,

so I threw some carpets over this rope

so I had a little tent.

♫ The rich get richer

♫ And the poor get poorer

♫ Baby, ain't we got fun

I've been here for 26 years now, almost.

I haven't really paid rent in 25 years.

[Voiceover] I'm sorry I have to ask,

but what's the difference between you and a pigeon lady?

(sighing)

(chuckling) I don't know.

♫ Oh, the rich get richer

♫ The poor get poorer

I stay in basements,

I slept in a storeroom for about a year and a half.

You have to sleep somewhere.

[Voiceover] Tell me again why you refuse to get a job.

Well, look, I work.

Just a lot of the work that I do,

you don't get paid for,

or you don't get paid for it right away.

I've done all the usual odd jobs, you know,

painting rooms, cleaning houses.

I've made cappuccinos,

which is a real survival skill in North Beach.

But it was all stuff that was temporary.

I was always trying to keep my freedom at the center,

not my freedom to be a bum or no-count or something,

but my freedom to move forward.

To stay in this kind of spiritual place,

as opposed to just a careerist path.

But, things weren't working,

because I was trying to do something

that I wasn't suited to do, and I knew it.

I realized I wasn't going back to music,

that that was done.

But I still didn't have a forward direction.

I mean, what the Buddhists would call right livelihood.

I didn't have that, I didn't any way of making a living.

And to make a living was to be doing

something that you loved,

something that was creative,

something that made sense.

I always assumed that the end was just around the corner,

but it drug on for years and years.

I just hoped and prayed that eventually

it was going to lead me where I wanted to be.

And, it was a long, long time.

I was on the street for 15 years there.

Who am I, where am I going,

what am I doing?

I really wanted a real transformation.

(birds chirping)

Then I got a caretaking gig on the other side

of Telegraph Hill, from North Beach,

surrounded by these huge gardens.

I'd been reading Gary Snyder a lot,

because I wanted to get into nature,

and he was a nature poet.

He said in this one interview that I read,

"well, if you want to find nature,

start right where you are."

So, I said, okay,

well, I'll go out and get a bag of sunflower seeds.

Let's try to identify some birds,

and as I figured out, it was boring.

(peaceful music)

And I was watching at the very moment

that the first parrot came over to see

what the scrub jays were eating.

And I just went, wow.

They didn't even seem like birds to me,

they were more like monkeys.

(squawking)

It wasn't a plan, it just happened.

It was what I was doing

while I was trying to figure out what that thing would be.

My idea of where I was going to go in my life.

But it became the thing that I'm doing.

It's magic that way.

Whoa, come on Connor.

Come on.

(squawking) You old curmudgeon.

Are you looking for your honey, huh?

Connor?

You lonely old bird.

Every spring he sits on up on the lines and springs.

And I assume he's calling for a mate.

He used to have another blue crown as a mate,

a bird I called Catherine.

But she died about a year after I started feeding the birds.

(squawking)

(cooing)

Since Catherine's death, he's had some relationships,

but they've been very brief.

All these birds have known him since they were babies,

but he's still a blue crown.

They know he's a different species.

(squawking)

(squawking)

(sighing)

Come on, Connor.

I thought it would be really nice

to make friends with a wild bird,

and the bird that I wanted at first was Connor.

But, he didn't want to be my friend.

He just didn't cotton to being

somebody's best friend, a human being.

He tolerates everybody that's around him,

but he doesn't really have anybody that he loves.

(whirring)

[Voiceover] I'm curious about something.

Why don't you cut your hair?

Oh, lay off. (laughing)

No, what?

You want me to answer that?

I just made this decision that

I wasn't going to cut my hair until I had a girlfriend.

Come on, sweetie pie.

Come on, Picasso.

You'll like, yes, good food.

This is Picasso and Sophie,

they're a little pair.

How are you two doing?

They're both somewhat crippled

because they've had nerve damage from this virus.

Picasso's had a lot of trouble in his life.

He had a real bad fight that bloodied

this eye right here, real bad.

