What Is a Good Summary About How It Is to Own Parrots (Macaws Specifically)?
29715768 - set parrots and parakeets

What Is a Good Summary About How It Is to Own Parrots (Macaws Specifically)?

I don’t know that there’s enough storage space on the Quora servers to answer this.

 

I read that parrots are loud, noisy, and messy – a lot.

Then again so are children.

Let’s start with a top-level explanation.

Pet people in the disciple category will always react negatively towards the word own preferring instead to call it pet bird companionship.

In reality, birds are the most owned pets we can have.

We have to lock them up in a bird jail.

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We’ve Learned How Much We Know and Don’t Know About Captive Bird Care After Taking the Exam
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We’ve Learned How Much We Know and Don’t Know About Captive Bird Care After Taking the Exam

Find the Birdy IQ exam here if you haven’t taken it

Of the first 170 exams we had a 25% pass with 75% correct answers to 44 multiple and true/false questions

Please share your comments below terms if you think this helped or did not.

What else would you like to see?

more questions and/or explanations to the answers.

Please comment below

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The Complete Guide To Understanding Sleeping Birds
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The Complete Guide To Understanding Sleeping Birds

Mitch,

Have you written about “bird sleep”? I watched an eagle chick go from hatchling to fledgling and during the process, both the chick and parents seemed to sleep only periodically, preening much of the night.

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The Secret of Do Birds in Cages Suffer All Their Lives?
selective focus of bright amazon parrot sitting in bird cage

The Secret of Do Birds in Cages Suffer All Their Lives?

I’ve often said the perfect size cage for a Green Wing Macaw is 30 acres. Many birds can and do suffer miserably in cages. There are ways we can offset the majority of the stress for our captive birds — but many of us do not.

Full transparency — I’m a companion to one Senegal parrot and four budgies. That in and of itself does not make me an expert. What makes me an expert in my 15 years of interacting with tens of thousands of captive bird owners while operating the Windy City Parrot website

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Does UV Light Really Help Produce Vitamin D3 in Birds?
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Does UV Light Really Help Produce Vitamin D3 in Birds?

Have you ever wished you could see the additional ultraviolet light spectrum that birds can?

I’ve been a strong proponent of using light cycles to interrupt the circadian rhythms of our pet birds 

I’m also fully convinced that no amount of artificial lighting over birdcage will help a bird produce vitamin D3 regardless of the lumens, quality of the ultraviolet spectrum emitted or the distance from the light source to the cage 

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The Bird of Time: Cognition and the Avian Biological (Circadian) Clock
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The Bird of Time: Cognition and the Avian Biological (Circadian) Clock

Front Mol Neurosci. 2012; 5: 32.
Published online 2012 Mar 22. Prepublished online 2012 Feb 1. doi:  10.3389/fnmol.2012.00032
PMCID: PMC3309970The bird of time: cognition and the avian biological clock
 
abstract

Avian behavior and physiology are embedded in time at many levels of biological organization. Biological clock function in birds is critical for sleep/wake cycles, but may also regulate the acquisition of place memory, learning of song from tutors, social integration, and time-compensated navigation.

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More About the Importance of Lighting for Captive Birds
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More About the Importance of Lighting for Captive Birds

Birdcage lighting for 3 parrots

 

Hi Mitch,

 

I am fairly new to reading your blog, so I hope I am not asking questions that are too redundant. I have three birds – an almost 4-year-old male Bodini Amazon, a 2-year-old male Blue-headed Pionus, and a feisty little female Parrotlet. I have two questions really.

 

First, I would like to know if what I am currently doing is adequate or not. My birds have their own room where their cages are. The room is furnished with a fountain, a tree, hanging toys, etc. – basically a parrot playground. There is only one overhead light in the room that is just an LED daylight bulb.

 

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Do Power Lines Affect the Health of Birds, When They Perch on Them?
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Do Power Lines Affect the Health of Birds, When They Perch on Them?

Questions about birds I answered on Quora the week of 3/13/17.

Do power lines affect the health of birds, when they perch on them?

I can’t speak to power lines but I know that Quaker parrots are colonial animals. They build large nests where a whole colony can live enabling them to survive brutal Chicago winters.

A heat source they seek out and build their nests in is electrical transformers. ComEd has access to a number of Quaker rescues who will come and get the birds when requested.

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