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Introduction to Medieval Aviculture

“The parrot is only found in India. It is green in color with a pumice-grey neck and a large tongue which is broader than other birds, and which enables it to speak words, so that if you could not see it, you would think that a man was speaking.”

 

These words, reprinted on page 25 of Bruce Broehrer’s Parrot Culture, come from a 13^th century Bestiary, a sort of medieval encyclopedia of animals. The passage goes on to repeat a Roman idea about parrots regarding the hardness of the head and the importance to beat the parrot into submission in order to make it behave and to remember what you teach it. 

 

As aviculturists we know that physical violence towards a parrot will kill her. If you’ve read my previous columns, you’ve seen Tango, the Catalina macaw at Arcadia Bird Sanctuary in Freehold, NJ. Before Terri Jones rescued her at the sanctuary, Tango’s former owner took a knife to her in a drunken rage. Violence towards parrots is lethal and we must assume that this was much more true 1000 and 2000 years ago when avian veterinary medicine was much different than it is today and access to life saving resources was much more limited, knowledge of avian anatomy less well understood. Even today, parrot specific nutritional needs are just barely beginning to reveal themselves as scientists finally begin to research the diets of wild parrots to discover what each parrot species needs to be healthy and how each species is unique from one another—even within the same genus.

 

In the middle ages, medieval Europeans didn’t have our science to tell them what to feed their parrots, yet they managed to feed them more accurately than most of us do today with fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden, some people food, and much less dependence on seeds and grains than our parrots usually get, allowing their parrots to match the wild diets more closely in a more “primitive” time than in the so called ‘modern” era with “improvements” that took our birds further from nature, replaced natural, cut perches from outside with smooth dowel perches that cause bumble foot and other previously unheard of foot illnesses from the wrong perching surfaces, and even made their housing far smaller than their previous aviaries could be before.

 

In many ways, the truly medieval parrot had a good life.

 

So what were the popinjays of Europe? And what kinds of parrots did they have in the Far East?

 

First, let one fact about parrots be clear: parrots are native to five continents: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Australia. They also come from the islands in the south pacific known as Australasia because they belong to both continents and lie between. Indonesia, home to some of the world’s most endangered parrots (and medieval parrots), lies in Australasia.

 

This means no native European parrots. The parrots of Asia actually evolved on the super-continent Gondwanaland which was the Americas, Australia, and India. When India broke off, it carried most of the Psittacula parakeets with it (the rest remaining in Australasia and Australia). Psittacula parakeets spread across Asia and one species made it to Africa where it spread across the continent from coast to coast into today’s Guinea, Sudan, Senegal, and Uganda. That African species is, of course, the African Ringneck parakeet, also called the rose-ringed parakeet and, because it has more of a rose colored ring around the edge of its face than other Psittaculas, we know that medieval Europeans were keeping this species as companion parrots.

 

Period sources also allow us to extrapolate that medieval Europeans kept three other Psittacula species: the plum headed parakeet, the Indian ringneck (which some consider the same species and just a different subspecies as the African ringneck), and, at 250-300 grams, the largest of the Psittacula parakeets, the Alexandrine.

 

Though the medieval records were lost, we have Roman records that African ringneck parakeets were not the only African parrots kept in ancient times. The Romans kept African grey parrots (we know not whether they had Congo or Timneh greys or both) and by the Renaissance, greys were once more in the menageries of at very least the rich and powerful. Henry VIII was a notable owner of an African grey. So was Frances Stuart, duchess of Richmond and Lennox (1647-1702). She had her Congo African grey preserved for us—it’s in a museum in Westminster Abbey for all to see. As for lovebirds and poicephalus parrots like Meyers and Senegal parrots…at this time, we have no way of knowing if any were brought up to Europe for aviculture or not until the Renaissance when greater exploration of Africa by Europeans began. Nor do we know if they tried to trade for African parrots from the Chinese. For never underestimate the Chinese in their ability to invent, explore, or discover something ahead of Europe. In the middle ages, the Chinese were especially more advanced than Europe.

 

Which is why it should be no surprise that when discussing Chinese medieval aviculture one is not talking so much about parakeets (Asia’s native parrot), but COCKATOOS.

 

Yes, you heard correctly, COCKATOOS. And world religion would never be the same again, not after Chinese expeditions to Australasia to please their emperors with luxury, exotic goods, the sorts of things every powerful monarch craves. Nor should it be surprised that the Fourth Crusade, sealed between Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the Sultan of Babylon in 1229 was done with…a COCKATOO the sultan bought from Indian merchants who bought the bird from the Chinese.

