AN ESCAPED parrot has been caught by her owner after four months of freedom. Courtil Bris resident Terry Burtenshaw had all but given up hope when on a by-then-routine visit to Candie Gardens, where the bird had most recently taken roost, Kingston the Derbyan parakeet simply landed on his shoulder.
‘I couldn’t believe it when she did that.
‘It’s as if she wanted to be caught, like she’d had enough of fending for herself in the winter,’ said Mr Burtenshaw, who lives with two of his four sons.
‘But it was really difficult keeping hold of her, because her feathers are so smooth. And the last thing I wanted to do was spook her and cause her to fly off,’ he said.
After a routine flyabout in the family home on 9 September, the bird escaped through the open back door.
After flying onto a neighbour’s roof, Kingston refused to come down and eventually made her way to Cambridge Park, where she stayed until 4 October, as far as Mr Burtenshaw can tell.
From the moment he heard a radio announcement from a woman who had been walking her dog in the area, Mr Burtenshaw’s vigils started - he took regular trips to the park and later Candie Gardens when the bird moved on.
He carried Kingston’s cage and food tray with him, hoping to lure the creature down, but until last week, it was to no avail.
So when Mr Burtenshaw spotted his pet near Candie cemetery he began as usual to shake the food tray and, to his delight, Kingston swooped down and landed on his shoulder.
Though he was shocked and excited, he knew he had to be calm or he might lose his pet forever.
‘I fed her and then grabbed hold of her as calmly as I could,’ he said. ‘But that was the easy bit - it was then that I had to get my car keys out of my pocket.’
And surprisingly Kingston was not nervous in the car on the ride home, sitting patiently on her owner’s shoulder.
‘The looks I must have got driving along with her sitting there,’ he said.
‘But to be honest I was used to it by then. I used to get equally strange looks down at the park and by Candie Gardens with a bird cage and her stand. They used to think I was down there letting my bird have a fly about - not trying to catch it,’ he said.
And despite her ordeal and a wound on her right eye, which has now healed leaving only a scar, Kingston is doing well and has settled back at home .
‘She hasn’t lost weight and she’s full of muscle from all that flying about,’ said Mr Burtenshaw.
‘The vet at Route Isabelle just gave her a worming injection and one for mites. But she does seem a lot quieter than she was before.
‘She’s been making weird sounds - perhaps mimicking the sounds the other birds do.’
GSPCA operations director Jayne Le Cras, pictured below, said: ‘It’s amazing that she’s been found and that she’s well.
‘She’d have been at risk from seagulls and crows - they can be quite savage birds.’
Mrs Le Cras expected that Kingston would have been eating fruit in the wild, and although acorns would not have provided the bird with much goodness, they might well have formed part of the bird’s diet.
‘She’ll be as fit as a fiddle from all the flying around. She probably enjoyed her taste of freedom.’
Mr Burtenshaw and his ex-wife Sharon, who still visits the bird, said they wanted to thank everyone who had kept them informed of Kingston’s whereabouts.
‘She was flying after dogs while she was loose,’ said Mr Burtenshaw. ‘All the pet lovers were so nice and helped me keep track of her so I knew where to go to look for her.
‘But I was getting fed up because I thought she would never come down - at Cambridge Park she actually flew straight over my head at one point.
‘It’s a shame she missed Christmas, as she likes to perch in the Christmas tree. But I’m so glad she’s back home.’
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