Yellow-Tailed Black Cockatoo. The youngest/newest member of my local wild flock.

There is a golden rule for Wildlife Rescuers in Australia. When you rescue an animal and rehabilitate it for release, it must be released back to the location where it was originally found. It’s actually illegal to release it anywhere else without a written exemption from the appropriate governing body. If you can’t release back to the original site and can’t get permission for an exemption then the animal is usually euthanized. It ...

I am loving this new series we have begun on sharing people’s success stories with the Bird Tricks’ training program. It is incredibly uplifting and inspiring to hear about more and more people realizing that having a bird is so much more than just something pretty in a cage to add to their household décor. This next story is particularly near to my heart as it’s a great example of my fervent belief that no matter what the start your bird has had in this life, no bird is untrainable – every bird deserves the opportunity to live an enriched ...

Morgy foraging on her zombie playstand.

In my last post, I mentioned that my Galah/Rosebreasted Cockatoo had suffered from something I called “learned helplessness”. I said how happy I was that she had taken possession of my new parrot stand because that’s a big deal when you have a bird like Morgy. A few people pounced on that and sent me questions saying that their birds also don’t play and should they be worried about that? How do ...

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The new bird stand that my flock got for Christmas

So I bought the world’s coolest parrot stand as a Christmas gift for my birds. I’d been looking for something like it for a long time. It’s a one-off find; there will never be another exactly like it again. It’s natural wood, well weathered with lots of nooks and crannies to hide things in. There are several places at different heights for birds to sit and it’s on wheels. There are plenty of bits ...

Every now and again, people write to me complaining that they have seen a photo of me with a bird on my shoulder. People tell me that I shouldn’t allow this. I’ve also had some negative feedback about perch location in some of my aviaries. Some of my perches are above my eye level. I am told that this is a terrible idea and very dangerous.

Now you’d think high perches and having a bird on your shoulder are completely different topics? I’m grouping them together because the ...

“I have adopted a male Eclectus parrot and I have a question about cuddling and petting. I have been very cautious about it so far because I have read that with their hair like feathers they don’t like to be pet like other birds. However, when he is relaxing with me he seems to want to cuddle and be pet, but I don’t want to upset him. I would like some advice about what he ...