Wirral councillors delighted after missing parrot is found at Chester Zoo

Feb 23 2011 by Lorna Hughes, Birkenhead News

A PET parrot has been reunited with his owners in Wirral after ruffling a few feathers at Chester Zoo.

Devoted owners and Wirral councillors Jerry and Irene Williams spent two months searching for orange-tipped Amazon Jack after he went missing in November.

They put up posters, rang radio stations, contacted local vets and asked for help in Wirral News in a desperate search for information as temperatures plummeted.

But they had given up hope of ever seeing him again until he was found sitting outside Chester Zoo’s tropical bird house.

Jerry, who is a Labour Councillor in Bebington, said: “After such a long time I thought I was never going to get him back.

“He went missing after I went to let our elderly dog Sarah, who’s 18, in from the garden.

“I forgot he was on my shoulder and he flew to a high place and then got spooked by a noise.

“I’ve had him for almost 10 years so I was devastated.

“When the zoo called to say they’d found him I was absolutely speechless. I was amazed.”

Jack was spotted perched on a fence by Andy Woolham, team leader of Parrots and Penguins at Chester Zoo.

He said: “We have critically endangered Green-cheeked Amazon and Ecuadorian Amazon parrots at the zoo that both have young which are still being fed by their parents, so Jack was probably attracted to them by the noise.

“I could tell he was ravenously hungry so I enticed him down with a grape.

“No parrot can resist a black grape”.