Umbrella Cockatoo, Goffin Cockatoo

We wear many hats as bird owners: we’re cooks, toy makers, housekeepers and behavioral analysts.  I once read: “Yur day job iz how ya ern muney, yur reel job iz to spend it on yur handsum burd”  by author Mango McCaw. If your parrot had to go out and find work (oh, the indignity!), what would he do?
I think this is what best suits my birds:

Goffin Cockatoo

Theo, goffins cockatoo, 24
I used to think of Theo ...

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Hyacinth Macaw

Hurricane season is beginning here in Florida, and forecasters are predicting an active season.  While I am located in central Florida and don’t expect to see the severe weather the coast might see, hurricanes do, in fact, travel inland. I grew up in the northeast and lived a good part of my life in Chicago so I am accustomed to severe storms and oceans of snow. The south offers some new challenges to which I don’t feel particularly accustomed.  The clouds, both here and in Texas, don’t seem ...

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Blue and gold macaw, Scarlet macaws

There are any number of things wafting through the air in a home where a bird lives.  Dust, dander, seed hulls and even airborne particles of dried poop occupy more than just the the immediate air space. It settles on and into everything creating the need for a higher standard of hygiene. Floor or ceiling fans and open windows seem to aggravate the problem more than solve it as it blows the settled dust back into the air.  Some of the better home ...

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The following are five things we all need to know how to do to give us the advantage in day to day life with our birds:

1. TARGET TRAINING

Target training might be one of the most important things you do with your parrot. This activity, which many parrots literally pick up in minutes, is the first step in training. The joy felt by both the owner and the bird during that first AHA! moment when it makes the association between the requested behavior...

For the tiny creatures that they are, parrots seem to have a lot of things, from cages to boxes of toys to dishes to perches and swings.  They dominate any home they occupy.  Here are 5 more things that you should not be without, or without access to, when you own a parrot:

1. GRAM SCALE
Birds are so good at masking an illness that there are few ways that we have to learn that something is wrong. One of those ways is by weighing them frequently. Because birds are so light, they must be ...

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Sprouts are the single most nutritious whole food you can feed to you parrot. The reason for this is that they are a living food. They are a plant in the progress of growth, and it just doesn’t get any fresher than that

With regards to produce, the term fresh is relative, unless they are coming straight from your garden. The vegetables and fruits we see in the supermarket are far from fresh picked. Once they are harvested, they are brought to a plant where they wait for processing and packaging.Then they wait for several ...

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