Urban Legends by Ivan Stormgart, Maggie McCall, Gary Thompson, Elizabeth Wright, Jamie Yorck

Crew

Produced, Directed,

Filmed, and Edited by Judy Irving

Original Music Chris Michie

Additional Photography James Attwood, Howard Munson,

Mark Bittner, Jacquelyne Cordes

Production Sound Jaime Kibben

Sound Editor and Samuel Lehmer, Skywalker Sound

Re-Recording Mixer

83 minutes 35 mm This Film is Rated “G”

Synopsis

The true story of a Bohemian St. Francis and his remarkable relationship with a flock of wild red-and-green parrots. Mark Bittner, a dharma bum*, former street musician in San Francisco, falls in with the flock as he searches for meaning in his life, unaware that the wild parrots will bring him everything he needs.

*Dharma bum (per Gary Snyder): "A homeless seeker of truth"

Bios

Filmmaker, Judy Irving

Judy Irving, producer/director of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, is a Sundance-and-Emmy-Award-winning filmmaker whose previous credits include Dark Circle, a feature film about the nuclear industry, and Out of the Way Café, an hour-long drama. Ms. Irving received a Masters in Film from Stanford University and is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her recent six-film documentary series about the San Francisco Bay Area’s wildlife and open space led to her interest in the wild parrot flock flying the city's north waterfront. Her films are distributed internationally to theatres, television, and home video.

For a detailed filmography, see www.pelicanmedia.org

Author, Mark Bittner

Mark Bittner was born and raised in southwestern Washington State. His ambition as a teenager was to be a Great Novelist, but Mark was alarmed by the uniformly miserable fates of all the writers whom he loved. So he decided to pursue a career in music instead. After hitchhiking through Europe in search of experience, he moved to San Francisco determined to sink or swim as a poet-singer-songwriter. He sank. Completely bereft, he turned to spiritual seeking and ended up on the street where he spent the next 14 years. Ultimately his search led him to the wild parrot flock, which, in turn, led him back to writing, and his first book: The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

Excerpts from Mark Bittner's book The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill:

Introduction:

"I'm standing on the front deck of an old cottage on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill. The cottage, vine-covered and frail, is nestled within the immense and chaotically lush gardens that tumble down the hill's steep eastern face. Just to my right is a large cage containing three lime-green parrots with cherry-red heads. On top of the cage, another parrot prowls at liberty. In my left hand, I'm holding a cup filled with sunflower seeds. Clinging to the cup's rim are two more parrots who are making quick and expert work of the seeds. There are parrots on my right hand, on my shoulders, and on my head.

In front of me, on the limbs of a tall shrub, are another dozen or so. They watch me with eager eyes as I pass around a handful of seeds. One of them, determined to get my attention, flaps his wings furiously, causing the thin branch he's perched on to bounce up and down. Five more parrots eat from a pile of seeds on the deck railing. To my far right, a gang of fifteen crowds around a large, seed-filled dish that sits on the thick growth of ivy climbing over the railing corner. Another ten sit on the power lines above me. In all, I'm surrounded by more than fifty parrots.

The birds on the lines start up an insistent, staccato squawking that grows louder and more anxious as those below gradually join in. A group of tourists, their faces lit with fascination, stop to stare. The squawking is getting so loud that one of the tourists has to shout his question.

"Don't you ever lose any?"

"They're not mine," I shout back, laughing. "They're wild."

Wild?...Are you serious? Wild parrots in San Francisco?"

Before I can answer, the screaming hits a tremendous peak, and the entire flock bolts. In the scramble to leave, a few of the birds nearly collide with the startled, ducking tourists. The parrots continue to scream as they fly on stiff, frantic wings through a gap in a row of trees and disappear from view.

Yes. Wild parrots in San Francisco."

The Wisdom of Parrots:

"In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki-roshi tells a story about a trip he took to Yosemite. While there, he stopped to watch a waterfall. It was one of the very tall ones, and he noted that when the stream at the top of the ridge hit the cliff, it split into many individual droplets on its way to the bottom. There, the individual droplets came back together in one stream. I'd read that story many times without comprehending his point. It's simple: There is one river until it hits that cliff which is life. The one river then breaks up into many individual living beings—humans, animals, and plants—until we hit the bottom of the cliff and become one river again. Each droplet loses only its identity as a single drop. But nothing is really lost. It's all still there. I'd encountered this idea in different ways many times over the years, but I'd never grasped it. It's an elementary idea, and not so difficult to understand. But my problem was that I'd been thinking about consciousness solely in human terms. It wasn't until I considered the minds of the parrots that my outlook broadened. So my problem was not with anthropomorphism; rather, it was with anthropocentrism, which is seeing human beings as the center of the universe. The parrots broke through that illusion. The understanding that ultimately came to me from looking in the parrots' eyes - was that their consciousness is one with mine. We are all one consciousness, and each finite being embodies a little piece of it. This is the preciousness of all that lives."

