Pub In The Park

No doubt parrots are an intriguing type of bird; most birds sing to us; how many of them are capable of saying hello and asking about your day?  Perhaps it’s because a friend of mine keeps a parrot in a cage in her living room, occasionally letting it out to walk the floor or to hop onto a stick or her finger, that I have a fondness for the colorful creature.  More than anything, though, it’s this ability to talk that draws me in: Talking birds, apparently, only mimic humans; some of them can only saw a few words or phrases, while a few, may have a vocabulary of nearly two thousand words — The Guinness World Records is filled with astonishing facts about birds, especially a budgerigar named Puck, who can contains a vocabulary of 1,728 words (if I knew that many words of, say, French or Russian, I could get along pretty easily in those countries, I would think).  If you want to find a group of talking birds all in one place, you might try out Miami, Florida, where you can visit the Parrot Jungle Island.

The Parrot Jungle Island allows you to see these tropical birds up-close in habitats that replicate their original environment.  Parrots aren’t the only animal you’ll find here.  You’ll run across penguins and flamingos, cranes, condors, tigers, llamas, skunks, even kangaroos, and reptiles, orangutans, monkeys, and chimpanzees and baboons.  There’s a quite a lot of fish and plant life, too.  The island even boasts a 900 pound Liger, a cross between a Lion and Tiger.

All this is quite close to the hotels of downtown Miami, over on 1111 Parrot Jungle Trail, via the I-395.  The island is open 365 days out of the year from ten in the morning until six at night.  The admission price is about thirty dollars for adults and twenty-four dollars for kids, although kids under two are free; if you have a Go Miami Card, the admission is also free.  And if you’re active duty military you’ll receive a free admission for yourself and a fifteen percent discount for your family.  If you’re into birds, as I am, and want to hear what they have to say to you, there’s no other place to go than Parrot Jungle Island.