Q:  I have a 2 year old blue and gold macaw that is very sweet and has never bitten me.  I heard recently that at some point my bird will bite me.  Is this true?

-Mary, Springfield, IL

A:  This is a great question and an important topic for new bird owners.  Unfortunately, the answer to your question is most likely ‘yes”.  Parrots may bite for a number of different reasons ranging from fright to fear to aggression, with a host of different possibilities in between.  What is more important than the bite itself, is why it happened and how it can be avoided.

Biting is a natural tendency for a bird.  The birds in our homes today are only about 3 generations removed from the wild.  Dogs and cats have been domesticated over hundreds, even thousands, of years by breeding out undesirable characteristics through many, many generations.  We are a very long way away from that with our parrots.  There are many wild caught birds in captivity today.  Even our young captive-bred birds have parents or grandparents that were wild caught.  They are wild animals with their wild instincts still intact.

Birds interact with each other using their beaks in feeding, preening and as warning.  It makes sense that they would use their beaks in their communications with us as well.  However, as natural as a bite might be, it is completely unacceptable, with the one exception of when the bird is falling and grabs onto you to right itself.  It is never okay for your bird to bite you just because that’s what birds do.  It IS up to us to pay attention to the clear warnings that they give telling us that they are unhappy, and to not allow an atmosphere in the home that causes them to feel fear and the need to lash out.

A bite can often be avoided by watching body language for signs of aggression and observing and removing things or situations which trigger fear or anger related bites.  Sometimes, though, we  encounter situations that we can’t foresee, such as the backfiring of a truck that might startle a bird into biting.  If you carry your bird on your shoulder, you don’t want to be in between him and what has startled him.

When birds reach sexual maturity, their temperaments sometimes change.  Additionally, hormones make some parrots aggressive and excitable during this time of year, and they can be quite unpredictable.  To avoid being bitten, I avoid handling mine when they are in a mood like this.

Watch and get to know your bird, and continue to learn as he grows and changes. If you take the time to understand and teach him what is and is not acceptable, and treat him with the respect he deserves, your altercations should be minimal.  I have a goffins cockatoo that has never bitten anyone in her 24 years.

If you are experiencing a biting problem with your parrot, BirdTricks has a course that will help.

There are countless sources of information about parrots online.  There are online forums and web pages that are dedicated solely to the specific bird you are looking for.  There are sites for conures, macaws,  cockatoos, eclectus, you name it.  Within each group you can learn the habits of the individual species.

The behavior differences between a macaw and a cockatoo are enormous, but even within a family of birds, different species behave differently.  For instance, the goffins cockatoo species is entirely different from the umbrella cockatoo.  Then when you throw in the independent personalities of each bird, there’s a lot to consider before you buy.  If you do your homework by looking into the natural inclinations and behaviors of a species that you are interested in, you are less likely to have a parrot that doesn’t fit in your household.

Ask yourself these question.  Within each question are more question to break it down further.  I will use a “typical” african grey as an example of how this species might or might not work in different households:

1.  Which parrot will fit with my my lifestyle?

• Do you live in a noisy, chaotic home that is filled with children and other pets? This may not be the best environment for the typical african grey, which has a tendency towards fearfulness.  A calm home that is not full of surprises is a better match.
• Do you live in an apartment or have neighbors in nearby? Since they are not considered to be loud parrots, african greys are great apartment birds.  This is not to say that they can’t raise the roof, it’s that they generally don’t choose to.  Be prepared for morning and evening vocalizations with whatever species you select.
• Do you work out of your home? This is the ideal situation for an african grey.  Since they are quiet(ish) as parrots go, you can go about your paperwork and phone calls without much interruption.  And your bird will get to have you around all day!

2.  What kind of owner am I going to be?

• Are you looking for a bird that might talk? Needless to say, the african grey is at the head of the classwith its ability to talk and comprehend.  Know, however, that yours may not.  Some prefer to imitate sounds  like the telephone, car alarms, kitchen timers, dripping faucets, and the alien spacecraft that apparently landed in your backyard recently.  (Half the fun in this is trying to identify the sounds and figure out where he picked them up.)
• Do you want a bird that enjoys being handled? Not all greys like to be handled. While there are some snugglers out there, this is not a typical trait.  Some prefer to watch from a distance.
• Will you make time to devote to a pet that requires a lot of care and interaction in order to thrive? The african grey is very intelligent and perceptive, perhaps even hyper-aware of its environment.  It requires a lot of interaction and needs to be included in the life and energy of its owner.
• Can you bring up a parrot the right way? African greys are are no different than other species in their need to be well-adjusted.  How your bird behaves in general depends on being taught him how to play independently to occupy his time on his own.  A parrot that feels bonded to its people, and has a sense of security, will find no need to play attention getting games.