The Parrots' Original and New Homes:

"...Although tropical dry forest seems to be its preferred habitat, the (wild) cherry head (conure, or parrot) is occasionally seen in moister forest—although apparently not rain forest—and in semi-desert. But there is no place where it is seen often. Its habitat is one of the most devastated on the planet. There was once continuous dry forest from Esmeraldas in northern Ecuador to south of Tumbes in Peru. But dry forest makes good agricultural land; today, nearly all of it has been cleared, much of it for banana plantations. Current estimates of its destruction range from 95 percent to 99 percent...

At the time (1992) that the Wild Bird Conservation Act became law (in the U.S.), there were already millions of wild parrots in homes in (this country). Many novice parrot owners discovered that the beautiful and relatively inexpensive parrot they'd bought (cherry heads sold for under $100) really was a wild bird. The birds feared them and hated captivity. Some screamed endlessly, and they bit their owners. Angry and frustrated themselves, some pet owners tossed the birds out windows. As wild birds, the parrots were constantly looking for an opportunity to escape, and many did. There were also handling accidents at pet stores and airports. There is a surprisingly large number of wild parrot flocks in the United States today, and many of them live near airports. In any locale, whenever enough parrots of the same species have found each other, they've begun to breed. One study claims that there are at least twenty-seven parrot species living free and breeding in the United States. I've heard of parrot flocks, large and small, in Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Texas, Oregon, southern California, Utah and Washington State. They have succeeded for at least two reasons. First, along with corvids, owls and woodpeckers, parrots are considered to be among the smartest birds. Second, there is a large amount of food available to them. American cities and suburbs are large, human-built ecologies in which parrots are able to thrive. Gardens and parks are usually designed to have something growing in them at all times of the year. Sometimes the plants are even exotics native to the parrot's home territory. That as many different species can thrive outside their native habitat indicates adaptability with regard to diet. They've also learned to use bird feeders. So far, none of the wild parrot flocks have left urban or suburban areas. If they were to venture out of urban areas, they would more than likely starve to death. Birds don't migrate because of cold, but rather because there isn't enough food for them in winter. One of America's largest wild parrot flocks lives year round in Chicago. Temperature is simply not an issue...."

The Three Stooges:

"...The entire flock landed on the fire escape. All twenty-six of them. I was ecstatic. It had been years since I felt that kind of joy. The day before, when the first three came to the bowl, I'd been about ten feet away from them. Since they'd been comfortable with that, I carefully maintained the same distance now. The flock started coming every day, and each time they did, I'd move a step or two closer to the Dutch door that led to the fire escape. After about a week, I was right up against it. I slowly eased myself down to the kitchen floor and sat in font of the lower window to watch. I did not go unnoticed. The parrots kept one eye trained on me at all times. Whenever I made even the smallest motion, they bolted instantly and in unison back to the trees and power lines. After a few minutes of cautious waiting, they would return one by one to resume their feasting and fighting.

The scene at the bowl was chaos. They were screaming furiously and running all around the area directly in front of me. They had large, floppy feet, and I got a big kick out of watching their clumsy, plodding runs across the fire escape floor. Their colors were luminous. The green had a shimmer that was almost psychedelic, while the red was a bright fire-engine red. I was struck by their eyes again. In a lot of the native birds I'd seen, the iris was nearly as dark as the pupil, which made the eye appear empty and impassive. But the cherry heads had a light iris, and the black pupil stood out distinctly. I could see their emotions, which were constantly shifting from playfulness to curiosity to rage. Fights were breaking out everywhere. A bird would jump on the lip of the bowl and lunge at the bird next to him, stabbing him with his beak if there was any resistance. They used their beaks on one another quite freely. Birds perched on the bowl were often attacked from behind with a bite on the leg or wing, or a yank on the tail. The bitten bird would scream loudly and fly away. I was totally captivated. It was like watching the Three Stooges, only much funnier."

Q & A with Mark Bittner and Judy Irving

(Wild Parrots “star” and director)

Interviewer: Let’s start with how long the flock has been flying free in San Francisco, and how it got started.

Mark: All the birds that started the flock were originally wild-caught cherry–headed conures (a.k.a. red-masked parakeets) shipped up from South America (Ecuador and Peru) to be sold as pets. My ideas on how they actually got loose change all the time. My current theory is that it was a combination of individual escapees and frustrated pet owners. The story of some birds getting loose outside a pet shop is possible, but then a lot of the stories I’ve heard are plausible. I have some leg band numbers, but that has proven to be a dead end. It only takes you to the quarantine station, not to who may have owned the bird after that. The first pair came together around 1987 and started breeding in 1989, so I always think of the flock as starting that year. Other parrots of the same species began to join up with the original group a few years later.

