If you own or are considering getting a parrot, there’s something you probably already know. Parrots are smart. Parrots are clever. Parrots are social creatures.
Imagine you were genetically programmed to spend your day looking for safe places to perch, searching for food, looking for places to bathe, and watching out for predators. Now, imagine all that work was taken away from you and…you had nothing to do all day.
Next thing you know, you are quietly going out of his mind.
When we keep a wild animal (yes, parrots are wild animals) in our homes, we have taken a lot of the daily activities away, and these birds may manage somehow or just be a bit bored, but they might be losing their marbles. They may start crushing their own feathers with their beak. They might go further and start pulling feathers out. Or, they might start chewing at their own skin, causing wounds.
Even if a parrot isn’t physically hurting himself, bored birds can suffer mental damage. BIRDS NEED THINGS TO DO!
I have a few clients who have a whole bird-safe room full of ropes and shelves and hanging baskets with items to explore. But most of us can’t set up such an elaborate Wonderland of Avian Amusement. We can, however, create a bit of activity and some entertainment.
Environmental Enrichment
- First, make sure your parrot knows how to play independently. It’s very tempting to take home a new parrot, snuggle the stuffing out of her for about 3 weeks, then your extended vacation ends and suddenly you just abandoned the baby with no instruction manual for her on what to do when you’re not home. Teach your bird early on how to play on her own. Give her things to do, play with her with some of her toys, then read a book while she plays. You’ll be doing her a huge favor.
- Provide foraging toys. These are toys that require your bird interact with them to get food or treats out. They come in “duh, any little bird could do that” to “holy crow, my Cockatoo just unscrewed three bolts and threw several latches to get to that Nutriberry treat!” levels of complexity. You can make a very simple “tootsie roll” style mini-project appropriate for any bird by taking some white 8×11 paper from your recycling, cutting into quarters, and using each quarter to roll up some food or a treat just like it’s a candy. Some more complex commercial foraging toys can be found at www.birdsjustwannahavefun.com.
- Audio Entertainment – well, who knows how our birds feel about hearing other birds talking, but we sometimes play a few hours of budgie calls for our hospitalized birds just to give them extra “company”. Best we can tell, they seem to like it. You can find many of these entertaining videos (with audio) for many different species on YouTube. Here’s one with some general bird sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6xBRts6J_E
And if you just want to be blown away by how smart our parrots are, watch this video of Alex the African Grey, who participated in language research for many years under the care of researcher Irene Pepperberg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXoTaZotdHg
Let’s keep our pet parrots from going bonkers and give them plenty of work to do! They’ll actually appreciate “going to work” each day.