He can't see very well out of it.

Hm?

Sophie's got an interesting story actually,

because when she was ill, she fell out of a tree

down at Washington Square Park,

and a homeless woman found her.

Picked her up, put her in this sack,

and was going around the neighborhood

trying to sell her.

Somebody called me and told me about it,

so I had to go down, find the homeless woman,

and ransom Sophie.

She cost me 20 bucks.

(squawking) Yes.

(all chirping)

I have a fantasy about them.

I always imagine Sophie being this little French girl

who loves her big Picasso.

She's a small bird,

and she was the one that established the relationship,

because he was just wasn't smart enough

to do it himself.

She's exasperated with her Picasso sometimes,

that big, dumb lug, you know?

Picasso. (laughing)

You can see her little beret, can't you?

She loves him.

(chattering)

(squawking)

Hey, Sophie.

Where's Picasso, Sophie?

Where's Picasso?

Still think about Picasso, hm?

You remember Picasso?

Sophie's been showing up all by herself

for about ten days, I'd say,

without Picasso.

Good girl, how you doing?

He had the virus once,

so he was a little bit unstable.

You know, there have been a lot of

hawks around here lately too.

It's possible Picasso got picked off.

He's blind on that one side,

so you know, if a hawk was coming after him,

he might not see it in time.

I've always thought of Sophie as needing Picasso.

But she is pretty spunky.

Hello, Connor.

You're such a good looking bird, Connor.

I have seen birds disappear for like, ten days,

go into mourning or something when a mate dies.

Connor, when Catherine died,

Connor disappeared for ten days.

Connor?

Hey, Sophie.

I'd like to see Connor and Sophie get together.

I think they'd be ideal for each other.

I think Connor's interested,

I think Sophia is dubious, but.

She just lost Picasso,

so maybe she needs some more time to mourn,

I don't know.

Sophie needs somebody to look out for her,

she's not a very strong bird.

She's got a lot of nerve damage.

And Connor, when he is protecting a mate,

is a lot tougher than when he's not.

And then maybe we'd have

some purple headed babies, yeah.

I'd love to see purple headed babies in the flock.

(hopeful music)

(chirping)

Good morning, loris.

Lori, lori, lori.

Hey, you guys.

Aren't you hungry?

Come on, come on.

Hey, no fighting.

These are rainbow lorikeets,

and they do just great in our climate here.

Outside, they're outside all winter long,

in fact they like to sit out in the rain.

But what San Francisco can't provide

for these guys is their food.

These are a specially adapted parrot

that feeds on nectar and pollen.

[Voiceover] So how do these guys

compare to the wild parrots of San Francisco?

And how can they survive the cold?

Well, when Mark Bittner first called me

that was the question he asked,

was there are all these wild parrots

flying around San Francisco,

how can they live through the winter here?

How can they survive?

And the answer is really the same,

the parrots aren't bothered by the cold

nearly as much as they would be by a lack of food.

And one of the things that San Francisco

and other urban areas provide

are a myriad of wild (chirping)

subtropical plants that are brought here

as part of our landscaping.

(laughing)

Mark has called me off and on

to ask questions that have come up in his mind,

as he's observed these birds,

and I've got to say, when he first called,

what I was taken by was the fact that,

here is a guy that is beginning to understand

the relationships between the individual birds.

Which is a very rare opportunity in science,

because parrots are very difficult to follow in nature.

They're difficult to study in a rain forest.

(upbeat music) (wildlife chirping)

Well, when I first started observing the flock

I established finally that there

were cherry-headed conures,

and then I discovered that there

were blue-crowned conures in the flock.

And then I saw these green conures,

and I looked them up,

and I thought they were wide-eyed conures.

Well, there was a strange thing

the wide-eyed conures were doing.

They were coming up to the cherry-heads

and looking up at them like,

please, do it again, do it again.

And the cherry-heads would look at them like,

oh, come on.

You really want it, don't you?

And the wide-eyeds would go, yes, please do it again.

