Mickaboo exists to help birds like Berry, a lovebird we rescued recently. YOUR financial support allows us to continue our mission - and this week's matching gift campaign makes your gift more effective! Gifts up to $50 will be matched at 50% from now through Friday, September 22, 9 pm PT.
Berry is a sweet black-cheeked lovebird. He was found outside, without an apparent owner, and taken to the local animal shelter. The shelter staff saw his severe leg wound and called Mickaboo right away. We immediately took him to a veterinarian. The skin on his right leg was badly torn, or degloved, down to the muscle and bone. Berry had surgery to drain the fluid build-up in the injured skin and repair the leg as much as possible. Because of the seriousness and complexity of his injury, Berry has spent a lot of time at the vet - his vet costs are expected to exceed $1,000.
Today, Berry is doing great. With his volunteer foster’s loving care and ongoing veterinary visits, his wound is nearly healed. We’ll be taking off his protective collar soon and he’ll become more mobile. We expect he will regain full function in his leg and his leg will refeather over time. Berry will soon be ready to be adopted.
Support from donors like you is vital to Mickaboo’s mission of providing care and services to birds like Berry who are in desperate need of our help. Please consider donating to Mickaboo today - your gift will go further because of the match! Thank you for your support.
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We would like to tell you about a special conure, and how YOU can help us save birds like him through matching gift events like the one in progress now through 9 pm PT. The more you give (up to $1000 per donor), the higher the match (while funds last)!
While all donations are welcome, please consider making a special one-time gift now to leverage this matching opportunity. Your gift helps birds like Luca, the half-moon conure pictured here.
A Good Samaritan found Luca while he was being attacked by a cat! He looked truly awful, with several cuts, puncture wounds, and missing feathers, and he was seriously underweight. Cat saliva is very dangerous to birds, so he was given medical treatment immediately after Mickaboo received him. After his physical recovery, he was an extremely skittish bird. It seemed unlikely he had had any positive interactions with humans before.
After several months of loving care, we have seen a HUGE improvement in his confidence level, and Luca has been adopted! Once he was on a good diet for a while, his feathers molted out cleanly and the damage to his beak grew out without issue. (See Luca's "after" pictures!) Thanks to fast medical action, Luca has no long-term effects from his injuries. He is getting lots of love and attention from his new adopter, who is happy to give him time to adjust. He's started eating with his 'flock', and is much more relaxed then he was when he first arrived.
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Please take advantage of today's matching gift event to help us help Luca and the other beautiful, intelligent birds in our care. Every dollar counts, and gifts of $100 or more today will go even further. All of our volunteers and our birds thank you for your consideration!
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Mickaboo exists to help birds and bird guardians like Gigi and Jeff (see their story). Your financial support allows us to continue our mission - and this week's matching gift campaign makes your gift more effective! Gifts up to $50 will be matched at 50% from now through Friday, April 7, 9 pm PT.
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Here is the story of Jeff, one of many who have learned about parrot rescues like Mickaboo and become forever-parents for our special birds:
It was still the height of COVID shelter-in-place when I decided to get a parrot. While I was happy to share my wife's Corgi, I wanted a pet of my own. I was originally going to buy a lovebird as I didn't know parrot rescues like Mickaboo even existed. Thankfully, before I found a lovebird for sale, my wife's friend pointed us towards Mickaboo and other rescues.
So many parrots need rescuing! It makes sense: parrots live a long time and they are intelligent, loud, and uppity. I like intelligent, loud, and uppity creatures, but for those who want a cuddly pet that is not going to challenge them, a parrot probably isn't the best fit. Once we were registered with Mickaboo and eligible to adopt, it was on to choose a species. I wanted a bird with a lot of personality, preferably an African Grey. At the time, there were few African Greys with Mickaboo. Imagine my surprise when I was told there was a healthy African Grey parrot named GiGi to be picked up that weekend.
My wife and I had no idea what to expect when we picked up GiGi from her surrenderer. She was in a tiny cockatiel cage where she had spent the entire ten years of her life. We were told she didn't like to be out of her cage ... she does, she is just phobic as per her species' reputation. We were told she couldn't fly ... she can, but mostly when she panics. GiGi was weighed at 337 grams, much smaller than usual for her species. It is less cute when one realizes her stunted size was probably from a life of malnutrition and lack of exercise.
I was hoping I would have a bird that liked climbing (she does!). I was worried I would have to get her off a diet of seeds and nuts. I was worried an African Grey would pluck. The reality is, GiGi loves her pellets and her fruit and other than cracking open nuts hasn't found much use for them. She is picture-perfect and does not pluck. One thing I was not prepared for was a cage-bound bird. GiGi is fiercely independent; while this probably helped her cope with ten years in a tiny cage, it does make it harder to build that trust bridge.
Nearly a year later, I still don't feel I know much about bird ownership, at least in the same way that growing up with dogs and cats makes me feel I know them. GiGi still spends most of her time in her cage. She accepts scritches from my wife but only a few from me. She still doesn't step up. But she seems happy, and I love her. I am still learning parrot body language, and she seems so much happier than when we got her. GiGi quickly became part of our family. When we are sad, she is sweet and empathetic. When we laugh, she laughs. It is so joyful to see the childlike wonder when GiGi is playing or talking with us or trying out new sounds. Whether African Greys have the IQ and EQ of a 5-7 year old human I can't assess, but I can certainly say that she is super-smart and feels very deeply. She just wants to be part of the family and have us -- her friends -- around her. I am honored to build a trust bridge with GiGi that will meet in the middle.
