Cockatiel Tinky

Moving is just no fun. It doesn’t matter whether you are doing it yourself or hiring someone to pack and do all the heavy lifting for you, having your life in total disarray for even a short period of time is just maddening. Welcome to my world.

After searching, I finally found a place that will work for me and the birds. Even though I am the only human that will be in occupancy, I have five birds and four are different species which made finding the right space harder ...

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budgies

Q: My bird is sexually frustrated and tries to mate with my computer mouse or anything else about that size. Should I put a stuffed animal or something in his cage for him to get out his frustrations on?

–          H. Hirsch, Kettering, OH

A: This subject comes up several times a year. Many people are mistaken in their assumption that their birds are sexually frustrated and they wonder if they should get it a mate. In reality, doing so may actually make the problem much worse.
To explain ...

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 ...

Dear Birdtricks,

I got Lizzy (5 year old sun conure) when she was just a baby. We were inseparable for the first 4 years, but last year I got a new job that has me traveling several times a year. While I’m away, my husband and son take care of Lizzy for me. When I get back she treats me like a stranger – she won’t step up and sometimes bites me– I feel like she hates me! It takes weeks for me to win her back to being MY bird again. We go through this every time I go away. ...

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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