So, the cherry-heads would take the wide-eyed conures'

beaks in their beaks, and jerk their heads up and down.

Real fast.

And then let go, and the wide-eyed conures

would look up and go, like they were in a state of bliss.

It was the strangest thing,

I had no idea what was going on.

I thought it was this weird trip

that the wide-eyed conures were on.

And the cherry-heads were indulging for some reason.

(squawking)

(playful flute music)

I mean, that's really stupid now.

It's laughable, from what I know,

because what they were doing was the

cherry-heads feeding their babies,

but I didn't know anything like that at the time.

One day I came across the information

that the cherry-head babies,

when they first come out, are totally green,

so then I realized, oh, they're breeding.

And that was something I didn't think that was possible,

that was one reason I assumed

that they had to be another species.

Because this is San Francisco, it's too cold.

I mean, it's strange enough that these parrots are here.

But they're breeding, too?

That's impossible.

(upbeat music)

When I first started looking at the parrots

I had all these questions,

and I really wanted to find somebody

who knew something.

Because they were so exotic,

and because I didn't understand

that there were other parrots flown to the United States,

I thought this was a one of a kind situation.

So, I figured, well, somebody has to be studying this.

This is so weird.

A lot of the information that I had right at the start

was easy to know, but nobody was interested.

Nobody cared, from the official bird world,

it just wasn't a thing of interest,

because they were non-native.

I mean, you have from one end,

the parrot industry, which is saying

this is escaped merchandise, this is terrible.

And then you have the birders,

which are going, these birds are non native,

they don't belong here.

They're as bad as starlings.

(chirping)

So there was no interest from either side.

In fact, I was the only one studying them.

(whimpering)

You know, I don't know a lot about native birds,

but my sense from what I've read

and from what I've seen,

is that the parents of native birds

are getting their babies out of their nest,

out of their lives as quickly as possible.

Where, you see, the parrots have a real big

investment in their family.

The babies stay with the parents almost an entire year.

(squawking)

I'd been really curious as to what actually happened

when a baby fledged.

And I always imagined the parents

trying to coax the young out of the nest hole,

but that wasn't what happens at all.

They keep stuffing the baby back in,

the baby wants out.

(squawking)

When the baby's so strong

that they can't keep the baby in there anymore,

they'll fly over to a branch nearby

and just wait for that baby to fledge.

And then the baby will just burst out of the hole.

(uplifting music)

I don't tell anybody where the nests are.

I just call it, the Republic of El Koto.

(squawking)

(chirping)

There is a new breed of parrot

coming into being in San Francisco,

and it's all because of one bird,

a bird I call Olive.

Olive is a mitered conure.

Mitered conures are bigger than the cherry-heads.

They have less red on their head,

they have a high pitched voice,

they almost sound like a seagull at times.

(chirping)

She was actually a real problem at first,

because she was kicking all the other cherry-heads off,

they were all intimidated by her.

(squawking)

I've always been curious about

the cherry-heads that choose her,

what does that mean?

Do they find her attractive?

Special, or can't they get a cherry-head?

What's the... (laughing)

It'd be interesting to know.

(chirping)

A lot of ornithological types won't like this kind of thing,

but I love it, that there's this

unique little San Francisco bird.

This particular hybridization wouldn't occur

down in South America.

The cherry-heads are from southern Ecuador, northern Peru.

And the mitered conures are from southern Peru,

and there's hundreds of miles

separating those two territories.

So, they just wouldn't encounter each other.

I mean, if Olive had another mitered available

to her, I assume she'd choose that bird,

but she doesn't.

(chirping)

Olive came off the nest

in late July.

And I saw that she was a little bit unstable.

She was ill.

I don't know what was wrong with her.

She actually fell onto my deck,

she was on her back.

She couldn't fly anymore.

I could see she was not going to make it,

so I picked her up and took her into the house.

Well, I knew they had babies in that nest.

Pushkin would have to go around

getting food for those babies,

and food for himself, and going back to feed them,

there'd be nobody to stay with the babies.

I thought maybe they wouldn't be able to keep warm enough.