I: Some people think the parrots should be captured and given homes; other people believe any unwanted bird should be released. What do you think?

M: No and no. We shouldn’t try to capture them. They're doing fine on their own, and they have family relationships, which they have the right to maintain. They love being free; why should we take that away from them? And another thing: They're one of the few birds that everybody, regardless of their interest, stops to notice. So they make great ambassadors for wildlife. As for releasing pets, I don’t believe that domestic, hand-raised birds would survive.

I: You say you’re not a parrot expert, but do you think you have anything to share with those who study parrots in South America?

M: Well, I am an expert on this flock. I know its history and the individual birds and their relationships. Having had this experience, I know a lot more details about parrots than some people. I do think I could give some insight to field researchers, but I believe they’re a little bit concerned about me. It seems they have very strict rules about how to engage with a species, while I don’t follow anything like that. There’s an attitude that “If you’re studying birds then you should do it in a scientific way,” as if there are no other approaches. I think that’s a bit ridiculous, because you can interact with the world any way you please. I didn’t get into this to be scientific, but inadvertently I have learned a lot of facts. I have no interest in seeing things in an untruthful way. I always try to be accurate.

I: Have you seen a pecking order?

M: No. There is none. Even if a bird is aggressive, he doesn’t obtain a leadership position. There is no dominant bird that the other birds follow. One aggressive bird was actually kicked out of the flock for a while. The flock would come to eat, and he had to stay up in the trees.

I: You’re feeding strictly sunflower seeds. What else is in the parrots’ diet?

M: They eat a lot of juniper berries, which, oddly, I’ve seen listed as poisonous to parrots. They eat fruit from backyard trees growing in the area—strawberry guavas, pears, apples, loquats, wild blackberries, etc.. They eat pine nuts and a lot of blossoms. Their range, by the way, is about four miles along the north waterfront. They are more accurately described as the North Waterfront Parrots. But at mid-summer they expand that range by about three miles down the center of the city. I believe it’s for food they find there at that time—especially Hawthorne berries.

I: Do you see a breeding cycle?

M: Yes, and it’s very consistent. They lay right around the first day of summer. I know because the females stop showing up for the feedings.

I: This hasn’t all been fun for you. I know you’ve nursed several sick birds over the years. Can you share some of those problems?

M: The main problem I had in the past was with young birds contracting some disease. We were never sure what it was, but it was probably pigeon paramyxovirus. The city has lots of pigeons. For a while there, every spring and summer, several of the juveniles developed the virus. The flock seems to have progressed beyond this problem. I never had the money to properly test any birds, but generally the flock is very healthy now.

I: And there were other tragedies involving predators. Will you share a story with the readers?

M: Sure. Parents often stash their babies in a tree near my house, go out to forage, and then come back to feed their young. At the same time that the babies fledge, we also get an active migration of hawks through the city. One day I heard a parrot screaming, so I ran out and found a hawk on a telephone pole with a baby in its talons. The hawk had probably dived into the tree and caught one of the babies. The baby was still alive, and the hawk was ripping it apart. It was extremely unnerving to witness.

I: More of these stories are in your book The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill – A Love Story with Wings. Do you want to make a plug?

M: Ok. I’ve had a very positive reaction to the book, and not just from bird people. The story has gotten around by word of mouth. People who don’t keep birds seem to enjoy it equally well. My publisher, Harmony Books, is New York-based, and they have good connections. The book is in stores coast to coast. Naturally, parrot people will identify with it. They recognize and relate to the stories first-hand. People around San Francisco are picking it up because they’ve seen the flock. But I think other people find it to be something unusual and different. Sometimes that’s what you want from a book. It’s a story first and foremost.

I: If need be, I could testify that the book moves into a deeper story, but the really convincing arguments are that your book has had strong sales in hardcover and has become a movie coming to local theaters. Fill us in on the details?

M: Well, that’s Judy’s job, but I’ll tell you that the film won awards in two major film festivals....Incidentally, the paperback is coming out just a few days before the San Francisco premiere.

I: Are you amazed at the turn of events and the ride you're on?

M: Not exactly. It's been gradual, so I've had plenty of time to grow accustomed to each step along the way. But it's illuminating to find that a person can get into something without thought of what it might bring—just do it for the love of it—and then have that thing be the answer to so many of your dreams. That amazes me. And I think that's something that everybody wishes for. So I feel lucky. It’s given me the confidence to start another book. It won’t have anything to do with parrots, but I really feel like I have a path now.

I: Judy, what is your experience with birds?

