Pictures from TASC

Last week-end I headed to St-Charles Illinois to attend TASC and meet up with other parrot people.

The event was held on Saturday. While it seemed pretty large to me, it appears it wasn't nearly as big as it had been in past years. In any case, the vendor area was much larger than anything I've seen at previous Canadian Parrot Conferences (CPC). One thing that did occur at TASC that didn't at the CPC is people selling birds - and to be honest, I do prefer the CPC no parrot sale approach. For one, you never know the condition of the parrots being brought there and there is a risk of contamination of products and other parrots present.

But I think some people do it out of convenience. As well, having birds displayed in cages obviously too small will pull at the heartstrings of people present. I felt pretty sad at the sight of a lot of birds there; and because of my love of Poicephalus, those got to me the most. Actually, it did seem to me that they were amongst the most represented there. I had seen a number of Senegals and Meyer's as well as one Red-bellied parrot. And the latter was the most hearbreaking to me. I stopped by to talk to him a bit and he came right at the front of his cage and looked right at me and made all kinds of cute cooing and kissing noises.



The sign on his cage said something along the lines of "13 year old Red-bellied, in need of love". It really looked to me like he just needed to find the right people. I got even sadder when I started thinking of the likeliness of him having been through this whole process a few times already. Crystal, with whom I went to TASC, had to pull me away from his cage.

On top of other birds for sale, I think some of them were there on display.







As mentioned above, I also took the opportunity to meet other parrot people, including Aleta from Wingdow. It was quite nice finally meeting her in person!

She had brought a number of her playstands which on top of looking quite nice also seemed very solid.







She also had a few Kitchen Sinks on hand.





This has been an item on my want list for quite some time, but I could never justify the price. Canadian vendors who carry them, and they are few and far between, charge a fortune and given the weight, I was hesitant to have one shipped from the States. When I saw the ones she had on hand, one immediately caught my eye and after deliberating for a few (long) minutes I did purchase one.

Aleta had shared her booth with another vendor from Avian Avenue, Jen from TNT toys and I took a few pictures of her set up as well.





I know I mentioned earlier that there is a risk of disease when birds are brought in to events like these. I didn't purchase much and what I did purchase were items I was comfortable being able to thoroughly clean (so nothing porous) and I'll have a subsequent post with the items I purchased.