Selecting The Proper Indoor Parrot Cage


Male eclectus parrot (Pepi)

Have you ever blown an entire week’s wage on a new indoor cage for your parrot and then discovered that it sucks? I challenge anyone who has done that to refrain from complaining about it!
About 6 months ago, that’s exactly what happened to me. I decided to ‘upgrade’ my male eclectus parrot’s cage. Stainless steel cages aren’t readily available in Australia, so his old cage was a powder coated one. Unfortunately, they ...

 

Continue reading

Macaw with Psittacosis


Fid my Blue and Gold Macaw

 

My Blue and Gold Macaw named Fid joined my flock back in February this year. He went through the standard ‘new bird’ vet consultation and was diagnosed with psittacosis and an assortment of other much more minor problems.

When I last wrote about him, Fid’s was health was steadily improving and I’d finally solved the issue of his terrible sleeping habits and fear of the dark by giving him ...

 

Continue reading

Training a Green Winged Macaw to Hang Upside Down

When I began presenting the parrot shows, I was lucky that they had already been trained lots of behaviours and tricks – for example, I cannot take credit for teaching Ruby (7 year old Green-winged Macaw) how to ride a bike; all I had to learn was how to pick her up and put her on the bike, and how to turn the bike around with her sat on it!

Ruby, Green-winged Macaw, riding her ...

Read the rest or post a comment »

Continue reading

Telling The Difference Between Our Camelot Macaws

Photo provided by Mirror Lake Exotics
Location: Florida
Shown: 3 camelot macaws related “Tusa”, Unknown, “Comet”

Someone asked me recently how to tell the difference visually between our two camelot macaw brothers; Comet and Tusa.

 

When camelot macaws are bred, they come out in 3 color variations (shown above), either yellow-dominant, red-dominant or a blue/green-dominant. Our boys are the yellow-dominant (Comet) and the blue/green-dominant (Tusa). They are only days apart, and Comet is surprisingly the elder.

 

Read the rest or post a comment »

Continue reading

Starter Birds

pacific parrotlets

A questions that we often hear at Birdtricks is: “what is a good first bird to get?”. It’s a difficult question and one that I answer reluctantly. I will try to offer my opinion…

First, I want to say that I don’t really believe in “starter” birds. It is often said that a smaller bird is more suitable for the first time owner. I don’t entirely agree.

All birds are created equally. There is no one species of parrot that requires less care or commitment than the others. Every single species ...

Read the rest or post a comment »

Continue reading

The Funny Things Our Parrots Say!

Umbrella cockatoos

My birds don’t talk a lot, with the exception of Libby, my quaker, who won’t shut up. The problem is, she only has one thing to say, and says it over and over until I finally have to leave the room having run out of ways to respond to “How ya doin’?”.  Still, every once in a while, one of them will come with a doozie.

I used to come home from work everyday to a familiar: “Hi. How doin’?” from Linus, my umbrella cockatoo. Now it has ...

Read the rest or post a comment »

Continue reading