World renowned author and lecturer, Rick Jordan has spent the last two and a half decades of his life working with parrots, breeding parrots, and educating others about parrots. His career began back in the early 1980’s when he left the U.S. Military to work for a parrot farm in Lake Worth, Florida owned by the late Tom Ireland. From there he sought full time employment working with parrots and ended up as facility manager of the Avicultural Breeding and Research Center (ABRC) in Loxahatchee, Florida, owned by Richard Schubot.
Rick used his keen interest in parrots to develop an artificial incubation protocol for ABRC and wrote his first of four published books on psittacine biology: Parrot Incubation Procedures. As his career progressed and he moved on to other parrot collections, including Loro Parque, Canary Islands, Spain, Top Flock Aviary, Loxahatchee, Florida, and Luv them Birds, Inc, Miami, Florida, he shared his experiences through several other books: Parrots: Nursery Management was co-authored with Howard Voren, and African Parrots as Pets and Breeders was co-authored with Jeannie Pattison. Rick also wrote A Guide to Macaws, published by Australian Birdkeeper Publications in Australia. More recently Rick authored the online education course, Fundamentals of Aviculture Level I and II, for the American Federation of Aviculture, Inc. and he has published hundreds of articles on parrot breeding and conservation ideas in many of the most popular trade magazines.
Rick and his partner Mark Moore own and operate Hill Country Aviaries in Texas. The facility boasts some 70 species of Psittacines and has been awarded several “U.S. First Breeding” awards from the American Federation of Aviculture, Inc. In fact, Rick’s facility is still the only US facility to have produced a Blue-cheeked amazon in captivity in the U.S. (Amazona dufresniana). Other rarely seen amazons such as Yellow-lored amazons, Blue mutation yellow-naped amazons, and Red-browed amazons can be found at Hill Country as well. Rick has recently turned his attention toward conservation of wild parrots and takes every opportunity available to educate the public on the importance of habitat conservation and the preservation of parrots in the wild and in captivity. In the past he served as a consultant to the government of Brazil on the Spix’s macaw and Lear’s macaw conservation committees and consulted on Maude Island, New Zealand for the Kakapo recovery program.
Rick now serves as the Conservation and CITES Committee chairs for the American Federation of Aviculture, Inc. In addition to his service to the AFA for the past twenty-five years, he is a member of numerous avicultural groups in the United States.
