Bird owners are raising a flap over a Pennsylvania Game Commission plan to ban a fowl some now keep as pets.
With phone calls and postings on Internet bulletin boards, owners of Nanday conures are trying to get a flock of protesters to a Harrisburg public hearing this weekend in hopes of blocking a rule that would prohibit the birds' importation, sale, possession and release.
If the South American birds -- also known as black-hooded parakeets -- aren't kept out, the commission claims, escaped conures might spread disease or form colonies that compete with native species for food and nesting sites.
Roberta Weisensee, founder of West View-based Pittsburgh Parrot Rescue and owner of two Nanday conures, said the game commission is just flapping its wings. Nanday conures can't live through the winter, she said.
"They could never find the proper food and couldn't survive the natural climate in Pennsylvania," she said.
Tennessee already bans the foot-long green birds, which eat mostly seeds and berries.
"If they can survive in Tennessee, they can survive in Pennsylvania," commission spokesman Jerry Feaser said.
U.S. birdwatchers spotted 920 of the birds last year in the wild, according to the National Audubon Society. Neither it nor the commission has an estimate of how many live in Pennsylvania, either in the trees or in cages.
With Tuesday's scheduled vote approaching, the commission has a bird-ban precedent. The state prohibits the Quaker parrot, in spite of the Argentinian fowl's Pennsylvania-friendly name.
Donald Blosser, owner of Pretty Birds pet store in Millvale, said he used to sell two to four Nanday conures a year. They were not popular enough to keep in his inventory, Blosser said, but he still thinks a statewide ban is unjustified.
"If anything was there to show this was a problem in Pennsylvania, I'd be there to help," Blosser said.
Nanday conure owner Melissa Burkhardt said it's not just the cold temperatures that would keep the birds from thriving.
"These are hand-raised birds," said the Monroeville woman, who runs Sprite's Avian Friends Endeavor, a bird rescue group.
"They don't know how to forage for food. They rely on humans for everything," Burkhardt said.
She and other bird owners said they at least want a grandfather clause in any ownership ban, so they can keep their conures.
A new regulation would not include a grandfather clause, Feaser said, but the enforcement guidelines conservation officers use would have one.
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