15 people claim to be owner of MacGyver the rescued budgie

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This article was published 04/01/2016 (3652 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No one was searching for MacGyver the budgie a couple of days ago but now, 15 people are claiming to own Winnipeg’s survivor bird.

Melanie Shura, president of the local parrot resource group Avian Welfare Canada, is now caring for the little green budgie who was caught on Jan. 1. He had survived outdoors in some of this winter’s most bitter temperatures for more than two months by joining a flock of sparrows.

No one had responded to various posts on Facebook and kijiji looking for his owner but Shura said many people have come forward and emailed her, hoping MacGyver is their lost bird.

“It’s very sad. What has come out of this for me is that there’s a lot of birds that go missing that people never follow up on and they never knew what happened and want so badly for this to be their little friend,” said Shura, who had had set trap cages in two different yards and worked with two couples on gentle behaviour modification techniques for over the past six weeks to try to lure in the budgie before he froze to death or was killed by a predator.

“All the pictures I’m getting are just the most cherished little pets, it’s on a shoulder, it’s on Grandma’s hair. They never put in a claim (on social media or elswhere), they never tried to find the bird. They just gave up hope right away.”

Shura said budgies have indentifying markings that can individualize them so she is keeping confidential some of MacGyver’s physical traits in case his owner comes forward.

“Some of the birds (in photographs emailed to Shura) do not even look like him. One is from two years ago, one is from Brandon, I’m doing more kind of grief counselling. It’s more of an issue that you really want so badly to know what happened to your little friend,” Shura said.

“One person (photograph of a bird), that bird looked very, very close but the one they had only had two black dots on each side,” she said noting MacGyver has different markings than that.

While MacGyver’s survival story has garned much public attention through media coverage, Shura said she understands it has also given new hope to people who had lost birds.

“I will do my best to go through every single case and try to find the right owner,” Shura said. “I will go through every case and respond to every single inquiry. What is helpful, what I need, are photos, dates that the bird was last seen and where, anything special about the bird in terms of markings or behaviour, the age of the bird. A lot of the psychological stuff is out the window because he a totally different bird now. He’s still speaking sparrow (making sparrow chirping sounds instead of budgie sounds).”

MacGyver was found through the combined efforts of Shura, Sylvia and Norm Cassie and Shelley and Val Corvino, as well as posts on the Winnipeg Lost Dog Alert Facebook page which had helped track the bird to the area near the Royal Canadian Mint and then to Southland Park. The bird was safely captured in the trap cage at the Corvino home. The couple had named the bird MacGyver, for the 1980s TV series star who could make contraptions out of scraps, because of the creativity and patience needed to catch him unharmed.

Shura said MacGyver is making slow progress. He will need more time to rest and rehabilitate after his long outdoor ordeal and re-learn behaviours if he is to once again be someone’s pet.

“He’s becoming a bit more accepting of hands, it’s not so threatening to him (today as opposed to the previous day). I put a little bird bath in the bottom (of his cage) today and he didn’t panic like he did yesterday when I had to change his paper (on the bottom of the cage),” she said.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca