Intelligent, devoted, alien – parrots are unlike any other pet
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They are indeed highly intelligent and social animals. It bonded with my dad the most. I was his second favorite. It didn't like anyone else.
As awesome of a species as they are, I can't help but feel guilty for keeping a bird caged and indoors their whole life. He definitely was neglected during the last few years of his life as it was almost like caring for a young child who never grows up. 20 years of that and you're going to be drained, especially as an older person with responsibilities.
Anyone thinking of getting a parrot as a pet, I strongly suggest you ask yourself. Are you willing to care for a bird who is as demanding as a young child, constantly, for decades?
The positive side is they do bring you closer to nature and enrich your life in ways you couldn't imagine.
Parrots are wild birds, they have not been domesticated for ten thousand years like dogs, and it is probably not humane to keep them in a cage. If you want a happier parrot, then get a breeding pair. They won't be as affectionate their owner though, as they have a mate.
Make messes of all sorts of shit (sometimes literal), and make noise, which carries multiple emotional and logistical concerns.
It was very hard for me to endure the constant noise (never ending screeching) which felt like Chinese water torture. That bird drove me absolutely insane over time. To me it felt like the bird was so loud exactly because it was incredibly intelligent but it used that intelligence to be jealous and protective and the intelligence was probably the cause of its unhappiness (since it knew it was in a cage).
My wife loved that bird to bits but to me it felt like I was taking care of a disabled child that is not mine (bonded with my wife only) and which would never grow up. It became more nasty and mean to anyone except my wife even it was hand-fed as a chick. Knowing nothing about birds when we got it I thought I'd be able to manage it (after all I grew up around cats, dogs, and farm animals so how hard could it be looking after another animal?). But it just got worse and worse and still is horrific today. I am no longer with my ex and that bird was at least 20% reason of why I could no longer live under the same roof.
Seriously don't get a bird unless you have lived with it for a couple of months. Once you have done that think of what it would be if you live with it in a more stressful period of your life ... Could manage that animal at a time when you are looking after your new born children? When you are up to your elbows in baby diapers and chronically sleep deprived?
After seeing this animal in captivity for so long I have grown somewhat disgusted with the idea of birds as pets. I guess it takes a very special breed of people to keep birds and be OK with it: The type of people who see a bird and go: "You see those beautiful creatures that are able to fly. Yeah, I'm going to make them stop do that."
I know I have heard it before somewhere but I forgot.
They bond with humans just as humans bond with each other. So they really do become almost like a family member. Because of their intelligence, it's not just like having a dog who you can throw a ball and walk down the block.
I suggest reading and watching videos of Alex the African Grey. Really eye-opening into the learning abilities and reach of intelligence which birds possess.
Unless of course you keep a single hand raised parrot in a small cage and don't much care about its well being. Then they make fantastic pets.
As with dogs, they're terrific if they have a good owner and absolute horrors if they don't.
Also destroyed all of my headphones.
There are also little things that mean a lot, at least to our parrot: at meals, if our food is not healthy for a parrot, one of us will put something good for him on our plates, and we always make a show of 'sharing' something on our plates with him. This communal eating seems to be important to him.
Another thing that seems to make him happy is to sit on my shoulder while I am working at my computer. He is not really a distraction and he seems to enjoy it. I try to cook with him on my shoulder but he wants to rummage through food ingredients laying about.
Yet another thing to do is understanding the bird's natural desire is to forage for food. What to do? Hide food and let him find it.
EDIT: I should also say that whenever someone likes our bird and talks about getting one, I try to talk them out of it. It takes a lot of effort to have a parrot and if that effort, over several decades, is not a lot of fun for you then getting a parrot is a bad idea.
My point is though that keeping single parrots in cages which are too small makes them a lot easier and cheaper to keep. Less area to clean, less potential for destruction, and single birds engage more with their Humans. It's just not really a situation were they thrive.
I won't go into why the scientific consensus is that parrots need conspecific companions. But it's not so much about being happy or bored, but more about meeting social needs and exhibiting the natural behaviors.
/s
Budgies love their cages. They clean them, they rearrange them, they make them into a perfect environment in any way they can. Introduce something they don’t like and it’ll end up on the floor. Introduce something they do like and they’ll probably move it because they weren’t happy with the placement.
With the pair I have currently, the whole front of their cage opens up and I open it every day. Usually the male has a five minute fly around the room, lands on the cage, then climbs back in. The female usually doesn’t even bother because she’s far too occupied with housekeeping and making angry noises because he’s not with her.
I can’t speak for the larger parrots having never looked after any, but budgies love their cages.
Perches/twigs taken from live trees. I have hazel and apple in the garden so that’s what they usually get (and destroy) but check the wood is OK for budgies before giving it to them. All parrots love destroying things, and providing perches to strip is a good way to satisfy this urge without letting them eat an entire sheet of sandpaper. Basically just throw suitable foliage in there and they’ll find something to do with it.
