Why is it that some of us don’t trust a bird’s 99 million year old instincts to fly – but will trust a teenager to navigate a 3500 pound terrestrial vehicle at 60 MPH on a crowded highway – after 36 hours of classroom and road training?
The below video received 349,906 views on YouTube. We got 11,000 views in a week after placing this video on our Facebook fan page.
From the 11,000 views we received the following comments
Recently Science magazine ran an article entitled “Parrots, songbirds pack more neurons into their forebrains than most mammals”.
Now some scientists are saying that birds are way more intelligent than we ever thought because they somehow counted the total number of forebrain neurons – with soup (we’ll get to that in a bit)!
The study, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that 28 bird species have more neurons in their pallial telencephalons, the brain region responsible for higher level learning, than mammals with similar-sized brains.
How can you stop screaming–excessive (Question from Quora)
Screaming is never excessive for a bird – they are merely communicating, it’s what they do.
Before I can answer your question I need to know the species, age, sex, the diet and a picture of the cage set up if at all possible – thank you.
Hi Mitch,
Bubba is a 30 yr, old CAG (congo african grey). dna’d male on basically harrisons with nutriberries and healthy people food,.. I don’t know how to take a pix of his cage. 2x2x4 feet – 5 perches – all different materials. at least 5 toys I try to keep changed.
What kind of parrot should I get based on this schedule?
I wake at about 5:30 AM and get ready for school. At 7:25 AM I head off for school. After at about 2:00 PM I get back home for lunch and do what I want for 2 and a half hours. I then do homework for 2 hours and then dinner and 1 hour of anything.
I have recently purchased a new parakeet (Budgie)
As my beloved 7 yr old Sparky died. He is very young as the cere above his beak is just changing color from white to blue.
When I cover his cage at night he is on his top perch but when I get up in the morning Budgie is hanging upside down from the top of his cage. He has a perch high up but moves to the roof when I am sleeping. Any ideas?
Martie H
How long should it take for a Cockatiel to grow back clipped wing feathers?
I have a 7-month-old cockatiel, he’s super happy all the time and is “shedding” his down feathers constantly lately. The people we bought him from at about 2 to 3 months old were clipping his wings and he still hasn’t been able to fly properly. We keep him clean, happy, and healthy.
My answer
For the record, we are proponents of keeping birds flighted. But if a person loses a bird because it is flighted and they walked outside with the bird on their shoulder un-tethered – they are a dumbass.
Apologies in advance, I’ll be stepping on some toes here. But first I will man up and say I don’t have a good answer, here’s why.
Captive bird keepers regardless of their avian resume cite all sorts of, “facts”. Certain species mature at this age, other species mature at another age.
A question I ask rhetorically all the time is, “if we have all these facts at hand – THE right cage size – THE right perch size – that pellets are the ONLY food parrots should eat…
In that we know so much about birds with certainty, why has captive bird ownership in the US done nothing but decrease for the past 10 years while bird rescue populations have done nothing but rise?
By request from one of our Facebook fans, Teresa – we will start off talking about the Goffin cockatoo. Known formally as the Tanimbar Corella. These adorable little birds are about 12 inches long from head to tail.
The males weigh about 300 g (about 10 oz) and the females weigh about 50 g less. Like many other cockatoos they have a crest they raise and lower on top of their head.
As Cockatoos go, this one is a quieter Cockatoo which makes it a terrific pet. You have to be careful what you do in front of these birds like opening the cage latch because they will watch it and mimic it rather quickly.
Hi Mitch!
Any thoughts on clicker training? Any videos on your site for that?
Thanks ahead for any insight…
Rocco (Michael)