Txori Ornithological Foundation is a non-profit situated 20 kilometers northwest of Guadalajara that breeds Mexican macaws, parrots and parakeets, and rehabilitates rescued birds, with the aim of reintroducing them back into the wild.
Txori (pronounced “Chori”) is Basque for “bird” and the name was given to the organization by its founder Cándido Busteros.
“My father was a Spaniard,” says Busteros’ son Victor, the current director of Txori. “When civil war broke out in Spain he escaped to France. Then the Nazis took control of France and he escaped to Mexico.
“At the beginning he lived in Mexico City, but at a certain point he went on a trip through the Sierra Occidental on horseback from Guadalajara to Tomatlán, located 75 kilometers south of Puerto Vallarta. He was utterly amazed at the beauty of those mountains, woods and jungles, but what fascinated him most were the parrots, in particular the guacamayas or macaws, which were plentiful in those days.”
Cándido returned to Mexico City, but never forgot those guacamayas. When he moved to Guadalajara in the 1970s, the first thing he wanted to do was to repeat his ride to Tomatlán.
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