Swings of any variety. You can make them from thick metal wire (thick enough that they can’t twist it themselves), optionally with a wooden perch part or make the whole thing from wire.
Ladders!
Small mirrors with caution, and not if you’re trying to tame them. They may “redistribute” food onto the mirror for their inverted friend. Interestingly in my current pair the female seems to pass the mirror test and the male doesn’t!
Bells, but make sure they can’t pull the clapper out and potentially swallow it. One of my previous budgies used to hit the bell, then was annoyed by the sound and so would attack it. The sound then obviously got louder and she would attack more violently, and so she kept herself occupied for quite a while.
It’s also nice to give them something to bathe in, which they may or may not take to. It needs to be a very shallow plate of water, and don’t just leave it in the cage or they will defacate it in and drink it afterwards.
They need cuttlefish bones and iodine blocks for bird health. Unlike dogs they won’t overeat, so even if you put lots of millet (budgie junk food) in there they will stop when they’re full. Useful if you’re leaving them for a couple of days because you can just provide extra food.
And definitely go for a big cage. My pair is in a 2'x2'x4' cage, and I feel it's probably too small for them. They spend their days outside of it, of course. And I only clip their wings when I need to travel with them (moving from one house to another).
Don't overfeed seed. Pelleted foods are a good base, but provide fresh fruit & vegetables daily.
I’ve never clipped but I totally understand. I just cover them up and remove swings but driving with a spooked budgie isn’t fun.
Fresh fruit and veg are always there, shouldn’t have omitted that. Millet OD is only if I’m leaving them unsupervised for a weekend which is very rare, but they are very sensible with how much they eat.
Last year we lived in a rental with a decent beach view. One afternoon our parrot spotted a kite surfer near the beach, and full-on froze rigid for 10 minutes until it went away.
We guessed that she thought it was some kind of massive hawk. Poor girl, must have been terrifying. Haast Eagle has been gone for a long time, but she doesn't know that.
For anyone with such pets, please don't drop your guard down, especially if you love your pet like a member of the family. Predators such as hawks and the occasional coyote or bobcat do roam cities and are closer to us than we're aware.
True that. I had a cat who was very good with dogs - it became an outdoor cat over time. Then one early morning, in the driveway right outside our bedroom window we heard a terrible fight which turned out to be a coyote trying to kill/eat our cat. I got out there in time to run the coyote off, but the cat died in mine and my wife's hands minutes later.
That morning I taught my daughter how to bury a pet which was incredibly tough, heart wrenching experience - but that's how closure works I guess.
We've had another great, sweetheart of a cat for years now - and she's also amazing with dogs. I still find myself waking up in the night to check that she's in the house.
PS. I don't blame the coyotes.
I may add that I too kept a budgie for 13 long years.
You said you kept “a” budgie. They are highly social creatures and do not like being kept alone.
The fact that captive animals can adapt to their cages, like a man does to prison, doesn't mean this is good for them nor that it's justifiable. And unlike a man, a captive-raised animal cannot comprehend anything else. You have chosen that life for them and are justifying it.
As for my singular budgie: one outlived the other by many years.
Sure, we should have gotten a pair, but these animals are not meant to live in little cages. Yes, some can be content, especially in pairs. But it's fundamentally unnecessary to keep them in cages like that.
Would they return to their cage if it was opened outside? IME very few would.
I much prefer doing things like feeding wild birds, this has all the benefits of bird ownership with none of the down sides. In time their friendly enough to to pat and nag when it's dinner time.
I also feed wild birds. Everyone should. After having to bury a whole clutch of sparrow fledglings a few months ago after a cat got the nest I’m pretty sure my budgies - spending the entire day happily grooming each other, playing with toys, and enjoying unlimited free food - have a better time than them, though.
As a child, I had a lone female budgie. She was completely tame - almost "post-tame" to the point that she knew you weren't a threat so was quite OK with biting you to make a point if you tried to get her to do something like the perpetual ladder game. I'd get back from school and she'd sit on my shoulder all evening chuntering into my ear.
When I started my degree she - age 10 - had to move on, so I gave her to a friend to look after. The friend had, until recently, had a pair of budgies, but sadly was left with just the male. Upon introduction the two lone budgies bonded immediately in a completely heartwarming display. She lived for 2 more years happily with her new mate, and I always felt guilt for keeping her on her own all that time.
Fast forward to now and I have two budgies together, and they're really happy. They're all over each other all day. They have arguments, and they work through them, and they end up smooching and grooming and feeding each other again. They're so loving they're gross.
But do I think my first budgie was unhappy? No, I don't. She was fine, she just identified with people for most of her life.
Then, do I think these budgies as a couple are happier than she was? Yes, I think they probably are.
