Blue and gold macaw

It seems to me that the people who have the most success with their parrots are the same ones who have evolved child rearing skills. The two jobs are, after all, very much alike. A good parent knows to encourage good behavior rather than expect it, because freedom of choice means that it can go either way.

I was recently having an online discussion with some other parrot owners about setting our birds up for success. One person was saying that she believed the best way to handle ...

Morgy in her sleeping cage.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blogpost about my galah Morgy, who had just been diagnosed with serious liver issues. At the time, the exact cause of her liver issues was unknown. There was a large question mark over whether or not it was cancer or maybe fatty liver? A biopsy would confirm, but she was in no state to cope with that procedure. She was already on a good quality diet and so her only ...

I received a request from a reader to do a post on this topic because people are unintentionally causing injury to their parrots with leg restraints and we hope that the following information might save a few lives.

Falconry is the keeping and training of birds of prey. It has been a popular hunting sport in some circles for a long time. In more recent years, it has become known to the mainstream, perhaps because of a rising public interest in birds of prey. Although I don’t have the ...

Moving is the worst. The packing. The chaos. The unpacking. The chaos. The only good thing about moving is the excuse it gives you to buy new stuff. Moving with parrots complicates matters even more and if you aren’t prepared, it can make things unnecessarily stressful for you and your bird.

It makes sense that a parrot would be uncomfortable with a move to a new location. They are a prey animal that must be very vigilant about their surroundings in order to avoid becoming some predator’s lunch. Familiarity would provide them with a feeling ...

Moluccan cockatoo on the road

Summer is the time when many people choose to do their traveling. The children are free from school commitments and the weather is more likely to remain suitable for a road trip. Why not load the kids and the dog into the RV and head out across country?

For we parrot owners, though, decisions like those are more complicated: what do we do with the bird?

On the one hand, there is the fear of boarding. Not only do we assume that we will spend the entire vacation ...

The padlock holding the food bowl door shut met an untimely death.

I was at the local hardware store replenishing my stock of padlocks (Fid my macaw killed my last spare) when I heard the word “macaw”. Naturally I found myself eavesdropping on the conversation that the three men nearby were having.

They were discussing a nearby robbery. One of them had a friend who owned a Blue and Gold Macaw. Apparently this friend lived just down the road and had been robbed a ...