I assumed those babies were finished.

And Pushkin had never been a father before.

But, he hung on there,

and he kept coming to me all day long.

Over and over again,

and it was clear that he was eating

for more than just himself.

So, I started thinking,

well, maybe he is actually raising these babies on his own,

and then one of the babies stepped out to greet him.

(squawking)

And I saw his first flight.

(squeaking)

And I thought that was just beautiful.

(chirping)

(upbeat music)

There's another flock in another part of the city,

in the mission, and that's a different species.

They're called canary-winged parakeets.

In fact, that flock used to fly this hill,

but this flock kicked them out.

Both flocks are escaped pets,

but nobody really knows how they got out.

I've heard all kinds of things.

There's a ton of urban legends.

In the 20s or 30s

a truck that was delivering parrots

to pets stores in San Francisco

had an accident right here on Dolores,

and fell over and all these birds,

all this beautiful color came up,

and they was flying into the trees here.

The only thing that anybody could think of

is that they flew off from a ship.

(honking)

Maybe from South America.

(honking)

If you had a pet bird,

and you had a roommate,

and the pet bird made lots of noise,

I think a lot of them just got released.

It's too loud,

so it's gone. (laughing)

Across the street, in one of these two big houses

there lived an old woman who had parrots,

and the story was that when she died

whoever was taking care of her estate

let the parrots go free,

and that was the beginning of

the flocks of parrots on Russian Hill.

(engine roaring)

I heard of a story where there was a shipment of conures

down at SFO, and the box broke,

and the birds flew out loose.

[Voiceover] You think they could have made it

all the way up to San Francisco?

Oh, sure.

Another one was there was this crazy woman

who had a store, somewhere downtown,

and she went nuts.

I think she just flipped out, had a breakdown,

and maybe too many birds. (laughing)

Too much noise, who knows?

I mean, there's stress in having a bird store.

You know all about that, huh?

A little.

(screeching)

And she couldn't feed the birds for a while,

and the health department came in

and opened up all the doors,

and birds flew out and things like that.

And then the other one was,

a friend of mine who was delivering me birds

at my store on Filmore street.

Right, Maxwell.

Had some conures in a box,

and he left one of the panels open,

and they flew all out.

[Voiceover] What do you think is the most likely?

I think the last one.

I think Jim's birds flew out,

and they were the beginning of the population of a flock.

(upbeat music)

You guys hungry?

Okay, the baby with the bite on for it,

is on the dish right now.

On the far side.

They're getting ready for the breeding season.

And they get really excited this time of year,

and they get into a lot of fights.

They're really loud and they're

really violent with each other sometimes.

It's just their way of communicating

with each other, I guess.

(squawking)

(laughing)

Whoa, what happened to you?

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.

(cawing)

I've actually seen Connor come to the aid

of sick or injured birds that the flock was picking on.

Whenever a bird is ill or injured

the rest of the parrots can be merciless

with the injured or sick member of the flock.

Like, a sick juvenile for example.

Connor would come to that bird's aid

when that bird was under attack

from a healthy bird.

(squawking)

(squawking)

Connor, you watch out for the hawks.

(hissing)

See a hawk or something?

Is there a hawk here?

Hear that sound they're making?

That caw, caw, caw?

That's the sound they make when they see a hawk.

Yep, there it is.

(hawk crying) (hissing)

I never noticed the hawks until

the parrots pointed them out to me.

The most common hawk in the area is the red-tail.

I usually see red-tailed hawks,

Cooper's hawks, sometimes sharp shinned,

red-shouldered hawks.

Connor is not as fearful as the cherry-heads.

It takes a lot more to worry him.

They have hawk alarms that go out constantly,

and Connor will ignore a lot of those hawk alarms.

He's not as afraid of the hawks as the cherry-heads are.

(cawing)

They see a soaring bird, they'll take off.

Connor has to be certain that it's a real danger.

The flock has several different ways of responding to hawks.

