Well, it was planned and turned out to be a 14 hour road trip. Rather full day.
The drive down was pleasant. We had an appointment at 11:30am to meet with them and they were a bit late, although they called to tell me they would be.
The non-profit rescue is quite small, perhaps a 20x80 building with a dozen larger birds up for adoption, plus the usual flocks of parakeets and whatnot. They themselves have rescued and made part of their family some really sad cases: Like the macaw that lived for 20 years in a dark room with her owning in a small house, just to lose the owner to cancer. It was so dark, the bird has eye development damage.
They had two birds of potential interest - both a scarlet macaw with the longest tail I've seen, and a blue-fronted amazon. The amazon was larger than I expected and quite chatty, although in a low volume. Both however were already in the adoption process, and the amazon really like the lady adopting it - jumping to her shoulder and cuddling on first sight. With me, he was curious, and came close, but never stepped up on me. The scarlet was "just a rescue" - very pretty, but not particularly friendly or showing any signs of interest. Just visiting with the amazon made the day worthwhile.
Anytime you adopt from them you get the original cage the bird was raised in with it. They do that as almost a rule to help de-stress the adoption process a bit for the bird. I liked that.
They do have a pretty pair of Bulgarian blue & golds - huge for the species, almost GW in size. They are siblings and have always been "together" - if you define together as being in the same room. One is male, the other female, and each has its own stainless steel cage. They want to adopt them out as a pair, but having (2) large cages exceeds my space availability. Not sure how the previous owner dealed with them, since to prevent mating you could never let both out of their cages at the same time. Pretty birds, but I know my limit.
Next stop was
Wholesale Bird & Cage in St. Charles Missouri, off of I-94 near the river. I had been there before, but my daughter had not. They have a smallish-size store front connected to a large warehouse area your encouraged to walk through. The warehouse has all the cages - quite a selection - and racks and racks of toys at reasonable prices. Most are Zoo-Max, made in Canada. I picked up a Zoo-Max 399, which they were selling for about $15 which seemed reasonable. When I got home, the web price from Zoo-Max was $18.99 - clearly Zoo-Max makes sure they don't undercut their retail customers. Since we were heading to another store, and we were ahead of schedule a bit, we elected to check out our last stop and come back if desired.
Last stop before the 3 hour drive home was Varietees
Varietees Bird Store This store is in Valley Park, Mo, about 25 minutes from Wholesale. They have a much larger retail front - probably about the size of Wholesales including the warehouse. Very nicely laid out... but here is the important part: I found the same Zoo-Max 399 toy and paid $11.59 for it! Some have told me its Ten Times the size of Wholesale - that is just not true, unless they exclude the warehouse. Store does have some wild bird supplies (bird baths, Martin houses, etc.) but would guess that is less than 10% of their stock. Ended up leaving about $250 there between toys for this new Sun Conure and my daughters birds.
Only sad part was seeing the impact of Covid on the area. My favorite hole-in-the-wall Japanese steak house in Manchester I've gone to for 30 years is gone, replaced by a "Cheers". My favorite large pub in Ofallon, with outstanding wings and breaded mushrooms, showed no signs of life. Fortunately my 3rd choice, Bucks BBQ in Wentzville, was going strong (in no small part likely due to them always having a strong take-out business). I use to live near St. Louis, but I digress.
Next up is to visit Burge
Burge Bird Rescue (Index1) or Iowa Parrot Rescue
http://www.iowaparrotrescue.org/ whenever they unfreeze from Covid-lock.
ps. Also plan on reading up on Amazons a bit more. The one we saw was a fine size bird for my desires and seemed quite calm. So much so I'm wondering if they mis-identified it as a Blue Front. Will figure that out, since there is a chance the adoption will fall through.
