SeattleFlyers need a new home so their feathery friends can socialize

It's entirely excusable that the parrots and cockatoos squawked as they looked down from the ceiling beams of a vacant Ballard grocery store.

The building, the equivalent of an off-leash dog park for the past 18 months, is about to be torn down to make way for a new city park.

If these birds could talk — wait, some of them can — they'd be begging for a new place to spread their wings and fly. Instead, their piercing calls simply echo through the building, drowning out the pleas of their owners, who are acting as their spokespeople.

"We hope someone with a vacant or semi-vacant building will be willing to lease it to us," Mona Delgado said as her orange-bellied Senegal parrot, Babylon, flew laps with exotic birds at least six times her size. "We believe flight is essential to the health and well-being of our birds. They are so much more confident as a result."

Members of the SeattleFlyers club have let their birds loose inside the old Safeway store at 22nd Avenue Northwest and Northwest 57th Street twice a week, three hours a session, since August 2003. The club, which paid a nominal rent to use the building, has about 25 dues-paying members. As many as 50 birds may soar on a single "fly day."

The birds need a replacement building that is roomy enough for flight — at least 8,000 square feet.

"We're good about cleaning up after ourselves," Delgado insisted. "We bring paper towels."

Delgado said there are only two or three clubs like SeattleFlyers in the country. In Manhattan, exotic birds are allowed to fly in a church.

On Tuesday, which may have been the final fly day inside the Ballard building, Andrew Bradman's pink Moluccan cockatoos shrilled after landing atop the hanging fluorescent-light fixtures. One pecked at a light tube until it shook loose and fell to the ground — the bird's comment on being evicted.

Many bird owners clip the wings of their pets to restrict flight. A few let their birds fly outdoors, but run the risk of their not returning home.

Suzanne Goodwin, who drives from Kent so that her gray pied cockatiel, Peanut, can fly with the bigger birds, said birds are born to fly.

"It is their birthright," she said. "But you have to train them."

MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES Linda Jean Brosell and Abbey, a hyacinth macaw, gather regularly with other exotic-bird owners for "fly days" inside the old Safeway at 22nd Avenue Northwest and Northwest 57th Street.

Training consists of coaching the bird to fly between perch and owner, praising and rewarding them with nuts or banana chips.

"Keep going! Keep going!" Linda Jean Brosell said as her hyacinth macaw, Abbey, a gentle giant with blue feathers and yellow eyes, took flight. "Good girl! Good girl!"

Some of the birds are old hands at flying, circling the interior of the building with controlled speed and grace. The cockatoos have grown fond of hanging from and twirling around a thick steel wire pulled across the ceiling.

"Poor Zilla crashed his first day here," said Kathy Morrison, referring to her Buffon's macaw, one of six parrots that share her South Seattle loft. "He finally got off the ground, and it was like he was saying to himself, 'I've got all this speed, now what do I do with it?' "

As if the birds aren't gorgeous enough when they are still, full flight exposes the colors hidden beneath their wing feathers — a treat for their owners. The fly days also have provided an outlet for local exotic-bird owners to share information and acquaint themselves with the qualities and quirks of various species.

The birds also seem to enjoy the interaction, their owners said.

"We've not had too much aggression between the birds," Morrison said. "They've never drawn blood, but they do argue like a bunch of little kids."

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293

or seskenazi@seattletimes.com