The birds are movin!

Last week, after waiting for several days, we moved the birds from pre-rehabilitation to their rehab cage. It seems like a simple step, but it really means a lot more in the grand scheme of things. These birds have been at ARCAS for over a year now. Many were illegally trafficked to become pets. Some already were pets; others were found injured in the wild. They all came to ARCAS, grew out their feathers, got healthy, and finally learned how to fly. They now are in their final steps to being released again into the wild as they fly around in their new and bigger cage with tree and huge, long limbs to imitate branches that we stick berries into (about 90% of their diet in the wild).

I was extremely excited for the move. I was excited for them to take the next step, and to see all the workers at ARCAS try and catch 90 screeching birds flying back and forth in a 30x100ft cage. We had to draw blood and inject vitamins for each bird, and the entire ordeal took almost four hours. But they are now in their new cage and on their way to being released in June. That release will take place in a Guatemalan National Park--the exact one still TBD--and will involve three weeks of monitoring and workers travel back and forth between the release site and ARCAS. Still work to be done, but another step in the right direction.