There are many more questions to ask with regards to your environment and level of care you are willing to give.  There are some situations that are preferred for this particular species, but it will vary from bird to bird.  I know greys that are quite outgoing and love a house filled with craziness.  I know one that has never uttered a word or imitated a sound.  Some prefer multi-bird homes, others prefer to be the only child.  Your birds personality plays a big role in how well it will adapt, but knowing the probabilities will help you make the right selection.

After you’ve done all your research and found a great species match and your cockatoo turns out not to be a snuggler, or your cockatiel  prefers to hang out in its cage instead of in the family room, will you be accepting of that?

With springtime fast approaching, we have to be on the lookout for “quirky” behaviors that are related to onset of hormones.  I have often compared hormonal parrots with teenagers.  They both know what is right or wrong in terms of their behavior, but neither seem to be able to control themselves at times when hormones are involved.  Your once placid parrot may overreact to things that he would normally overlook, and he might express himself with aggression.

Linus, my umbrella cockatoo, always seems to be walking a fine line when he is excited.  Throughout the entire year, I have to carefully watch his body language to make sure his play doesn’t escalate into aggression.  He gets to a point of excitement where he seems to lose control, and is quick to bite.  It really appears to be temporary insanity.  Sometimes he seems as shocked by his actions as I am, and he quickly tries to make amends by doing something cute.  Or he walks away grumbling something along the lines of: “Look what you made me do!”

Linus is not a bad bird.  He is typical of a cockatoo in every way, except he has a bit of an edge.  Over-stimulation is something that affects all species of birds.  I bring it up now because it is a behavior that is exaggerated by hormones this time of year.

How much is too much for our parrots?

The signs of an over-stimulated bird look very similar to typical signs of aggression, but they are easy to confuse with a bird that is excited by play. A parrot that is playing hard will have raised feathers, pinned eyes and a fanned tail at times.  Since these are also the signs of an angry bird, the best way to figure out if your bird’s mood is by assessing how it is responding to you at that time.  A playing bird will encourage you to join in the fun, or at least want you as an observer.

For instance, when I get on the floor and roll a ball to Linus, he might grab the ball, throw it over his back and run after it.  He’ll look at me to make sure I’m watching.  He’ll grab the ball, run back and forth with it and then drop it.  He’ll look at me to see that I am watching and cheering him on.  Then he’ll grab the ball, bang it on the floor a few times, maybe smack it into the wall, and then stop to see that I am paying attention.  This is a happy-excited bird, who is behaving in an interactive way with me.

However, the tone can change quickly.  I will retrieve the ball and toss it to him again and he will go through his repertoire of moves.  After doing this several times, he becomes possessive of the ball, and is no longer including me in play.  He is now eying me wearily and is taking the ball in a direction away from me.  If I approach him, he takes on a defensive stance and might hiss at me.  It is a perplexing behavior, and frustrating to say the least.  Playtime comes to an abrupt halt.

What could I have done differently to avoid over-stimulation?

The first and most important thing to remember is that your bird keeps a scorecard.   The card has two categories:  good experiences and bad experiences.  Any time something unpleasant happens, he puts a note under bad experiences.  When that column is full, behavior problems begin, even if there are an overwhelming amount of entries in the good experiences category, and even if the bad experiences are brought on by himself.  Any experience that is perceived as negative, regardless of our level of involvement, can be related back to us, so we want every interaction to have a positive conclusion.

That said, we need to halt the escalation of a potential problem BEFORE we get there.  Knowing Linus has a short window for play, I should have stopped the game while it was still fun and interactive.  There’s nothing really gained by continuing until the bird is tired or bored with the game anyways.  Keeping him wanting more will only make it that much more fun the next time.  I should have stopped after a few tosses of the ball, and moved onto something different.  Once I am able to notice subtle changes in tone and attitude, the game is already over.

How do I handle my bird once he has reached the point of aggression?

Usually, over-stimulation is easy to calm.  Remember that it was just seconds ago that the two of you were having fun.  I find that lowering levels of excitement and speaking in quiet tones gets the job done quickly.  Parrots are quick to match our energy levels.  Since your bird is just high-strung at the moment, and you have not committed an atrocity for which you must be repaid, a parrot will generally relax quickly.  A period of quiet cage time is a good idea at this point, not as punishment because he’s done nothing wrong, but to maintain calm and assure his level of stimulation has lowered.  Playtime can resume, more carefully, in a while.

My work days are sometimes very long and it often feels like bedtime the minute I get home.  I want to have plenty of time to spend with my birds since that is the highlight to my days.  Bird related chores and meal preparation sometimes cuts into our fun-time so I try to get these things done with the most efficiency possible.

