Fid my Blue and Gold Macaw. He can open the fridge door, climb down the door shelves and steal any bottles that have screw top lids. He’s not worried about drinking the contents but all lids are HIS.

You know you’re in really serious trouble when you walk into your bird room and all of the birds stop what they’re doing and look at you in that way they do when they want to see if your head is going to explode? There is ...

Umbrella cockatoos may be quiet sometimes, but they have the capability to produce an ear-splitting scream like a dying, wounded animal.

We can’t expect our parrots to be quiet all the time. Many species are naturally noisy, such as sun conures, amazons or cockatoos. While we can train our birds that excessive screaming isn’t okay, I feel that it’s important to allow them to let off steam sometimes.

Enter the scream session…

Try making time for a sanctioned (and planned!) ...

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Blue and gold macaws

This summer I had the opportunity to meet Chris and Misty, a couple that Dave Womach worked with on a behavior consultation involving their moluccan cockatoo. They were at the Womach’s house graciously offering their time to disassemble some of the indoor cages for the Womach’s final move to Idaho.

In talking to them, I realized that Dave had managed to drive home a really important message during the consult. Chris said to me that he was relieved to find that the source of the problem was him ...

Can dogs, cats and birds live together?

Photos and videos of birds with other pets tend to start wars on social media. There are many people that swear their dogs and/or cats are best friends with their birds but there are just as many tragic stories where those friendships end in disaster. It’s a tough topic.

There are two main reasons to be concerned about letting your birds interact with your dogs and cats. The first and most obvious is the fact that you’re trying ...

Budgies

We may talk about large birds here a lot at Birdtricks.com, but the fact is that we are also small bird keepers and we have learned that the smallest of our birds sometimes occupy the largest places in our hearts. My cockatiels are beyond precious to me.

Something that really bugs me is when the small birds are treated like second class citizens. Even though the message about appropriate parrot diet and enrichment has reached more and more people, somehow the small birds are still being overlooked.

People getting larger birds are ...

My elderly galah, Cocky Boy is in position for my annual Christmas pic.

My birds aren’t getting a stack of awesome new toys for Christmas this year. Sounds a bit lousy of me, doesn’t it? I’ve got a good reason for this though.

Christmas is actually a very stressful time for a lot of pet birds. It definitely is for my flock. My extended family tend to descend on my house at Christmas for a large gathering. It doesn’t end there either. The day after ...