Jamie McLeod, Owner
Turning Interest Into Action
While still in her teens Jamie began her career working as a Veterinary Assistant for the Santa Barbara Humane Society and the Santa Barbara Zoological Gardens. As a college student, she worked at the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Zoo. Upon achieving her AS degree in Exotic Animal Training and Management from Moorpark College in 1984, she became an animal trainer at the Bowmanville Zoo in Canada, where she developed an educational animal show.
Although captivated by all animal species, exotic birds are her first love. With the pet parrot trade at its height in the 1980's, Jamie turned her efforts to breeding and began the Santa Barbara Bird Club for breeders.
She saw an opportunity to continue the relationship with her fledglings and their owners and in 1995 opened Menagerie bird store in Summerland, CA. There she developed her nutritious line of frozen gourmet bird food, McLeod’s Parrot Cuisine. She also provides grooming and boarding, toys, other parrotphernalia and pampering.
Through nurtured relationships with the owners of her birds, she also became a resource for those who could no longer care for them. In 2004, with the problem of displaced parrots growing and the Bird Club dwindling with decreased demand, she founded the Santa Barbara Bird Sanctuary as a means to provide a solution for the problem that was created by breeding.
In 2013, PBS Nature series documentary Parrot Confidential featured Jamie and the Santa Barbara Bird Sanctuary. Her work with the film shed light on the overwhelming need for public education about the welfare of exotic birds, whose needs and longevity parallels human life.
