Not long ago, I was standing on a rocky hillside in Patagonia, the southernmost part of South America.

It was morning, and I was surrounded by a dense forest of gnarly birch trees.

The air was cool and damp, and just about everything around me was covered in mosses and lichens.

Through a gap in the trees, I was looking at an enormous glacier, blazing white in the morning sun.

It was less than half a mile away.

I could trace the length of it, grinding its way through a valley,

down from the Andes Mountains and crumbling into a milky blue lake. The scenery was jaw-dropping and surreal.

I couldn't get over the fact that I was in a forest so close to the face of a glacier.

There were birds singing happily around me and some Chilean fire bushes,

displaying crimson-colored flowers. And just when I thought the moment couldn't get any more magical,

here come the parrots.

A noisy flock of austral parakeets flew right in front of me.

Their feathers were shades of dull green, yellow, and red. The flock stood out

in sharp contrast to the backdrop of the glacier. Landing in some nearby trees, the

parakeets chattered and settled in to munch on some berries and leaf buds. I could see them up close.

They were adorable, beautiful, and charming.

I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be sharing this experience with these wild parrots

in a place that felt like the edge of the world.

Birds make everything better, don't they?

That moment in Patagonia was one of my treasured memories of wild parrots. The austral parakeet, anacognathus phyrogenaeus,

is found further south than any other parrot species in the world. It lives in southern Chile and

Argentina. So the word austral in this case is not a

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