The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is a 2003 documentary film directed, produced, and edited by Judy Irving. It chronicles the relationship between Mark Bittner, an unemployed musician who is living rent-free in a cabin in Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, California, and a flock of feral parrots (cherry-headed and two blue-crowned conures) that he feeds and interacts with. Bittner also wrote a book by the same name on the subject. In May 2007, the documentary aired on the PBS series Independent Lens.
Much of the documentary focuses on the individual parrots, and their relationships with one another. Bittner notes that there is humor in the piece, which he believes makes it different from many other nature documentaries. Raising funding for the film was difficult at first, as Irving had to find individual donors. The proceeds from a fundraiser, in which Bittner gave a presentation to a packed theater, allowed Irving to start shooting the film in earnest.
The musical score was created by Chris Michie, a Bay area musician, formerly the guitarist for Van Morrison. It was his final project before he died from melanoma. The film, which he did not live to see released, is dedicated to him.
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“It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”
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“And the chandeliers are neat . . .
But their mignon, marblish glare!
We are cold, the parrots cried,
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“The most interesting thing which I heard of, in this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed out to me on the side of a distant hill, as I was panting along the shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I should go through Rome, it would be some spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember the longest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)