A Bird in Hand

Little Corella’s Adventure in the Big City

On Sunday, September 29, Gateway Plaza resident Maxim Zeleznak was escorting his son and daughter, ages three and six, back from gymnastics practice, when they decided to cut through the underground passageway that connects the A train stop to the E train platform, near Chambers Street. “The weather wasn’t very nice,” he recalls, “so we ducked inside. We had taken a few steps when my daughter said, ‘Look! A real bird!” When Mr. Zeleznak turned, he was confronted not by the lost pigeon he was expecting, but a gorgeous, gray-and-white parrot, more than a foot tall, gripping a handrail.

“At first, I thought it was a performer’s animal,” he recalls. “You sometimes see people in the subway with exotic species, like snakes, who charge to have a picture taken or allow you to pet the creature.”

But as he looked around, Mr. Zeleznak did not see any human companion for the bird, which turned out to be a female bare-eyed cockatoo. “Then another passenger came by and explained that the bird was lost, and had been there since the day before,” he says. Inquires with subway personnel established that the station manager had called animal control to have the bird captured and taken away.

“I called 311 and City’s Department of Environmental Protection,” he says. “But after about 90 minutes of getting the runaround, nobody would help. The people who worked for the Transit Authority said they are not allowed to intervene,” although they did agree to take down his name and phone number.

But then he noticed something odd: “This bird was willing to be petted,” he remembers. “So it was clearly comfortable around people, and probably domesticated.” The subway staffers lent him a large basket, “and I picked the bird up by wrapping it in my jacket, and put it inside.” This enabled Mr. Zeleznak to carry the cockatoo back to his home in Battery Park City.

“Once we had it inside our apartment, we released into the bathroom, to see how it would react,” he says. “It was very calm. Better behaved than my kids, in fact.”

After the bird had acclimated itself to the apartment, “it started climbing on my shoulders and my wife’s shoulders,” he remembers. “That made us think the owner was a woman, because the bird was so comfortable with my wife.”

“Our next step was to find its owner,” he says. The cockatoo was wearing a bracelet with a serial number, he recalls, “but we realized, with a lot of frustration, that this doesn’t give you any way to trace back to a human companion.”

So Mr. and Mrs. Zeleznak began posting on social media, asking if anybody knew of a resident who had been separated from a bird. “My wife was posting in multiple chat rooms,” he says, “and the community went into overdrive. Everybody pitched in.”

This outreach very quickly put the Zeleznaks in touch with Battery Park City’s resident tropical bird expert, Nancy Chambers. “She was very helpful,” he recalls. “She has long experience with rescuing birds, and was able to give us advice. She also generously lent us a cage, some food, a carrier, and a bunch of bird toys.”

Ms. Chambers says, “the first thing I noticed was that it didn’t appear to be injured. And the second thing was we had a very dirty bird on our hands. Bare-eyed cockatoos are supposed to be bright white, but this poor thing was gray, after picking up dust and soot in the subway for 24 hours. So I started by helping get it cleaned up.”

She continues, “parrots are monomorphic, meaning that males and females are almost identical. But cockatoos are dimorphic. You can tell the genders apart by their coloring, especially around the eyes. Males have black patches, but females are a lighter shade.”

“Much later,” Mr. Zeleznak says, “well after midnight, we got a call from the Transit Police, saying that the owner had contacted them looking for her lost bird. She was gone by that point, and they couldn’t contact her, because she had lost her phone.”

But the woman returned the next day to the Transit Police station on Canal Street, “and they called again,” he says. “She had been robbed in the subway, but the person who grabbed her bag never imagined that there was an exotic bird inside. So after he got away, the thief just abandoned the bird in the subway.”

Because bare-eyed cockatoos are valuable (priced at several thousand dollars), “I wanted to be sure this woman was the real owner,” he says. “But once the bird saw her, it was obvious that they knew each other and belonged together.”

The woman, who lives in Queens, was overjoyed to be reunited with her companion, whose name turned out to be Yin Yang. “My daughter had been calling her ‘Bird Bird,’” Mr. Zeleznak notes, adding, “our kids were sorry to see her leave.”

“The owner is in the business of visiting nursing homes and assisted living facilities, show the bird to elderly residents for entertainment,” Mr. Zeleznak learned, which makes his initial guess of a performing animal not far off.

Yin Yang’s owner said that the bird is 23 years old, which is not quite halfway through the 50-year lifespan of the species, known popularly as “Little Corella,” and taxonomically as “Cacatua sanguinea.”

Mr. Zeleznak says, “for me, there are a couple of takeaways. First, this was something that needed to be done. Helping to rescue Yin Yang was just the right thing to do. Second, this is just one more indication that have a genuine community here — everybody’s first instinct was to help. And third, my son has now decided that this Halloween costume will feature a parrot on his shoulder.”