Purloined Parrot Reunited With Owner He’s Known for 40 Years

Magda Wilson’s Baby is home again.

The 80-year-old Santa Monica woman who suffered a heart-wrenching loss July 1 when the outspoken parrot she had owned for nearly 40 years was apparently stolen outside her apartment was reunited with her pet late Monday night.

“He just ate and ate and ate, and when he was done he said, ‘You wanna go to bed? You wanna go to bed?’ He was so tired,” Wilson said Tuesday. “I’m very happy now.”

Wilson got her bird back through a combination of luck and the keen eyes of a young woman who had learned of the pilfered parrot through reports on three television stations and in two newspapers.

With the help of Santa Monica police and her daughter, Margaret Dormer, Wilson met with a woman who said she might know of a man who bought the bird last week on Santa Monica Pier.

The young woman, calling herself “Blanca,” said she had been offered the bird but feared it was stolen. She later recognized the yellow-naped Amazon parrot in a local television station’s newscast about Wilson’s plight and telephoned Dormer.

After a weekend of negotiations, the group met Monday night in front of a house on Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica where the man, who remains unidentified, gave Wilson her parrot.

Santa Monica police said their investigation is continuing. Wilson reimbursed the man $100 for his purchase cost and gave the woman an $80 reward, she said.

“He’s very docile. He’s exhausted,” Wilson said of Baby on Tuesday morning. For her part, Wilson woke at 5 a.m. because of the excitement of getting her bird back, she said.

Wilson, who has lived alone with Baby for much of the time since the death of her second husband in 1971, lost the bird July 1 while she was working in the garden of the apartment building she manages. The parrot, well known in the neighborhood for his extensive vocabulary and sunny disposition, was later reported seen in a nearby park wrapped in a man’s jacket.

Yellow-naped Amazon parrots, their commercial trade limited by international treaty in 1972, can cost $1,000 or more. Their high value has given rise to smuggling rings that bring the birds to the United States from their Central American habitats.

In captivity, an Amazon parrot such as Baby can live to be 100 years old.