Ultimately it's up to you and how you want to care for the bird. If you want a super tame bird and you think you can provide enough time for them that they won't be lonely, you can make the decision to get a single budgie. If you want them to be able to have fun on their own when you're not there, get a pair - because then they don't need you.
Both of my current budgies are finger tame, but for them interacting with humans is mostly an annoyance. They will get curious and start chatting with you if you come to the cage, and they will get on your hand - but if they hear the other budgie that takes priority. One thing I haven't tried is getting two young birds and taming them independently before introducing them to each other...
Cage size I think within reason the bigger the better. Tall thin cages work well if your space is restricted, since vertical space is usually more readily available.
But if they're home alone for most of the working day or otherwise kept in their cage most of the time minus an hour or two I would get a pair.
Not to be insensitive, but this is a fallacious conclusion. The lab I worked at did fatal experiments on rodents who were also kept in cages. Some of them were known to personalize their cages after they were rearranged by humans. Human prisoners are known to do the same thing to their cells. Many inmates fill their cells with personal belongings and arrange things until they are satisfied. We can't really conclude that rats, inmates or budgies love their cages.
Eventually a limiting environment can start to feel like home. It's possible that the animal would choose to stay in a limiting environment as opposed to being released in the wild, because they are literally unfit for the wild.
Yeah, either them or hypocrites who do.
>Budgies love their cages.
Relatively to being free? Or you just mean they keep them tidy, decorate them, and generally make the best of a bad situation?
My wife and I have an Timneh African Gray parrot and she is basically our child and who we miss most on vacation.
Unlike the typical Congo African grays on the market, Timnehs are smaller, and tend to enjoy spending time with just about anyone but trust/recognize their regular keepers the most. They tend to make better family pets. (Congos can also be worked with to trust more than one person but it is typically much harder)
She is not clipped and has free reign of the apartment when we are home with perches (and poop trays) everywhere she knows to fly to (usually). We also do flight training and often take her with us on walks. She is a very capable flier as she demonstrated in her 3 day adventure outdoors looking for my wife (who was out of town).
She is slightly evil and plots ways to get attention. She gets very jealous of anything we give too much attention to other than her and has thus destroyed 2 laptops. We named her GlaDOS.
Grays are known to do contextual communication and not just random mimmicry. Ours is no exception. When we come home she yells "Hello?!?!" until we take her out. When she wants to cuddle (which is often) she makes a stomach grumbling noise and demands to be let under the covers where she learned said noise.
We have had guests feed her treats since she was a baby so she readily flies to the shoulder of most people.
Sometimes she will randomly look at you and say "What do you do?!".
They are not for everyone but if you have want a small highly intelligent animal you can form a strong bond with and are prepared to look after for 40+ years then parrots make amazing family members.
Did you teach the words?
I love them and wanted them as a pet but after reading up on it, so does a huge amount of other people for such little supply of African Greys. I've decided to stick to domestically bred pets now.
Sadly, African Greys may head for extinction in the wildlife like the dodo.
DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. To acquire a parrot is a major decision: it is likely to outlive you. If you don't know how to treat the parrot, it could be emotionally scarred and spend many decades feeling frightened and unhappy. If you buy a captured wild parrot, you will promote a cruel and devastating practice, and the parrot will be emotionally scarred before you get it. Meeting that sad animal is not an agreeable surprise.
Plus they are so unbelievably smart, as in significantly smarter than a very young human, and think of how much trouble little humans get into when bored! He was a good boy though, incredibly loving, and in the 99% of times we could meet his needs very happy. We’d run around for a couple of hours in a nearby mountain wilderness, then go home and take a nap together.
A good boy. I miss him.
Starting with an ultimatum and then immediately undermining it with an “unless” seems counterproductive. I wish people would realise that not every comment has to begin or end with a sensational assertion.
After he died, it was always a bit weird to visit my grandmother as, for the remainder of his life, the parrot (whose name I cannot recall) would hack away in precise imitation of the cough which killed our old grandpa.
Parrots truly are unlike any other pet.
Imprinting on Humans should be avoided at all cost, even at the expense of diminished tameness.
Behavioral problems in parrots seem to be the norm rather than the exception. Add to that the destructive nature of the parrot pet trade, and you get one nightmare of a pet.
I'm already planning a gigantic indoor aviary build to give her more freedom during the day when we're both working, but companionship is it's own huge problem for such intelligent (and more importantly I think, emotional) creatures.
If only we could converse with them.
— Julia Segal (@juliasegal)
Fun fact about parrots, they can teach another parrot to talk, but that parrot can't teach another.
Also don't consider getting a parrot unless you understand it is a 30-50 year commitment that takes active daily social interaction. They are great but they are a big commitment.
Side note, it tooke twenty years to actually witness him sleeping.