Sometimes what it does

is it scatters off in a lot of different directions,

so that it confuses the hawk,

and the hawk doesn't know which way to go.

Another method is kind of funny,

the flock flies up behind the hawk

and then follows it.

And then the hawk can only attack

from above and behind,

so it neutralizes the hawk.

I saw this huge red-tailed hawk nest

in Golden Gate Park.

It's in the trees right above Stow Lake.

(whistling)

The babies were tearing up the bird

that the mother had brought in.

Usually you just see red-tails eating rodents,

things like that,

they're not inclined to eat birds as much,

but obviously, occasionally they will eat a bird.

You could see the babies eating the feathers of the bird.

(hawk crying)

Being eaten by a hawk has got

to be a parrot's worst nightmare.

(chirping)

There usually is a watch parrot,

looking for hawks. [Voiceover] Fascinating.

[Voiceover] What are their other predators,

besides hawks and cats?

Or is that about it?

[Mark] Human beings.

I think that's really the only other danger they face,

is human beings.

(engines roaring)

(marching band music)

(birds chirping)

(hawk crying)

I was seeing the parrots do

all these strange things every day.

And I would tell my neighbors stories,

and they kept saying,

well, you ought to write this stuff down.

And I would say, well, yeah.

I probably should, and I just never did.

And finally one day, somebody brought me a journal

and said here, start writing.

(keyboard clacking)

Later, I started actually writing articles

based on the journals.

And somebody said,

"oh, well, if you're writing about the parrots,

you'll need a computer."

So, they gave me a computer.

I needed some slides for an article that I'd written,

so I started taking slides

and I had a cheap camera at first,

and then I started borrowing better cameras,

and buying professional film.

I never had the idea of a career.

Well, I did actually, I wanted to be a musician.

That was the last time I wanted to have a career.

But, I am moving in a direction

that can support me.

I mean, I can see it.

(shuttering)

You look dirty, Connor.

You do, you're a mess.

Come on, you hungry?

When a new feather grows in,

it is wrapped In something,

it's called a keratin sheath.

It itches, and it's prickly.

The parts of Connon that he can preen,

I mean, he preens with his beak,

just like any other bird,

but that it's the area around his neck

and around his skull that he has a difficult time with.

That's where all those pin feathers are.

They have to have a mate do that.

And when that happens,

I've taken him out of the flock to preen him myself.

He doesn't like it, but he's a beautiful bird,

and I can't stand to see him looking that way.

One time, see I actually had a

blue-crowned conure in the house.

It was somebody's pet.

The blue-crowned was given to me

because the woman that owned it

just couldn't deal with him anymore.

And she asked me if I wanted it,

and I thought, oh, that's perfect.

I can give Connor a mate.

I thought it was a female,

it turned out to be a male.

They were both males, but Connor,

he had a lot of pin feathers at the time.

And I had this other bird clean him up.

And Bucky did.

He gave Connor a real good cleaning.

(peaceful music)

But then I gave Connor the option of coming and going

as he liked, if he wanted to go out and fly with the flock,

he was free to.

If he wanted to come back into the house, he was free to.

And, for quite a while he was quite happy to come and go.

He would never stay out for very long.

He always did want to be back in the house.

This lasted for several months.

The other bird, Bucky, didn't like it.

Bucky was angry with Connor for leaving.

And eventually they started having fights about it.

(squawking)

In the end, Connor chose,

he chose to be free.

Since the last time I brought him in and cleaned him up,

he has kept his distance from me.

He used to let me pet him,

but he won't let me do that anymore.

Connor?

No.

He's suspicious.

I'd like to get back into his good graces

before I have to leave.

They've been really good to me.

Why don't you follow us out,

we can show you the lay of the property here.

[Mark] I mean, they've let me stay in the cottage

for nearly three years without paying any rent.

When we first moved here,

we lived up there, on Alta street.

You can't see because this building blocks it.

So, we loved the neighborhood

and we started looking for a place to live permanently,

and we found this house.

