Spirits in the Sky
Captivating "Wild Parrots" deserves flock of admirers

This movie has it all: action, romance, suspense, comedy and pathos, couplings and break-ups, bloodthirsty villains, birth, death, and every cycle of life in between. But it's mostly enacted by avian participants in The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, a disarming, deeply moving documentary about one exceptional man who bonds with a flock of wild birds. Filmmaker Judy Irving, best known for her award-winning non-fiction film Dark Circle, a grim expose of the nuclear power industry, seems to be trying something completely different with Wild Parrots. Yet Irving's interest in environmental issues and preserving the natural word come into play in her profile of Mark Bittner, a Zen wanderer adrift in the canyons of San Francisco who found his life's calling as volunteer caretaker to an improbable urban flock of tropical birds.

Irving introduces her subject without unnecessary preamble. In the shadow of Coit Tower, amid a riot of transplanted sub-tropical landscaping, Bittner stands at the edge of a popular path up the hill. An aging hippie with a waist-long pony tail, Bittner holds up a handful of sunflower seeds from a pouch at his side while one or two cherry head conures (vividly colored green parrots with bright red heads) perch and eat out of his hand. Other parrots perch on his arm and the top of his head; a bird on his shoulder plucks seeds out of Bittner's mouth, while still more birds flap and squawk in the bushes nearby and from the power lines above.

Tourists are astonished into silence as Bittner feeds and talks to the birds, calling each one by name. Hushed questions are posed and Bittner calmly explains that the birds are wild, and points out their individual markings and personalities. With the same aplomb, Bittner copes with a button-down right-brainer who can't grasp the concept that Bittner does not "own" the birds, nor does the city pay him to maintain them.

"Mark has no job, and all the time in the world," notes filmmaker Irving. "How does he get away with it?" Gradually, as Bittner tells the stories of the birds, his own story takes shape. Himself a transplant from the Seattle area who spent time on the road in Europe in his youth, he originally came to San Francisco with the idea of becoming a rock musician. Unable to make a living, he spent years on the streets, sleeping on rooftops, on couches, or in basements, while devouring spirituality books at City Lights.

The birds became his path to enlightenment, and everything else fell into place. Befriending and studying the parrots, then starting a log of their activities, Bittner explains that friends donated camera equipment for his studies and a computer for recording his research and writing articles. Homeowners in the neighborhood let him stay rent-free in an unused caretaker's cottage on the hill because "it was the right thing to do." Aware that he might wrongly be considered "eccentric," he has earned the birds' trust, and taught himself to care for them indoors if they are sick or injured, but never interferes with the parrots' compelling need to be free.

The parrots themselves are fascinating. Mingus, the dancing parrot, bobs and boogies on his perch when Bittner plays guitar, and fears the outside world, the only one of the flock who "doesn't want to be wild." Majestic, solitary Connor, the only blue-crowned conure in the flock, is fated to life without a mate and always stands up for the other weaker or outcast birds. There's racy Olive, a mitred conure with slightly different markings, credited with introducing a whole new strain of bird into the next generation of parrots, and sweet, aging Tupelo, brought indoors by Bittner toward the end of her life, whose story will touch anyone who's ever lost a loved one.

Suspence is introduced in the ominous circling of the ever-present red tail hawks, joy when Bittner tracks the birds to their nests and watches the fledglings' first flights, and drama when a property renovation forces Bittner to leave his cottage and his flock. With more feeling for the simple awe and mystery of life than any dozen mainstream Hollywood epics, this captivating little movie will give your heart wings.

THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL With Mark Bittner. A film by Judy Irving. A Shadow Distribution release. Rated G. 83 minutes. (****)
Review published in Good Times, February 17, 2005