Bird Conspiracy!
I want to set the record straight about the notorious parrot, Forked Tongue George.
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard of him: the scarlet macaw who helped uncover a sinister network of operatives in the world of ornithology. Maybe you consider him a hero; maybe you think he’s a scoundrel. You may agree with my phrase ‘sinister network,’ or you may sympathize with the network, plotting revenge against this innocent bird. Either way, I won’t know--I’ve turned off comments.
To start at the beginning, I did not seek him out. The cops brought him to me. I was spending the season in southern Arizona doing field work, looking for gila woodpeckers and elf owls (not saucy psittacines from the sub-tropics!). I had befriended the local sheriff and deputy and we shared a few coffees at the diner in town. They listened to my tales with delight. Cops love birders--we spend money and cause no trouble. So when they discovered a macaw stashed in the hubcap of an old Dodge, they thought of me. These folks had never dealt with a smuggled exotic. Neither had I, tbh. But I know birds.
When I saw FTG, I was sure he was dead. His hollow-boned body had flipped in circles for countless revolutions of wheels. His wings were brutally clipped. He was dehydrated, panting. He couldn’t hold himself on a perch. But I gave him the best care I knew--a warm towel, food from a dropper, constant companionship. Miraculously, he recovered, and in a couple days he was flapping around the room, eating fruit, crapping everywhere, and talking nonstop. That’s when I knew we had a special bird. That’s also when I observed that a cruel injury had given him the tongue of a reptile, split down the middle. So I named him. He started to open up.
What did he say? The first phrase I remember was ‘passenger pigeons!’ followed by ‘10,000 in the river!’ I thought that was strange, but not noteworthy, until he said ‘Ivory-billed! I-vo-ry… billed!’ and then ‘Mining town!’ and shortly thereafter ‘Labrador Ducks! Oil rig!’ It kept coming--these staccato vocalizations of extinct birds and remote locations. Once he recovered his strength (and, dare I say, took me into his confidence), he wouldn’t stop talking. He recited these phrases into the night.
This is when people ask me: Why didn’t I contact authorities? Why did I “play” with the bird for days? Let me repeat: The correct course of action was unclear. I had in my hands a rare parrot clearly intended for sale on the black market, discovered in an old car with no clue to its owner (not that the sheriff could find). I also had a bird with an unprecedented vocabulary, all related to a mysterious subject. Whom do I contact? Fish and Wildlife? Cornell? ICE? Of course I web searched what to do with a recovered exotic. The official recommendation was--get this: Contact the police. So. I decided to find out myself where this extraordinary bird belonged.
It was late when I started my investigation in earnest. The town slept. Beyond my screened window, in the far hills, I heard the wail of coyotes and the whinny of screech owls. I breathed the astringent fragrances of the desert cooling down. I began typing in the phrases I’d heard from FTG. And then I saw the great storm brewing in this alternate universe of online birding.
The landscape of the ‘freedom birders’ was different than it is today. There was little debate, only tremendous enthusiasm to uncover a conspiracy. They were unified in the following assumptions:
1. Birds considered extinct are in fact thriving around the globe.
2. These birds have hidden in surprising places--often in mind-boggling numbers.
3. Birds have faked their decline in numbers, to garner sympathy from human beings and dupe them into bird protection.
That’s right: they believe that 10,000 passenger pigeons are hiding out in a cave along the Mississippi. That a colony of ivory-billed woodpeckers thrive in an abandoned copper mill town in Upper Michigan. And most scandalously: that Labrador ducks are living in healthy numbers, covertly, under the protective cover of oil rigs on the North Atlantic. All of these birds are complicit in this scheme to hoodwink humanity. All birds, they say, are much more diabolical than we thought. And for further proof they point to the exploit that birds orchestrated some 65 million years ago. And we all know who won that evolutionary contest (hint: birds!).
I know it sounds implausible now, but this alternative community of birders hadn’t crossed with ‘mainstream’ ornithology. There were certainly heated debates on the popular bird blogs, but they involved topics like whether the towhee was somehow diminished, now that its sides were no longer rufous. These two vast groups of enthusiasts were separated by an opaque, impermeable membrane. Only I, it seemed, had managed the osmosis to see both worlds. Only I… and Forked Tongue George.
Burdened by this discovery of a parallel, deranged world of birding, I yearned for someone to talk to. But whom? People ask: Why didn’t I take FTG to animal control in Tucson? Why didn’t I send an alarm to Audubon? Here’s the honest answer: I didn’t know whom to trust. All I knew for sure was I needed to help this poor macaw return home.
So I talked to the bird himself. As the spring migration passed over the low tiled roof of the motel, I appealed to his reason. At first FTG was petulant, stubborn, sarcastic. I asked, ‘Where did you hear about these birds?’ He tipped his head, fixing me with one eye, and replied ‘Polly want a cracker!’ I offered him a slice of apple, stroked his waxy neck feathers, and asked, ‘Who told you these things?’ He replied, ‘Into the salty brine with ye!’
But eventually, I wore him down. By the seventh day, he had begun to speak in the Spanish phrases we know so well. I asked, ‘Who stuck you under the hubcap?’ He replied ‘Que madre!’ I asked again. He replied ‘Que salidas!’ Costa Rican phrases! Now we were getting somewhere.
Then one night he woke me with a strange and beautiful music. Like bells playing a cheerful melody, like a marimba. He repeated it again and again. He danced on the desk, flicking his forked tongue, lifting his clipped wings, and sang. Someone on the internet would recognize this music, I realized. Someone would identify the bird’s home. I knew I was tearing the membrane asunder, that two worlds would pollute each other and birding would never be the same. But I had to do it, and I’m not sorry.
You know the rest. Once I posted the video to the streaming site it took less than a day for a San Jose street musician to comment ‘That’s me, man! ¡Ese soy yo! That bird’s stealing my bits!’ We had our location. Within hours, the Costa Rican police trampled the door of Colton Camoshanter, alias robobird669, in his lair beneath the street where the musician played. They found the criminal in a tiny room with a steel desk, a computer, three monitors, hundreds of cans of energy drinks, and 17 exotic birds in cages, screaming profanity.
And so we uncovered Camoshanter as the primary author of the bird conspiracy. His intention, I believe, was to discredit ornithology so he could sell rare birds without consequences. I had seen his name, even in my short time across the membrane, always spoken with reverence. For the freedom birders, he was the source of truth, braying from his digital pulpit--irrefutable, like a football coach in a rural town.
The Costa Rican police arrested Camoshanter for smuggling protected birds. They gathered overwhelming evidence against him. They rescued his bird captives and put them in sanctuaries. They delivered the criminal to U.S. authorities for prosecution.
But, as of this post, the federal government has released Camoshanter without bail. These authorities consider the evidence tainted. They are considering the validity of his claims to the bird conspiracy. They hold Fork Tongued George in custody.
I can’t comment on the legal proceedings. My goal with this post is only to set the record straight about what happened that spring in southern Arizona, when a misplaced macaw crawled out of a hub cap and told the truth.
Please do check out my posts from this trip in ‘featured stories!’ All photos, #nofilter.
UPDATE: Readers have asked if I’ve heard of Guy Plum, who wrote a piece several years ago, describing such a bird conspiracy. I did message a bit with Guy (nice guy), and he clarified that his piece--now redacted--claimed (satirically) that humans had faked the decline in population and were hoarding the birds. He said when he saw my story, he gave up. ‘These days,’ he said, ‘A satirist just can’t stay ahead of reality.’