And yeah, where we were,

our unit now, is the top two stories

of the main house, and also included in the property

is the cottage, which was the original structure

that was built sometime,

we believe in the 1880s,

which is where Mark lives.

I'm not sure I'd use the word squatting.

It wasn't like he had snuck into the property,

or anything like that, he was living there.

I guess the legal term is an occupant,

but the common phrase is he's living there

without paying any rent.

But, he certainly seemed like a very integral

part of Telegraph Hill, and the culture.

He was fine where he was, to live there,

and we didn't need the space,

and you could think of all sorts of practical reasons

why he should leave,

but then when we would talk about it,

we were so uncomfortable with it,

to the thought of going down and saying "go."

So that, when you actually meet Mark,

you've met him,

he's a very interesting person,

and it seemed like, well,

the reason we're living here is because there's parrots

and people that have lived here for 20 years,

and they're the history.

And it just seems like he should stay.

At the end of the day,

it just seemed like the right thing to do.

So, we did.

[Voiceover] So Mark's going to be leaving, then?

Yes, as part of the,

the renovation is so substantial, again,

it requires a new foundation,

fundamentally new framing,

and structural support inside the house.

Substantially new plumbing, electrical,

on and on and on and on.

And so, there's simply no way that

a person could continue to live in the property

while it's being renovated.

I've been involved with these birds for

five and a half years now,

and I want to present the case

of just leaving them alone.

I don't think really anything needs to be done.

They're wild birds.

Have any questions for Mr. Bittner?

After you leave, what will happen to these birds?

Do you think that they will take care

of themselves in the wild?

Yes, I'm positive.

I mean, their biggest problem would be people.

And so far, they have never had that,

and they are elusive and they're difficult to get to,

even if you do want to get them.

I don't really think a special effort needs to be made.

I think they should just be left

the way any other species in the city is.

The city and county of San Francisco

will do their best to make sure that

nothing bad is happening to them.

But, I don't believe we're going to have any official

city department going up there and feeding them,

and taking care of them,

and I think that many of the commissioners

are in agreement with me on this.

Good. (chuckling)

Thank you.

And again, thank you for coming down.

I got calls from media all over the world,

all over the United States.

From La Monde, in Paris, to BBC,

the New York Times, the LA Times,

the Reuters News Agency.

And the amount of citizen calls

from England, from all over the United States,

and quite a few calling here from the bay area,

with suggestions on what the city should do

to help the parrots, since Mr. Bittner is leaving.

[Voiceover] And what are some of the suggestions?

Oh, I mean, they range from some that are,

I think actually might make a little sense,

to some that are absolutely I think, just crazy,

I'm sorry, it's the only word that I can think of.

And some, of course, it also evokes a lot of pranksters,

and college kids after a couple of beers,

they decided they would call in with their suggestions.

We've had suggestions everywhere.

One of the most common is that

the zoo should trap them and open up the

San Francisco parrot exhibit at the zoo.

Other suggestions have been

that we should open up like,

feeding stations on Telegraph Hill.

Where you put 50 cents into a machine,

and you'll get some bird seed,

and then you can feed the parrots

of Telegraph Hill yourself, you know.

There are a few environmentalist type,

and conservationist types that call to remind me

that they are non native species,

and that we really should not be

supporting non native species here

in the state of California.

We have a terrible problem with

non native invasive species.

Although I would say they are

very much in the minority.

It seems that...

[Voiceover] What did they suggest we do?

That we trap and exterminate,

and that's pretty draconian,

but that's what some of the suggestions were.

Okay, here we go, say good night.

Okay.

Oh, look at that.

Kiss good night, Mingus?

Kiss kiss.

(chattering)

[Voiceover] So where are you going to go?

I have no idea.

I have to figure out where I'm going

to put Mingus and the other birds.

I can't take them with me, obviously.

Thanks for letting me borrow the van.

[Voiceover] No problem.

You're going to be living in an oasis for parrots, yes.

We're here.

Hi there.

Hi, sweethearts.

Yes, let's go take a look.

[Voiceover] Is it okay if we come on in?