I want my birds to have fresh foods everyday, but there are some mornings when I know that I will be running against the clock and 20 or so  minutes of washing and chopping just won’t fit into the schedule, especially when the chopping has to accommodate 4 different sizes of birds.  These are the days when I have to rely on what I have in the freezer.  I try to always have a stock of frozen meals prepared that require only that I remember to put them into the refrigerator for thawing the night before.  Not only do these meals offer convenience and big savings, but they add variety to the menu.

15 Bean Soup Mix: In the dried bean section of your supermarket, you will find 20 oz packages of 15 bean soup mixes.  It makes an awesome slow cooked soup.  Quite often, though, I will buy a package that I use only for the birds.  The greatest thing about these packages is it gives me a huge variety of beans in a not so huge quantity – just enough to cook and freeze without any spoilage.  The packages contain different kinds of kidney, lima, black, navy, and pinto beans, split peas, black eyed peas, lentils and more.  I soak the beans overnight, rinsing a few times before I go to bed and then again in the morning.  I fill the pot up with fresh water and cook them for about 40 minutes until they are tender.  Small birds have no trouble biting into the whole cooked beans.

Multi Veggie Chopped Mix: You can get really creative with this.  With a small food processor and a variety of raw veggies you can make the most nutritionally complete and economical meals for your birds.  Simply mince the foods and put them into a fine mesh strainer so that excess liquids can drain out (it will freeze and keep better).  There is no limit to the number of veggies you can use in a single batch, in fact, the more the better.  Sprouts and cooked grains also mix in perfectly. Try adding parsley, carrot tops and cilantro…use your imagination!  The more things you add, the better balance this diet will offer.

The best thing about this mix is that since the foods are chopped so small, they will often eat things they didn’t intend to because the foods will cling to one another, which will sometimes add a new option for foods they will eat and enjoy.  And it’s cut small enough to work for any sized birds from a parakeet to a macaw. I have a couple of birds that don’t care for celery, green peppers, or garlic.  I  don’t add these to the mix, only because they are so strong in flavor that they tend to permeate the rest of the mix and have caused these birds to turn down the entire meal.  Sometimes I will freeze these foods separately for those who appreciate them.  I know many people who serve their chopped mix everyday.  If your parrots love it, it will provide them with a nutritious and varied meal.

Freezing And Thawing The Meals: A Seal-A-Meal type of vacuum sealer works great for these meals, but Ziplock freezer bags work fine too.  Since my birds all get fed the same thing everyday, I put enough into each bag to serve them all, but the serving sizes can vary however you need them to.  As I mentioned, the dryer the chopped mix is, the longer is will last in the freezer, so drain it well before bagging it.

As long as you get as much air out of the bag as possible. the meals will last 3-6 months in the freezer.  The trick is to remove as much air from the bag as possible to avoid freezer burn.  Linus, my umbrella cockatoo, bit through the cord of my unplugged Seal-A-Meal a couple of years ago and I have yet to replace it.  So I resort to a trick my mother taught me years ago, although, I laughed at the time.

When I was a kid, my parents had a deep freezer, which is a freezer that maintains a temperature below 0 degrees, as compared to the  below 32 degrees that regular freezers are kept at.  Being one of six kids, my parent learned to shop economically, buying larger quantities of food for less and storing it in the deep freezer.  Since, unlike the freezer in the kitchen which was opened and closed constantly, the deep freezer was only opened for the retrieval of food for dinner, and everything kept beautifully.

Long before the invention of vacuum sealers, my mom figured out that the foods kept better if air was eliminated from the bags.  I remember watching her process of preparing the food for the deep freeze.  She would seal off a plastic bag, except for about a 1/2 inch in the corner, with the edge of a  cool iron.  Then she inserted a straw, sucked out the air, and managed to seal off the remaining 1/2 inch without letting more air into the bag.  Pure genius.  Of course, her technique was revised with the invention of  Ziplock bags.  As much as I giggled at her, it worked, still does.  Of course, you have to be careful to suck the air out, and not blow your germs in all over the food!

She also taught me to wash and reuse the Ziplock bags.  I go through a number of them, and this alone has saved me a ton of money.  Just be sure to dry them thoroughly before your store them for re-use.

Thawing your parrot meals is easy.  Just take the bag and place it in the refrigerator overnight.  The pieces are tiny and will thaw quickly, even in the fridge, and once thawed they will keep there until you serve them in the morning.  Sometimes, I will pop them into the microwave for a few seconds to take the chill off.  Make sure you stir the mix or beans up well so there are no hot spots.

Less time we spend in the kitchen means more time for fun with the birds!

I wrote an article a while back on the devastating parrot disease PDD (Proventricular Dilation Disease).  Since that time there have been great strides made in the testing process for this disease and some new discoveries about PDD in the environment.  This is great news for parrots owners, since testing for the disease in the past has been very invasive, dangerous, and costly.  More recently, researchers developed a test that didn’t require a biopsy of the crop, but these test result were proving to be unreliable.  This is no longer the case.