 

 

Yet as much as Frederick enjoyed his cockatoo, he probably had little guidance on how to handle a cockatoo’s particular behavioral quirks. Want a hard to guess trivia question for someone? This is it: what was the biggest difference between Chinese and European aviculture? Answer: the Chinese had COCKATOOS and the Europeans didn’t. 

 

Why is that a big deal? Because, as so many of you know, cockatoos are driven by drama. They will bite, scream, and destroy things for no other reason than it gets a reaction from you. They have a keen sense of exactly what will bring out the greatest response from the humans around them. More than any other avian, their desire is for a drama response. The SLIGHTEST reaction will reinforce the undesired behavior. Cockatoos are very hard to teach only the behaviors you want to.

 

We know about cockatoos in China from Edward H. Schafer’s The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, a Study of Tang Exotics. This excellent work details the exotic imports brought into China from other parts of the world—and the parrots native to China that were poached to near extinction in the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) from the wild for the pet trade: the Derbyan parakeet of Shan3xi-Gansu provinces and how they were taken especially from the Dragon mountain (in Chinese, Long Shan, now Liupan mountain and national park), often as tribute to the Chinese emperor in Chang An (modern Xi An).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Golden Peaches of Samarkand we learn that in the Tang dynasty the Chinese poached the umbrella cockatoo in particular, a bird of Indonesia that we know is nearly impossible to handle straight from the wild. This tells us that in order to keep them as pets, the Chinese had to have figured out cockatoo aviculture pretty quickly and that Frederick II’s bird was absolutely a product of Chinese aviculture. Hand-raised umbrella cockatoos are very friendly and loving birds—but only if they start out seeing humans from their earliest months.

 

The introduction of umbrella cockatoos also made an important impact on religious life throughout Asia. Pure Land Buddhism saw the introduction of the “white parrot” (the umbrella cockatoo) first in a story about Guanyin in the Tang dynasty (which we’ve established is also the same time umbrella cockatoos are known to be in China by the primary sources Schafer translated) and later, starting in the 12^th century and thereafter (see White-robed Guanyin: The Sinicization of Buddhism in China Seen in the Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteshvara in Gender, Iconography, and Role by Jeong-Eun Kim. http://www.fsu.edu/~arh/images/athanor/athxix/AthanorXIX_kim.pdf).   Interestingly enough, the sculpture shown in the article does not show the cockatoo’s crest. This should not surprise anyone given the size of the figure and that umbrella cockatoos have recumbent crests. It is simply too difficult to show the level of detail needed to make a recumbent crested cockatoo look truly like a cockatoo as opposed to a generic parrot, especially by someone who doesn’t know their birds and in a time where true to life is not the point.

 

In summary, both Europe and Asia were shaped by non-native species of parrots in the middle ages. From northern Africa and from India came four species of Psittacula parakeets that became the basis of European aviculture that would shape their concept of parrots so thoroughly that when they encountered New World parrots, most of them also green, early explorers like Columbus also had problems knowing they were not in India because these explorers were not aviculturists and well versed in the details of each species. In Asia, they kept native Psittacula parakeets, but also imported non-native species as well: cockatoos from Indonesia. So important were these cockatoos that they would become part of Pure Land Buddhism. They became holy birds and venerated as part of Guanyin’s veneration. Holy is the white parrot of Guanyin.

 

If only we today loved our white cockatoos as much as medieval Buddhists loved them. If we did maybe, just maybe, they would not be listed as “vulnerable” which is one step away from endangered in the wild. Other Indonesian cockatoos no doubt also taken by the Chinese for the imperial aviaries are already endangered or on their way to being so. The citron cockatoo is critically endangered while the Moluccan cockatoo shares the vulnerable spot with the umbrella cockatoo. All the while, our hand-raised cockatoos are being abused in our homes in record numbers. Often rescues have to turn away birds needing homes because they don’t have the space or the money to keep all the birds who need to be placed.

 

The irony of medieval aviculture is what has happened to the parrots of Chinese aviculture. The cockatoos of reverence are the disposable parrots today. Why did that change? Why have we as a culture not continued to revere these most beautiful and glorious of parrots who sit at the left shoulder of Guanyin in the Pure Land?

 

It’s not that European culture does not revere parrots—in medieval Europe, the popinjay was always depicted at the shoulder of the Virgin Mary as well or perched on a branch near her.

 

If parrots are sacred birds, associated with the holiest of women, then how can we allow any harm to come to them? How can we ever neglect or abuse them or fail to cage them properly?

 

Next time, we’ll talk cages. What your bird needs and how you can keep your bird healthy and happy if you can’t afford a room sized cage.