It’s 6 a.m. in Marengo. Far from Chicago’s glow, the Marengo sky is as black as its fields are still.
In a modest ranch home at the end of a gravel road, Marilynn Black, 53, feeds a day-old umbrella cockatoo from a syringe. She savors the predawn serenity as the chick sucks its formula.
An hour later, pandemonium breaks out.
Dozens of macaws and cockatoos squawk for breakfast, holler wake-up calls to their friends in other rooms and belt out their favorite songs. Black begins her 17-hour daily routine of feeding, cleaning and training birds while fielding telephone calls from customers who affectionately call her the Bird Lady of Marengo.
One of the noisiest houses in McHenry County currently is home to Black and her husband of 29 years, Larry (“There’s no way he could divorce me; it would be the custody battle of the century.”), three German shepherds (including one trained guard dog), an elderly Shih Tzu mix and enough parrots and cockatoos to populate a small zoo.
By nature, Black is plucky and forthright–useful traits in running a business/household where one must compete for attention with 4-pound birds able to crack open palm nuts that humans have to use a vise to open.
Black recently quit her job as a database coordinator for a McHenry company to devote all of her time to her aviary. Her husband builds filtration equipment for a Northbrook firm by day, then helps his wife with raising macaws and cockatoos during evenings and weekends. He supplements their income by building and selling large wrought-iron cages and bird toys that he dyes with food coloring. Their grown daughter, Debbie Black of McHenry, also lends a hand.
A few of Black’s birds (she calls them “the guys”) are pets: H.C., a hyacinth macaw who is the class clown; So Big, a more subdued hyacinth who prefers to cuddle; Tay-O, an adoring green-winged macaw who likes to perch on Black’s shoulder and preen her keeper’s salt-and-pepper curls; Rambo, a green-winged macaw who wrestles Larry on the kitchen floor; and Toby, a cockatoo who mimics you behind your back.
Perched throughout the house are Black’s 34 pairs of breeding birds in various stages of courtship. There are mini-macaws, including Hahns, Illiger’s and severe; large macaws, including green-winged, scarlet, hyacinth, blue-and-gold, military and red-fronted; and cockatoos, including Goffin’s, umbrellas, sulphur-crested and Moluccan. Some are producing chicks for Black’s customers; others are too immature to breed.
“This is not just a business for Marilynn; these birds are her children,” says her avian veterinarian, Dr. Peter Sakas of the Niles Animal Hospital and Bird Medical Center, who describes Black as a top-notch breeder. “The problem is, selling them is like placing children in adoptive homes; it’s hard for her to see them go.”
The younger they become matched with a mate, the more prolific they are at producing eggs, Black says. They bond for life; a widowed bird does not necessarily accept a new partner. Although their chicks wear steep price tags, they don’t produce many offspring in captivity and don’t always breed annually. A pair of large macaws is lucky to produce seven fertile eggs a year. A cockatoo pair produces six, tops.
Black raises the chicks until they are mature enough to leave her aviary. She does not release them to their new owners until they are weaned from formula, which is age 3 months for the cockatoos and most of the macaws and 5 to 6 months for the hyacinth macaws. Black is adamant about weaning her own chicks; she does not approve of breeders who sell them unweaned.
“The bird magazines are full of horror stories from people who tried to (wean the birds) themselves,” she says. “Buyers think they should participate in the feeding in order to bond with the birds, but that’s not true.”
Although the Illinois Department of Agriculture licenses aviary owners who sell birds they purchase, it does not require breeders like Black, who only sell birds they breed, to be licensed.
In Black’s nursery, equipped with human cribs and playpens, are the newborn cockatoo, six blue-and-gold macaws, three green-winged macaws, three red-fronted macaws, three Hahns macaws and one Goffin’s cockatoo.
This year, she may reach her self-imposed limit of 30 unweaned babies at one time. “Any more than that and I’d become an assembly-line breeder,” she says.
“Usually, my babies are spoken for long before they are weaned. Depending on what type of bird people want, they are put on a waiting list,” Black says.
Black screens out impulse buyers, choosing those who have done their homework and are willing to provide “forever homes” for the birds who “didn’t ask to be hatched.”
“These birds cannot be bought and sold and bought and sold,” says Black, who gets most of her clients by word of mouth.
Pam and John Short of Roscoe, owners of an umbrella cockatoo who takes showers and returns to its perch to be blow-dried, were relieved to pass muster.
“Marilynn is very picky about who she sells her birds to. But if you do buy a bird from her, then you become part of her family,” Pam says.
The ideal buyer, says Black, is a bird fancier who realizes how much time and attention these intelligent, complicated creatures require.
“They live 80 to 90 years, so they are more than a lifetime commitment,” she says. You have to provide for their care in your will because they’ll probably outlive you.”
Although the Blacks had been lifelong pet owners, it wasn’t until a few years ago that Black earned her Bird Lady title. In 1990, Larry came home from work with Toby, a coworker’s cockatoo who needed a new home.
