Faint chirping inside a carry-on bag at the Miami airport caught the attention of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer.
The 24 bright green baby parrots began chirping and bobbing their heads the second anyone neared the large cages that have been their homes since hatching in March., are being raised by the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation — a round-the-clock effort that includes five hand feedings a day in a room filled with large cages.
Officers stopped Wu at a checkpoint. He was asked about the sound coming from his bag, which Reillo later described as a "sophisticated" temperature controlled cooler.Wu reached in and pulled out a smaller bag and showed the officer an egg, the complaint said. The officer then looked inside and saw more eggs and a tiny featherless bird that had just hatched.
He helped set up a makeshift incubator in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's aviary at the airport in a mad dash to save the now-hatching parrots. Both birds are popular in the trafficking and caged-bird industries because they are pretty and have a nice temperament, Reillo said. BirdLife International lists the yellow-naped Amazon as "critically endangered" with a population in the wild of between 1,000 and 2,500. The red-lored Amazon is also listed as having a decreasing population.
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