My interest in birds began at the age of 5 years old. I loved to watch the wild birds flying free, I even jumped off of high places trying to imitate them.

My first bird was a big crow. Every free minute I had I tried to catch that crow. My Uncle Lee (always teasing me) told me if I would get a salt shaker and sneak up behind him, sprinkle his tail with salt that he would just stay still and let me pet him. I tried doing that for days while all of my little friends laughed and called me stupid. One day, I cornered that crow and caught him. Everyone asked me how I caught him and I told them that my Uncle was right about sprinkling the salt on his tail.

I was entertained by those macaws for 4 1/2 hours. I finally talked to the owner and told him that I was a bird collector, that he should send the macaws over to me, get his people working instead of playing with the macaws and pay us the money he owed.

Approximately one hour later, here came the big cage with "ROCK ROCK", the Buffon Macaw as a gift just for me. I took painful bites for 4 years before he became part of the family.

I received three more birds from other companies and one from a bank teller. The first was a NAKED Orange Winged Amazon named SOB, which I named Bubba. MORE BITES !!! The second was a sweet Congo African Grey which I named Commander. He had only one leg, was coated with machine oil and almost died; The third bird
was a big Moluccan Cockatoo.

I traded $1000.00 worth of machine parts for him because the workers really teased him. YOU GUESSED IT, MORE BITES. The fourth bird was a Naked Nanday Conure talking like crazy, named Feather Plucking Jake. I immediately got him a new wife and they had 4 babies one month later.

My daughter (Robin), found Skipper (B&G macaw) in the classified ads for $400.00. Sure enough he had no wing or tail feathers and bled a lot. We also bought a Green Winged macaw (Captain Sparky) and a Hand-Fed Moluccan Cockatoo (Sugar Baby). I loved and lived for these birds and since my passion was only for the birds, I retired from the companies and trained these birds to do shows for the old folks in Convalescent Homes, Prisons, Birthday parties and Church functions. How they all loved my parrots.

Fortunately we had a lot of talented people in our facilities that could manufacture all of my PVC Props. I joined the Orange County Bird Breeder Club and donated a show for them on the Orange County Fairgrounds. Everyone wanted to buy my Props and have me teach them how to train and tame birds.

My husband and I decided we would make a few Props for Bird Trainers and I started traveling to every Trade Show in the U.S. The News Media was always waiting to film Skipper and Captain Sparky wherever we went.

Bird Talk Magazine asked me to write a Training Guide Manual because they received so many letters asking for info on training birds. So I wrote the Training Guide Booklet for the most popular props. I received over 500 letters asking if I could make props or toys for Cockatiels and small birds. I
bought a couple of Cockatiels and trained them. Originally we had the first Training Videos for Taming and Training Parrot-Type birds.

Everyone knew Skipper and Captain Sparky's names but could not remember mine so I just became their MC and was called the Bird Lady from California My name is Bonnie Pesce. Pesce means Fish so I changed it to Bonnie Bird. I haven't had any problems since with my name.

Twenty five years ago, when I first got Rock Rock, I never dreamed it would lead to my being good at Taming, Trick training, manufacturing bird props and breeding all kinds of Parrots. My babies are sooo Smart and Tame. I think it is because of their very intelligent Trick Trained Parents.