Why get a parrot? Gigi screams if we leave the room and she wants us around. She is independent to the point of being stubborn. Owning a parrot is a huge commitment time-wise as well as dealing with a creature closer to crocodiles on the evolutionary ladder than cats and dogs. In the end, I have a tiny fierce friend whose friendship will grow over the years. While GiGi is fierce, more than anything she is kind, sweet, and -- like myself -- just trying to make the best of the world. Mickaboo has been helpful in taking me from someone that never cared for a bird to someone that, most days, kinda thinks that he knows what he's doing. It is a continuing journey to learn how to care for parrots; it is an even more rewarding journey to share a life with this unique and beautiful creature: GiGi.
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Help Mickaboo continue to support birds like GiGi and their human companions like Jeff. This week, gifts up to $50 will be matched at 50% from now through Friday, April 7, 9 pm PT. No limit on matching funds! Please give now, while the thought is top of mind.
All of our volunteers and 450+ bird rescue flock thank you for your help!
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As the year draws to a close, it’s always good to pause for a moment and reflect on some of the more significant events of the last 12 months and look forward to what lies ahead as we forge into January, just around the corner! It’s also a great time to review our reports and get a more objective view of how we are doing.
2022 began with a handful of major events for us, including Michelle Yesney’s decision to step down after 15+ years of tireless work at the helm of our organization. Thank you so much to the senior leadership team for working with me to help us navigate such a fundamental change. Michelle is still around of course, continuing as a very active member of our board, an expert for moments of counsel, and a foster home with significant numbers of our smaller Mickaboo birds!
We also handled one of the largest rescues we’ve ever been involved in, saving 177 finches in a single day - and in record time as we battled to finish before nightfall. While our finch population exploded all of a sudden, the budgies have not been far behind. Our budgie team rescued nearly twice as many budgies this year compared to last. It’s been a big year for little birds!
This year also saw a number of more challenging rescues, including a macaw living in very sorry circumstances in a garage, a collection of birds in a van, and two group rescues of budgies that all have multiple health issues including avian tuberculosis, avian gastric yeast and feather mites. Larger group rescues can be really stressful on our volunteers as the medical needs and foster spaces for group intakes of sick birds are never easy to handle. Thank you budgie team for so much hard work this year!
It’s been wonderful to return to some more ‘normal’ activity as we attended a number of outreach events, including the Oakland Zoo, the Bay Area Pet Fair, Nightlife at the Academy of Sciences, and the Solano Stroll. We’ve missed these touchpoints that help us spread awareness, and it’s a great boost to see people in person again!
We’ve been thrilled to find some super star new volunteers, who have thrown themselves into various aspects of the ‘Mickaboo Machine’ from our fundraisers and auctions to much needed help on our Macaw species team. Finding and recruiting great volunteers every year is essential, and we’re thrilled to have new faces onboard.
Next Year
We plan to invest in our Basic Bird Care classes, adding new teachers and also trying online modules for the class to make it more accessible and available. We’ll also be looking at our volunteer onboarding and training to create fresh material and make our organization easier to navigate for newcomers. Finally, we’ll be brainstorming ways to recruit big bird foster homes to take the pressure off boarding costs for macaws and cockatoos we have been unable to place in foster homes.
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The Numbers
The good news is that overall, we are just about keeping up
We took in 478 birds in 2022 - an astounding achievement. Even if we account for the 177 finches, this is still more than the 271 birds we rescued in 2021.
In contrast, we have adopted out 254 birds, which is in the same ballpark as 2021 despite the decline in applications to ‘normal’ pre-pandemic levels. We saw a tremendous spike in applications in 2020 that doubled the number of potential adopters we had to work with, and now applications are back in the ‘normal’ range, as people stop looking for ‘pandemic pets’.
Finches, budgies and cockatiels have been the most high-traffic species. We are thrilled to have had 53 finch adoptions this year!
We have 171 active foster homes, which is a stable level over the last 3-4 years. Thirty-eight of these are new foster homes recruited this year, a wonderful effort from our species coordinators - a big increase over the ~25 we usually recruit each year.
Perhaps the biggest number of all this year is “25”: it's been 25 years since ‘Mickaboo Cockatiel Rescue’ formally incorporated in 1998. Thank you to Tammy Azzaro for creating such a special organization, and continuing to help drive and lead it with your support!
All of this tremendous effort is thanks to our amazing team of volunteers helping us stay on course during difficult times to complete our mission of being there for birds in need.
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This #GivingTuesday, GlobalGiving is giving away $1.2 million in matching funds from now to 8:59 p.m. PT on Nov. 29. The more you give, the more Mickaboo's birds can receive from this event!
Your financial support allows us to help birds like PeeWee and Dusty, baby cockatiels born to bird parents and human guardians unprepared to raise them to adulthood; and Penelope, a 6-month-old tiel rescued via a vet clinic, where she had been taken by her former owners for euthanasia when they couldn't afford her medical expenses.
During this season of giving thanks, PeeWee, Dusty, Penelope, the other 450 birds in our rescue flock, and all of our volunteers, thank YOU for your support. This year we are celebrating our 25th anniversary of rescuing, rehabilitating, and rehoming companion birds. With your help, we will continue helping these beautiful, smart, caring, feathered beings in their time of need. Please give now to take advantage of this matching opportunity.
From ALL of us to all of YOU - best wishes for a great start to a happy and safe holiday season.
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Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
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