CREATURE FEATURE : Next, a Personal Trainer

Polly want a doctor? Polly’s a lucky bird. Just like plastic surgeons and personal-injury lawyers, veterinarians who specialize in treating birds seem to gather in Southern California, which has more than a dozen avian experts.

When Dr. Annelise Spira of the All Bird Clinic at the Center Sinai Animal Hospital in Palms started 20 years ago, bird health was not a top priority on anyone’s list, including those of pet bird owners, who tended to feed and water Polly and then bury her when she died. “It was very difficult in the beginning,” she says. “There was not such a following and not much research being done.”

But bird medicine has advanced dramatically, thanks first to poultry research, but more recently to the high cost of pet birds. Some exotic birds cost thousands of dollars, and their owners are spending money like it was chicken feed to keep Polly perky.

Spira has treated everything from turkey vultures to hummingbirds, along with the usual parrots, finches and canaries. Respiratory illnesses, malnutrition and injuries (often caused by flying into a wall) are frequent ailments.

No matter how good your perchside manner, birds make lousy patients. Most don’t take to strangers and their beaks can be dangerous. Spira has an assistant on hand to restrain the bird. “Even so, they’ve gotten me once or twice,” she says.