Enjoying the warmth of the heated section of the aviary on a cold winter day

There is a big difference between parrot rescues and parrot sanctuaries. Parrot rescues are faced with a daunting challenge. Their goal is to take in unwanted, sometimes very ill and emotionally unsettled parrots and make them right again so they are adoptable. In most cases, rescue birds are transient. If all goes to plan, they eventually find a home, leaving an open cage for another unwanted bird. I have unlimited respect for those who are able ...

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African grey Stormy playing with rings inside grey aviary

One of the best parts about working for Birdtricks.com is the constant contact with other bird lovers. As owners, the learning never stops and we are always looking for new and better ways to improve our birds’ lives.

Out there, in the avian community, there are countless unsung heroes – rescues who go the extra mile for the birds in their care every single day, without much praise or much help, people who have gone to extraordinary lengths to create amazing habitats for ...

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Blue and gold and military macaws

The different parrot families are divided into two broad categories: Old World and New World species. New world parrots, of which there are 148 species, are all parrots that are indiginous to Central and South America and Mexico (The U.S. no longer has a native parrot species.) Some popular New World species are the macaws, the amazons and the conures.

The 181 species of Old World parrots are those that are native to Asia, Africa and Australia. Among Old World species are the ...

Hyacinth macaw

There was a video on Youtube some years ago featuring an african grey with the nastiest vocabulary I have ever heard. It said not only the worst of the worst words known to English slang, but it used them to descriptively detail human anatomy.

It was obvious that these words had not been simply overheard and repeated – they had been taught. The video had a gazillion hits on it. I am by no means prudish, but hearing these words said with an african grey’s perfect clarity, my jaw ...

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Just like people, parrots sometimes find themselves in a place in life where they have a hard time getting around. This might be the result of a deformity, an injury or the struggles of old age. And, just like people, parrots learn to adapt to their circumstances with a little help from those around them.

To most people it makes sense that a parrot hatched with a deformity would be better able to learn to get by. After all, it has never known any other way. ...

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In my opinion, one of the things that most strongly speaks to the intellect of a parrot is the use and reworking of the words in its vocabulary. Taking two unrelated words and placing them together to form another word or phrase with an entirely different meaning is the “recombining” of words.
Many birds have the ability to put labels to the things around them  Some words are the names of objects, such as a bell. Other words are adjectives such as colors, big or small, hard ...

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