Judy: I started loving birds because of my grandfather, who lived out on the North Fork of Long Island. He had trained wild chickadees to eat out of his hand, and he taught me how to remain calm and feed them too, when I was about 8 years old. He also had binoculars and a spotting scope, which he let me look through. But then I got interested in horses, and after horses, boys, and as I entered adult life I sort of forgot what a joy birds were. I still liked them. Sometimes I included them as background in my films. Then, 15 years ago, I bought a cockatiel, and Sweetheart introduced me to the parrot world.

I: How much did you know about the Cherry-head flock prior to meeting Mark?

J: I only knew what Mark had written in Bird Talk, a pet parrot magazine, back in 1995. I didn’t know a lot about keeping birds, so I read the magazine, and when I read Mark’s story I thought it might make an interesting short film. But Mark wrote that he would soon be leaving the Greenwich Steps, so I felt he’d be gone before I could even get started. Later I did do a short film on the great blue herons that had started nesting in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The film had a showing at a museum and two friends, independent of each other, told me I needed to consider meeting the parrot man living on Telegraph Hill.

I: Did you have a concept for the film in mind when you knocked on Mark’s door?

J: Not really, just that it would be short. I had a few rolls of film left over from another project, and I thought I could use it up. I didn’t think you could go very far with one guy feeding some parrots. At the least I thought it would be colorful.

I: At what point did you realize a larger story was unfolding?

J: Well the film had two development stages. First, when I met Mark, I thought he was too much of a hermit to communicate clearly about the birds. He lived in an absolute shack, he had rough clothes and very long hair and he seemed like a burned-out hippie unable to string two words together! But when he fed the birds it was like this wonderful, magical moment. The birds came swooping down into the garden and landed on his shoulders and arms and all around. Watching this I thought that maybe I could do some sort of 20-minute children’s fable and bring in a troop of young actors to watch and interact. But after a couple of weekend shoots I decided it wasn’t going to work. They say you shouldn’t try to make a movie with both kids and wild animals, and they’re right! The good news was that Mark’s work with the kids was fantastic. He told terrific stories about the birds and I realized he was actually very articulate. So the film’s direction changed and Mark became the center of a story about his relationship with the flock. And every story Mark shared about the parrots was true; certain birds were constant cuddlers, another was an old standoffish grump. I rolled film and it’s all right there in the footage.

I: After establishing Mark’s relationship with the parrots things became complicated. You get engulfed in it and while we see very little of you in the film you provide a fair amount of narrative in the way of questions to Mark – the viewer knows who you are. Is this your normal routine or was it hard for you to enter the film?

J: Oh it was hard, and for the longest time I stayed out of it. The film wound up taking four and a half years to finish, in part because the story kept unfolding. We would be logging film and starting editing and then we'd have to rush out and shoot something new. I like to work behind the camera, not in front of it, but issues arose that demanded I take a more active role. A couple of film editor friends who saw the rough cut just insisted on it because I had become somewhat of a mystery woman lurking at the edges.

I: This film is unlike any movie I’ve seen in the theater but it is hard to consider it a documentary. How do you classify this film?

J: It’s a nonfiction feature. But it’s like a narrative film because it has a story arc, a main character, and a supporting cast both human and avian. When it played at the San Francisco International film festival, the reviewer from the San Jose Mercury News summed it up: “It is that rare documentary that has romance, comedy, and a surprise ending that makes you feel like you could fly out of the theater like a cherry-headed conure.” I like that quote; we’ll probably add it to the movie poster.

I: How proud of this film are you?

J: Well, pride, (laughs) that’s a slippery slope. I am very happy with the film. I do feel like I got lucky in many ways. I had a lot of fun making it but I also think it is my best work. It’s won a couple of audience awards at festivals so that makes me feel good.

I: Is there anything else we need to know about the film?

J: Only that it’s flying into a theater near you in 2005. It was originally shot on

16mm film, not video, and that’s rare for a documentary these days. The wide-screen 35mm blowup looks great

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill - The Book

Mark Bittner's autobiographical book, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is published in hardcover by Harmony Books, a division of Random House, and in paperback (starting Jan. 27, 2005) by Three Rivers Press.

“instructive, surprising, sweet…”

Gary Snyder, Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet & naturalist - (book jacket blurb)

“charming memoir…for devoted birders everywhere.”

Reader’s Digest—“Editor’s Choice”

“a healthy dose of inspiration disguised as oddball autobiography…not simply for bird-lovers, (it’s) the perfect read for anybody who believes that success means more than a corner office.”

Elle Magazine

“inspirational saga of one man finding his life's meaning in the most serendipitous way….”

San Jose Mercury News

“essential and delightful reading…successfully inspires readers to find nature and peace in whatever place on the planet they happen to occupy.”

James D. Gilardi, PhD. Director, World Parrot Trust

“appealing, heartfelt…”

Publishers Weekly

“a glimpse into an altogether different plane of existence….Bittner's relationship with the parrots is profound enough to spark envy. A pleasure and an education.”

Kirkus Reviews

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