We are no longer able to do Open Houses. However, we welcome small groups,
by appointment, after 1 pm – we are very busy with our bird care in the
morning. Please call 207-683-6322 to arrange. The sanctuary is part of our
home and we value our privacy. Please, no drop-ins.
We're a 501(c) parrot rescue and run exclusively on donations. It costs
$16,000 per year to care for the birds - half of that is just for food!
Any help you can provide is SO appreciated. Experiencing these parrots,
an endangered species, up close and personal is an absolute TREAT!
Welcome to Siesta Sanctuary!
In 2006 Margaret and Fritz Buschmann founded the non-profit Siesta Sanctuary
as a home for parrots who have been displaced and need permanency.
Parrots are wild animals that live 30-80 years. They are very intelligent and
social and, in the wild, thrive as part of a flock. It is our mission to
recreate the flock for parrots that have had their human flock disrupted;
seldom can humans accommodate a pet through all the family life changes in
80 years!
Our parrots have come to us from rescue organizations, owners moving
to nursing homes or apartments, spouses objecting to the bird, birds
with problem behaviors that disrupt the home and birds that other folks
have rescued but couldn’t keep.
All birds we take in will have sanctuary as long as we can provide it.
Here the parrots live in a flock, can fly and learn to behave like birds.
Many birds that come to us have lived alone. Nearly all have found a mate
or best friend. We delight in all this social activity and the odd couples
that develop.
Match Making
While Siesta Sanctuary does not normally re-home parrots, we can often
arrange a match. Please contact us if you have a bird that needs a home.
We maintain a list of people looking for a particular bird.
Donations
It costs roughly $16,000 annually (roughly $45 per day) to house
and feed the flock. Any donation, large or small helps immensely!
We are both semi-retired so we have more time to spend with the
birds but less income.
100% of all money donated goes to the sanctuary's upkeep,
and food and medical expenses for the birds. We are a 501(c)(3)
nonprofit so your donations are tax deductible. If it is an in
- kind donation of a cage or equipment, we can give you a
receipt for the value of the item.
MANY THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED MONEY,TIME AND EQUIPMENT OVER THE YEARS!!
We love volunteers! There are many small and large niches for help
such as direct bird care, handyman services to stay ahead of the
parrots' demolition, transporting cardboard boxes twice a month,
chopping produce and preparing 40+ salads daily, floor care, making
parrots toys, socializing with parrots, anything that helps keep the
birds happy! Volunteers set their own schedules - do one day a week
or one day a month; IT ALL HELPS, and we greatly appreciate it!
How You Can Help
- Report abused or neglected parrots to State of Maine Animal Welfare Program 1-877-269-9200.
- Make a donation to help feed and care for our flock of 40 +/- parrots.
- Volunteer; Call us to talk about help we can use.
We need another and a wiser and perhaps more mystical concept of animals.
Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys
the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the
whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate
of having taken form so far below ourselves. Therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal
shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished
and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by
voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other
nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor
and travail of the earth.
The Outermost House by Henry Beston
"We are a Member"