I used be very intolerant of people who allowed their birds to escape. I saw this as the height of irresponsibility.  Then, three years ago, it happened to me.  It was a fluke accident.  My cockatiels were in a bathroom that was off of my bedroom and both doors were shut.  I had not fully latched the door to my bedroom and my cat pushed it open creating a series of incidents which resulted in one of my cockatiels escaping out of the open sliding door in another room. I was horrified.  I managed to track him to the ...

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Galah

I have a full time job which means I am out of the house for 10-11 hours, five days a week.  I worry sometimes that each of my parrots aren’t getting enough one on one attention from me.  Given that parrots need at least ten hours of sleep each day, there isn’t much time left in the day once I get home from work.  I have five parrots and this means that meal preparation and cleaning up after them needs to be worked into the schedule ...

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Toco Toucans

Crate training might seem easy… you get the bird and put it in the crate, right? Wrong. At least not with these birds.

These toucans were, again, wild caught so they came to the island very wild and very scared of people. Cathy was their main caretaker on the island who brought them their food and cleaned their cages, they began to become comfortable around her. Until one day they had a hurricane warning and HAD to get the toucans out of their cages and into crates for transport.

Originally, their travel cages they came in stayed in their new aviaries and they ate out of them all the time so it wasn’t a problem. However, it made a huge mess between left over food (as they were over feeding) and poop everywhere so it wasn’t done for long. When emergency time came, they chased the toucans all over the aviary until they were too tired to move from the ground and could no longer perch. This was recommended to them by a vet as a means of getting the birds in the crates… so for 45 minutes they chased the toucans over and over again in the aviary until they were limp in their hands and they could put them in the crates.

After that experience, the toucans never trusted anyone and this included the crates.

Dave and I were darn proud to have gotten them over such a huge hurdle in the beginning and have them eating out of anyone’s hands on the island as a sort of “excursion” people could do. But crate training in two days time? Yikes…

Yellow Budgie

Alright, so this isn’t prettiest topic, but it is one you should know your way around as a parrot owner.  Since birds so completely mask their illnesses, there are really only two ways we have to monitor their health at home.  One is by weighing them frequently, and the other is by watching the quality of their poop. Your parrot’s poop will remain fairly consistent as long as it is healthy.  It only takes me a couple seconds, several times a day to take a look at the ...

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Birds squabble, just like humans.  They get on each others nerves and will warn each other, in no uncertain terms, to back off! Even my cockatiels, who cannot bear to be apart from one another, get into it from time to time.  Sometimes a disagreement might escalate to raised wings and flared tails, but it is always peacefully resolved. There are times, however, when a war is waged that is unprecedented and, from our point of view, unprovoked:

A friend has, among many other species of parrots in her home, two amazons: a female aged 45, and a male aged ...

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