You may have noticed the “live help” tab at the bottom of the site coming on now and then: Here’s a “fly on the wall” look
Chatting with Guest (Egypt)
Mitch: Hello, how can I help?
Visitor: I brought 2 Indian parrots 6 months old yesterday.
Visitor: Yesterday they were nice but today they tend to bite so hard.
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.
Lovebirds are native to the African continent while the Gray-headed lovebird also known as the Madagascar lovebird comes from of all places, Madagascar. Lovebirds are known for their strong monogamous relationships and spend a lot of time being together wing to wing.
They are capable of having close relationships with people in addition to their chosen companion. They like to snuggle with people and quite often they will train their humans. You’re really better off spending short periods throughout the day with your lovebird rather than just one or two longer interactions, the way you would with a larger parrot. Lovebirds can be noisy but are not necessarily good talkers.
That is not really a fair question. The personality of a captive bird is determined by many factors and the environment that humans provide for them.
The bigger question is are we seeing the paratroop personality or does being a captain of birds change everything? In other words, would a bird be different in the wild than in captivity?
There is no single event, procedure, or training apparatus that will cause a bird to act like this or that, be an uncontrollable screamer, feather self-mutilation, or toe-tapper (a neurological issue in some Eclectus parrots).
Most people fail in raising captive birds because they don’t “speak bird”. It is essential to look at a pet bird holistically because every component of their life impacts their behavior.
Good morning and thanks for your time,
I enjoy reading your newsletters every Sunday, and I just knew yesterday, Sunday, I had to contact you. In short, my sweet female, 1.5 year old, sun conure decided to attack her sitter yesterday when she entered our home. Here is the scenario:
- We had three other people present whom she
Now, she did not attack her right away. Perhaps it was not intended to be attack mode. Once the sitter passed me and my bird Sofia, Sofia immediately flew towards her, the sitter, not expecting it, flailed her arms.
Hello, I have two Caiques. The first we have had for 6 years and is sweet mostly. The second, we introduced about 2 years ago. At first, the two about killed each other, but now they are friends.
However, the second caique does have an issue with wanting to be super nice to me and then all of the sudden out for blood. It goes for fingers, almost always. I am fairly sure it had a bad childhood and feel awful for it. It has some great times, but then sometimes will revert and attack. It goes in phases.
I am curious if you have any ideas of how to break this? Currently, to hold the bird or get it, most times I need to have a towel, which it is so smart to hold it’s wings out so I cannot wrap it up. It flips out from the towel also so I cannot grab it, always going for fingers and biting. Thank you for any information! Sometimes I’m at my wits end with this bird, but have been trying and trying to make it have a great life.
My name is MitchR. I am an avian influencer. Full transparency – my day gig is selling products just for pet birds – I spend approximately 20% of my work week scanning about 40 Facebook bird groups and niche (species-specific) forums like this. The content I write has one purpose which is to make you a better pet bird keeper.
I think serving dishes filled with any sort of commercial bird food without offering foraging and enrichment opportunities 24/7 in and out of the cage is the single biggest problem with getting our birds to eat properly.
Catherine,
Sorry for the delay. I had full intentions of providing you with my take on the African Red Bellied parrot several weeks ago and life got in the way. 🙂
First of all, let me introduce Pepper our two-and-a-half-year-old ARB. I am emphasizing two year old because we are going through what I can only hope is the terrible 2s stage and not a lifelong trait with him.
For a bit of history, this is not my first rodeo. I was very active in owning, caring, training, and taming parrots many years ago. I go back to the days when most were wild caught birds that required significant patience and attention.
I just love this time of year with my parrots. Currently, we’re singing and dancing to rambunctious Christmas carols while hubby wraps presents. It’s time to think about gift-giving for your beaked family.
Homemade toys are the answer, because, like me, you probably have lots of things around, like wrapping paper tubes to make into foraging toys. Husband wraps with the pretty foil paper which isn’t suitable for them.
Before iPods there were boomboxes. Before boomboxes, there were stereo radios. Precursors to phonographs were Victrolas.
But the way to get tunes in your home long before there was electricity was the natural sound of bird songs.
For years people would place a Canary or other singing finches in a small cage on either side of the room and whoever did that first can take credit for inventing stereo sound.
Canaries are small songbirds coming from the Finch family and were initially found in places like the Azores and believe it or not the Canary Islands.
