excellent thread on belize forums on care of parrots

http://www.belizeforum.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=26;t=000134

here's the gist of it. i did not write this its rigrat at belizeforums

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Well, I am a little bit fed up.
In the last two weeks we have had two severe cases of parrot injury due to people clipping the wings of a parrot. One has broken ribs and a cracked beak, and the other has had her beak broken off entirely. People who don't know what they are doing think it is OK to just hack away at a birds wings until the bird, (who could fly ten minutes before) just plummets to the ground when they try to fly.
I am not going to get into a debate about wing clippimg because I personally will never do it and think it is totally unnecessary.
But we now have one parrot that will take a year to recover and another that will have to be fed by syringe for up to seventy years.
On top of this the parrot with the ribs doesn't know what parrot food is, and has been used to a diet of corned beef, tortilla chips, and rice.
The ignorance in this country about parrots is stunning.
If you really really must clip your parrot's wings take it to someone who knows what they are doing.

We are battling with the Forestry department at the moment to get a Sanctuary licence, but it is hard going. We don't actually keep parrots per se. they all fly around the house or roost in the trees outside the front door until their wings get better. As they start to fly we give them 'orientation trips' so they can get back home. But are often up to our ears in bush retrieving ones that can fly downhill but not uphill!
We are also building a large aviary (enormous... a small valley) so that parrots too badly damaged to ever be paired up with a wild bird can live some sort of a normal life.
At the moment we have 13 birds, 9 free flying and coming home to roost (six of these paired with wild birds) and four others who are rescue birds.
We don't do Macaws as we don't have any wild populations nearby so our reasons for doing this don't apply.

Rant over