Morndyke Parrot Sanctuary: 'I won't stop until all 1.5 million parrots in the UK are out of cages'

The owner of a Yorkshire parrot sanctuary has made it her mission to free 1.5 million parrots from cages in the UK through her charity.

Morndyke Parrot Sanctuary, in Thirsk, started off as an aviary for rescue pigeons when Tricia Phillips, 55, was inspired by her daughter, Anna, who found a dying pigeon on their farm in 2017.

Mrs Phillips officially started accepting birds into the sanctuary in 2023 and it has since grown exponentially.

Over the years, she was exposed to the reality of how the pet trade affects wild birds and it has motivated her to keep going despite the sanctuary being at full capacity.

“There are 1.5 million parrots in cages in people's homes in the UK,” Mrs Phillips said.

“So until those 1.5 million parrots are out of cages I won't stop.

“We started off with the originals, a few more and then people just kept bringing more and more in.

“We are absolutely full and one of the main drives for the whole sanctuary is education because there is no information out there.

“We need more space for them; we turn down possibly between 80 and 95 per cent of the birds that are offered to us. Nobody has any idea about the scale of the problem out there. It's like a hidden disaster.”

Even though parrots are the third most common animal in the pet trade worldwide, Mrs Phillips said they are wild birds and are not meant to be kept as pets.

“Parrots have only been en masse in the pet trade for the last 30 or 40 years. They’re not domesticated,” she said.

“Tamed wild dogs and cats have been domesticated for 15,000 years and to be domesticated you have to be genetically modified amongst other things.

“We've normalised the word cage without fully understanding the implications of that. The birds that most commonly are relinquished are the Congo African greys.

“They have the same intelligence as an eight-year-old child.

“They are so sentient and aware they live in the wild in flocks of up to a thousand, two thousand. Parrots are never more than six meters away from their bonded partner. They bond for life.

“The African greys will live for 50 or 60 years and when that parrot is taken from the wild, they are smuggled in the most horrific conditions. They're sold in pet shops and breeding facilities and then their offspring are sold as pets.”

The Congo African grey (Psittacus erithacus) is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List for endangered species, Mrs Phillips said.

“They are among the most at risk category of birds in the world,” she said.

“We get these parrots relinquished constantly and take them in at certain times of the year so the last intake was March. We ended up taking in a total of about 30 pretty parrots.

“One had gangrene, one had both legs broken and couldn't walk and one had half its wing missing.

“A lot were totally plucked out. When a parrot plucks its feathers people think it's bored. It isn't. It's self-harming.

“The pain of plucking out a feather hurts the bird so they do it because the pain inside is so intense that they try to cope by pulling out the feathers.

“It was awful. They have to go through quarantine with us because we know we have to disease test them and change them to proper food because most of the parrot food you buy in pet shops will actually kill your parrots.”

The sanctuary was given a charity status in 2023 and is run by volunteers including its founder.

“Last year I gave £11,000 to the charity. Sometimes it's either feed the birds or feed myself and it has come down to that when you're literally scraping around for pennies,” Mrs Phillips said.

“But those birds will never ever go without and that's the promise I've made to them.

“We're going to do as much as we can and just try very, very hard to fundraise because although we need £52,000 a year for maintenance that doesn't include growth. It's immense work.”