During a trip to San Francisco, my husband and I were walking down a terraced hill near Coit Tower when a woman came up to us and said, “Have you seen the wild parrots?” This question had the flavor of a bit of spy code as though she had said, “The crow flies at midnight,” and we were expected to confirm our identities with an appropriate response in spy-code.
We didn’t think much more of the incident until a couple of weeks ago when we happened to see a trailer for the documentary, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. We immediately knew that those were the parrots the woman had referred to, and of course, we had to rent the film.
What a treat it is! A wonderful, touching story – collection of stories, really – with a surprise twist at the end. You can get a bit of a flavor of it the Web site of Mark Bittner, the man who cared for the parrots for several years. See especially the Table of Contents of the book of the same name and Bittner’s photos. And see the film. It’s lovely.