At the recent Houston Parrot Festival, Dr. Sharman Hoppes from Texas A&M shared with the public more information on testing and dealing with the virus.  Recent updates include:

PDD in the environment:  While PDD does permeate the environment and is highly contagious, UV light kills it.  This means that to eliminate the disease in the environment, NOT the bird, we will roll our cages and toys out into the sunlight. This an amazing finding, proving once again that there is nothing quite as healing as sunshine!

Testing accuracy: Crop biopsies had been our chance to properly diagnose this disease, but are only 65% accurate.  Serological testing (blood serum) now has a 90% accuracy rate.  Fecal tests are also proving to be of value.  In a small study, the testing of a fecal sample three weeks in a row came back with accurate results.  The tests were done on droppings, meaning a vent swab is not necessary.  There is a need for further study before this is considered a reliable means of testing, but it looks promising.

Collecting specimens for testing: A very small study has shown that a fecal sample is best kept refrigerated, or in saline.

This is a huge advancement in a disease we know little about.  I’ll continue with updates as information becomes available.

Studies are showing that parrots bred in captivity are not living as long as they used to.  It seems impossible to me.  With all the advancements in avian sciences and medicine, with the increased numbers of avian certified vets, with all the information available out there on the internet, how can this be??

Up until as late as the early 90’s, the parrot owning general public had only the advice of pet store employees on how to care for their new birds.  All seed diets, with the occasional table scraps, were routinely recommended. Parrots were kept in tiny cages and offered little, if any, mental stimulation.  We had no understanding of the dangers of metal toxicity or the benefits of sunlight, and vets treated birds with medications intended for cats and dogs.  We had virtually no information about the wild habitats and behaviors of commonly kept species.

I understand how some  parrots fared badly in human care during those days.  Some of the longer lived parrots that survived their all seed diets, are paying the price for this ignorance with poor health now.  Some of the sharper owners applied common sense and gave their bird a healthier, more active life than was the norm.  Still, there were no guidelines to follow and there was a lot of “winging it”.  But that is not an excuse today.

So, given the glut of great information available to parrot owners, new and old, how can we be taking such a huge step backwards? I spent quite a while on line trying to find answers, but there really aren’t any at this time.   So I gathered the opinions of some very trusted sources on what might be some causes and these are what made sense to me:

The Pelleted Diet:

This portion of a parrot’s diet is very misunderstood.  People who own other animals will go to the supermarket and buy a 50lb bag of Purina whatever Chow, pour it in a bowl and consider their animals fed.  I wonder how many parrot owners are doing the same thing with their birds.  For the lazy owner, pellets are ideal, no muss, no fuss.  I think, though, that we may be leaning on them to heavily in our parrot’s diet.

I want to point out that I am not anti-pellets.  I offer them everyday.  I do fault the manufacturers who claim their pellets to be a complete diet.  They are not, and the uneducated owner might believe this claim.   Parrots are not at all like cats and dogs in their dietary requirements and MUST have fresh foods, which are the only foods that contain the ingredients that help fight disease and sustain good health in old age, and not just keep a bird alive.  To my way of thinking, pellets are a supplement to a fresh food diet.

For the best and 100% organic pellet that can help your parrot live longer, try Feed Your Flock organic parrot pellets. They come with a homemade recipe from Chet and Dave Womach of birdie bread muffins with the organic pellets incorporated in, that will have your parrot drooling for more!

Poor Breeding Practices:

Disreputable breeders have been around forever.  However, with parrots now being the third most popular pet, they are in a particular hurry to “crank them out”.  Aside from the breeder parents being in poor health, another age old problem is in the practice of in-breeding (mating of parents to sibling or sibling to sibling) and line-breeding (mating of relatives outside the immediate family: uncles, nieces, grandparents etc), which if carried out over a series of generations will lead to health issues and odd characteristics.  Breeders have been doing this for a long time, but with the increase in consumer demand, it may very well be happening in much higher numbers.

Lack of Exercise:

Birds are meant to fly.  Everything in their physiology screams this, from their feathers to the their hollow bones to their uniquely designed respiratory system.  But we discourage this behavior, and often clip their wings.  Sometimes the safety of a bird in the home requires clipping, since so many accidents occur as parrots fail to navigate windows and mirrors.  What are we doing to makeup for the loss of this natural ability in terms of exercise?

Obesity is one of the most common parrot health issues today, and is usually the result of both a poor diet and an unmotivated bird.  If our birds are not flighted, we need to be making every effort to see that they are getting ample exercise both inside and outside of their cage.

Thank you to everyone who offered opinions on this subject, but I still can’t wrap my brain around this.