Parrot T-shirts help birds find a home

Saving the National Bird
Jenny Nikolov, a National Trust Volunteer, and Marnie Laing, an employee with the Trust, model the new T-shirts designed to help protect Cayman’s national bird and other feathery species. The T-Shirts go on sale this Saturday ,17 September.  Jenny Nikolov (left) and Marnie Laing, who thought of the idea of raising funds for bird houses and bird feeders by selling T-shirts, stand outside the National Trust office in South Sound.

Friday,  September 16, 2005

Two local participants in National Trust Parrot Monitoring Programme, Jenny Nickolov, and Marnie Laing, had the bright idea of helping the national bird population, the Grand Cayman parrot, recover after Hurricane Ivan, by selling T-shirts.

Money from the T-shirts will be used to provide bird houses and bird feeders. The houses and feeders will be placed around Grand Cayman, and are intended to help the parrots, which have lost so much of their natural habitat and feeding territory.

Apart from the parrots, it is hoped that the programme will provide help for other indigenous birds such as Thick-billed Vireos, Cuban Bullfinches, Caribbeaen Doves and West Indian Woodpeckers.

Two different designs of T-shirt are available, and will be sold at all the main supermarkets including Foster’s at The Strand and Airport; Hurley’s; and Kirks, on Saturday 17 September between 9:00 am and noon.

Both of the designs, one depicting indigenous Cayman parrots, and the other one depicting parrots along with other kinds of indigenous wildlife, have been provided by local artist Guy Harvey.

“We were aware that the bird population had been quite hard hit, and we wanted to help them through this hard time, but we wanted our birds kept wild,” Ms Laing said.

“We also thought this would be a good way of educating people about the condition of the bird populations since Hurricane Ivan, and about habitat degradation.”

Providing bird feeders and houses was the right idea, she said, because it addressed the two most apparent needs of the birds, food and shelter, while keeping the level of human interference to a minimum.

It is anticipated that at least 30 of the bird houses and feeders will be built. No design for the houses and feeders has been decided upon yet, and Ms Nikolov suggested that if members of the public had a good idea for such a design, or could help with making them, that they should let the National Trust know.

In addition, sites are being sought for the bird houses: “We are asking people if they would like to have a bird house and bird feeder in their yard,” said Ms Laing.

In addition to expressing their thanks to Guy Harvey who has helped provide the T-shirts, Ms Laing and Ms Nikolov expressed their thanks to Air Jamaica who has assisted in the transportation of the T-shirts from Jamaica, where they are made.

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