“We loved Toby so much that he gave us `the feather disease.’ We wanted more,” Black says. “We got an African grey, then some umbrella cockatoos, then macaws. Our first hatchlings were blue-and-gold macaws in 1992; we didn’t sell them because we couldn’t part with them.”
Since then, Black has sold 10 to 20 chicks a year for prices ranging from $550 for a Hahns macaw to $7,500 for a hyacinth macaw.
She gave up her job to work with the birds. “Trying to run a full-time business and working a full-time job was just too much,” Black says. “I was running home at lunch to feed the babies.”
“Marilynn is very loyal to her family, to her birds and to their new owners,” says husband Larry.
Larry is comfortable with the birds, too. “These birds have a sixth sense. They know who they can trust,” he says.
Buyers like Pete Bollenbach of Barrington know they could buy cheaper birds elsewhere but are willing to fund Black’s maternal ways.
“I’ve dealt with other breeders before, so I know how important it is to choose a good breeder and to have a bird vet-checked before you buy it,” Bollenbach says. “A breeder like Marilynn wants to make sure her birds are healthy. There’s a big difference between production-line breeders’ birds and those truly hand-raised and socialized like Marilynn’s; hers make much better pets because they’ve had so much attention from the start.”
Pam Altergott of Wheeling agrees, claiming it’s Black’s mollycoddling that made her hyacinth macaw, Wilma, a delightful pet.
“She plays catch with us. She chases the cat,” Altergott says. “When our Catalina macaw gets to the part about the duck in the `Old MacDonald’ song, Wilma says `quack, quack.’ “
When a macaw chick hatches, Black puts its cracked egg in a plastic bag as a souvenir for its future owner. Then she begins a round-the-clock feeding schedule, a few drops of baby-bird formula at a time. By the time the chick is a week old, Black gets more sleep; the chick requires only four daily feedings.
When the chick is 8 weeks old, Black introduces crumbled bird food and Cheerios, which double as toys. After it is weaned, it eats seeds, pellets, greens and shelled nuts. The macaw’s favorites are macadamia nuts and Brazil nuts from its native South America.
The cockatoos’ weaning and diet are similar, except they don’t need as high a fat content in their food as macaws. Adult cockatoos thrive on seeds and nuts that they would find in their native South Pacific region.
The adult cockatoos and macaws relish the Blacks’ “bird salad,” a concoction of dried fruits and vegetables they make and sell to bird owners who prefer it to fresh (read: messy) produce.
While the chicks are weaning, Black encourages buyers to visit their baby birds often. On a typical spring or summer weekend, families come and go all day.
Black encourages first-time bird owners to consider easy-to-train cockatoos instead of macaws, even though the larger, brilliantly colored macaws are her favorites. Not to mention their sizes; the cockatoo is one-fourth the size of an adult hyacinth macaw, which is 4 feet long and has a 4-foot wingspan.
“You don’t go from a parakeet to a hyacinth macaw,” she says.
“Cockatoos are more laid back than macaws yet very smart and able to talk, interact and perform. Some people like cockatoos because they are so cuddly and devoted. They’ll curl up in your lap like puppies,” Black says.
Before Black’s birds go to their new homes, she takes them to Sakas for examinations, blood tests and injections of microchips, which are tiny IDs the size of grains of rice that he implants into the birds’ chests. Then, if the birds are lost or stolen, veterinarians and animal shelter personnel can use scanners to retrieve the birds’ identifying numbers, which are recorded through national registries.
After her birds fly the coop, Black encourages the buyers to call her with questions and send photos of their birds for her bulletin board.
As Black gives the cockatoo chick its last drops of formula at 11 p.m., she dreams of what she hopes to be her swan song–building a shelter for abused and neglected birds. In the meantime, she’s a happy camper, pursuing her passion of the plumage.
“It took me 50 years to find my calling. Now I know this is what I was put on this Earth to do,” she says. “How lucky I am. Not a whole heck of a lot of people ever get the chance to do what they really want to do, do they?”
TAKING CARE
Before the macaws and cockatoos she raises go to their new homes, Marilynn Black offers owners the do’s and don’t’s of bird care.
– Do give it lots of love, but don’t spoil it. “Vary your routine so it won’t have a fit if you don’t have enough time to play with it one day,” she says. “If you take it out of the cage every day as soon as you get home, then if you are too tired to do that one day, the bird will be upset.”
– Do be confident with your bird. “Remember that it will pick up on your moods,” she says. “If you’re nervous, it may react with aggression or withdrawal. If you’re relaxed and playful, the bird will be happy and entertaining.”
– Do consider that raising macaws is especially tricky, compared with the more docile cockatoos. Newspaper classified advertisements are full of juvenile-delinquent macaws, Black says, and prospective macaw owners should take a lesson from these take-my-bird-please folks.
“A macaw is very strong-willed and will test you,” she says. “If it learns to manipulate you, you’ve had it. Then it’s like having an eternal 2-year-old spoiled child. It throws temper tantrums, screeches, pouts. I’ve seen a spoiled macaw lie on its back and kick its feet until it got his way.
“But when a macaw is raised with love, consistency and discipline, it is a very affectionate pet that will give you back 10 times what you give it,” she says.