Sure, if you don't mind the fact that

we will never win any brownie points

at all from Better Homes and Gardens.

[Voiceover] Don't mind.

Scary Homes.

Scary Homes, yes.

Scary Homes we could win.

(squealing)

Whoa. (chattering)

Lord have mercy.

And you thought your conures were loud.

(laughing)

Loud is in that room.

(screeching)

Mingus, why don't you attack some cockatoos?

(screeching)

So you'll be sending four down to the oasis?

Yes, inevitably I'll be taking yours by hand,

I'll hand carry them, because I don't want to

put them through shipping trauma.

But I will carry them to the oasis

because the oasis is originally set up,

really, to be a special needs facility

for birds like yours that have special needs,

are handicapped, or whatever other special needs might be.

Some birds there may be blind,

or really, really elderly,

and just need more care.

[Voiceover] So how did you get started

taking in these birds?

I was dropped on my head as a small child.

(clanking)

No, um, I have this great bleeding heart.

This desire to save the world.

I'm an only child, I had no siblings.

I don't have children of my own.

So, for a while I kind of looked on it

as my surrogate children.

I'll miss you, Mingus.

Okay, bye bye.

You okay, Mark?

Yeah.

(sighing)

Well, I promise they're going to be fine.

Yeah, I know.

I'll take good care of them.

I needed them, you know,

I couldn't keep them.

I needed for them to have a good home, so.

Thank you very much.

- I'll take good care of them. - Take care, Mark.

Good meeting you.

I'll stay in contact.

Okay, you take care.

I've never been good at goodbyes.

I'm terrible at them.

There is one goodbye I wish I could have made.

I wish I could have said goodbye to Tupelo.

This is Tupelo's grave right in here.

She was the first bird that I

was ever taking care of that died.

I had an experience with her, the night before,

which makes me think that she was dying.

(whimpering)

She was a total cripple at that point.

She was completely helpless,

she couldn't do anything for herself.

She couldn't even feed herself anymore.

And, so I got some formula.

It's a powder that you mix with water,

and then you put it in a syringe,

and you feed them that way.

At first, she always fought me.

But, after a while, she just, (laughing)

it was dinner time, she liked it.

And so, we bonded.

But, it was a pretty gloomy existence for her.

So, I decided that I'd start taking her

for little walks out in the garden.

They love being in the sun.

They like being warm.

I had a heater that she used to sit by.

So, I'd take her around to different plants,

and I'd hold her up to the flowers.

And she used to look at them.

It was like she really enjoyed doing it.

She seemed to.

Her favorite seemed to be this fuscia

that has some especially nice blossoms on it.

I'd hold her up to those blossoms

and she'd stare at them intently.

She was really good hearted.

Yeah, that's a good bird.

So, one night, I used to lay Tupelo

right next to me while I was reading,

and she'd just sort of snuggle up against me,

and she really liked that.

But the moment I picked her up,

I felt this really strange vibe pass through me.

It was like, real gratitude

that I had picked her up and put her in the bed.

It really felt like it was coming from her.

I thought, well, that's strange,

that's unusual, I wonder what that is.

After about 20 or 30 minutes

I wasn't going to let her stay in the bed

with me or I could crush her,

so I closed the book and I picked up Tupelo,

and I put her on the floor,

and the moment I did,

I felt regret and resignation.

Very strong, very clearly coming from her.

The next morning

I started looking for Tupelo,

and I couldn't find her anywhere.

Birds when they're sick really like heat.

I had this heater over here on the other side of the couch,

and she had crawled over to it,

and she was dead.

I think that what she was doing,

I think she knew she was dying.

She was getting cold, probably,

but she was knew she was fading or something,

and she wanted to be with me.

I wish I had been there with her as she died,

I could have been holding her.

How do you get so attached to an animal like that?

I know there's lots of people

that have experienced something like this,

but in a certain sense they're a lot purer than we are,

because we have a lot of neurotic thoughts.

Things that bind us up inside,

and we play a lot of games that animals don't play.

They're really straightforward.

