A subscriber from our Sunday Brunch writes

I recently adopted a 15-year-old Severe Macaw whose previous owner had a terminal illness.

I could tell the Macaw had been taken care of meticulously from the written records of her care from Hatch Papers to recent complete blood panels however I never had the opportunity to question the previous owner concerning details of ‘Bandit”.

I knew the moment I saw her that I wanted her as I owned a Severe 30+ years ago and have known several over the years but none as sweet as this little girl.

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and Parrots Don’t Use Napkins on Their Beaks – Does your parrot need a napkin? Why is he wiping his beak on his perch or cage bars?

Have you noticed that sometimes your parrot wipes his beak on his perch or cage bars? Do you wonder why this behavior happens and what it means? There are two reasons a healthy parrot does this behavior, so let’s look at each reason.

why do humans use napkins, not steel bars?

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When you are not with your bird, what quality of life do you provide it?

I’m lucky, I work from home and can spend more time with my birds than most people, but I also find that Mango, my tame, trusting conure, doesn’t want to be with me all the time.

And I have a rehomed budgie, Kiwi, that isn’t trusting due to his early life and Mango is teaching him how to be a bird at two years of age, things he should have been taught as a just weaned baby.

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Would you like your parrot to learn to talk or whistle, imitate sounds of any kind? If you haven’t been told yet, there is some bad news on that front: there is no guarantee that any bird of any species will ever learn to talk or make sounds. It just isn’t guaranteed.

If that is why you are adding a feathered companion to your home, then your motivations are wrong because even those parrots that do not speak add a lot to the lives of their owners —

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Accidents around the home are far too common when it comes to parrots. I have many years of experience and yet, I want to show you just how easily someone with my skill level can still allow something to happen that shouldn’t. This is how Mango lost a joint from his toe when he was very young.

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How a Lonely Little Understimulated Budgie is Learning to be a Bird

As many of our loyal Sunday Brunch readers know, Kiwi is a beautiful little yellow and chartreuse budgie who needed a good home and found me through Craigslist. My first parrot — yes budgies are small parrots — was a normal green female budgie named Sydney and since falling in love with her and spending every day of her 11 year life with her, I’ve always loved these tenacious little parrots. I even bred them for a while when I lived on the mainland where an outdoor aviary was practical.

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What you can learn from your bird’s droppings

You should become very aware of your companion bird’s poop because you can use them as a daily guide to your bird’s health. The parrots and soft billed birds we share our homes with are flock creatures and, like all flock mentality creatures, hide signs of illness until they are too ill to be able to hide it any longer. The first clue we have of illness or diet-related problem shows up in our bird’s poop.

Unlike humans, birds have only one opening in the body for allowing fecal matter, urine, and reproductive material (sperm and eggs) to exit, the cholaca. Inside the avian body, three distinct routes bring these types of matter to the cholaca for expulsion from the body. In this case, we will only be looking at droppings rather than the use of the cholaca for reproductive purposes.

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