She depended on me, so she loved me.

And I felt that.

The thing that's interesting to me actually,

a lot of people think that this is anthropomorphism.

But I felt those, those two emotions pass through me.

They came from her, I wasn't looking for anything.

I was preoccupied, I was thinking about something else.

So, to say that animals don't have these kinds of things,

is nonsense.

And I think it's cruel nonsense.

We do a lot of bad things to animals

because we don't believe that they feel anything.

So, up until Tupelo's death,

people would often come up to me and say,

boy, you're really into this, aren't you?

You really love those birds,

and I was always worried that people

were going to think of me as eccentric,

for getting so deeply involved in this,

and I'd always downplay it.

Like, oh, no, it's just kind of a hobby, yeah.

It's just a hobby, it's just something

I'm sort of doing to pass the time.

But because I couldn't talk to anybody for three days,

after Tupelo's death, I said okay, well,

it's just unreal to talk to people that way.

That's not true.

I had to admit after that,

that I really did love them.

I was unconsciously anthropocentric.

I only thought of it in terms of human beings.

I would say, if somebody asked me,

do animals have thoughts and feelings?

I would say, oh sure, of course,

but I didn't put it into a whole.

When I was thinking about consciousness,

I was only thinking in terms of human beings.

There's a number of events

that have made me think differently about this,

but Tupelo's story is definitely one thing

that contributed to that idea,

and that idea being that all life is one whole.

It really is.

There's a story that Suzuki Roshi told.

He was the zen master at the

zen center here in San Francisco.

He went to Yosemite,

and he sees this big waterfall coming over this cliff.

And it's one river at the top of the cliff,

but as it falls, the river breaks up

into all these individual droplets.

And then it hits the bottom of the cliff,

and it's one river again.

We're all one river 'til we hit this cliff.

That distance between the top of the cliff

and the bottom of the cliff is our life.

And all the individual little droplets

think they are individual little droplets

until they hit the bottom, and then they're gone.

But, you know, that droplet doesn't lose anything.

It gains, and gains the rest of the river.

(somber music) (birds squawking)

Okay, Connor, this is it,

that's the last feeding.

You're looking pretty old.

We friends?

You're going to remember me as a friend?

I remember you as a friend.

Bye, Connor.

(chirping)

(all chirping)

[Voiceover] A couple of weeks after,

Mark moved in with some friends across the bay.

I went back to the Greenwich steps

to try to get some close ups of Connor.

I found him in a plum tree,

barely moving.

As it turned out, this shot was taken

on the last day of Connor's life.

Later that afternoon

three hawks attacked the parrot flock.

Connor was never seen again.

(chirping) (cawing)

A neighbor took these shots that same day.

We can't be absolutely certain the red-tail got Connor,

but we think we can see some blue in the parrot's head.

(hawk crying)

(whirring)

(buzzing)

(pounding)

(birds chirping)

I can't say I don't miss them.

I loved Connor, he was a kind, old bird.

And I'm sorry he died the way he did.

I did think about retiring him, so to speak.

Every now and then I'd say,

well, he's getting old,

maybe it'd be better for him if he was brought in.

But, I didn't feel it was my decision to make,

it was his.

Once he had the opportunity to be wild,

he wanted to stay wild.

He wanted to stay free.

But, life in the wild isn't safe.

Connor was born in the wild,

probably somewhere in Argentina.

And he died in the wilds of San Francisco.

He and the cherry-heads brought me into that world.

I used to think the native birds were really boring.

I didn't even think about them, I never noticed them,

and now I always see them.

I always see what they're doing.

And I see that just like the parrots,

they have personalities too.

I mean, they have their own particular lives.

There are even quail here in the city.

(bird calling)

I've noticed that morning doves,

which look very stupid to me,

if you get at just the right angle

you can see the pupil,

and then you get a different idea of what they are.

(seagulls cawing)

I was looking for something that I could really get into.

I didn't expect it to go this far.

(snipping)

[Voiceover] And um, Mark and I became a pair.

(upbeat music)