Have you ever wondered why parrots, being prey animals, are so brightly colored?  How is a brilliantly colored macaw supposed to blend into the green background of the rainforest canopy?
Have you ever casually looked into your bird’s cage as you were passing by to find him gone? You try to hold down that feeling of panic as you frantically search the cage with your eyes. And then there he is, right where he was when your eyes looked in that direction a minute ago and saw nothing.
Camouflage is a very complex science, and it seems to sometimes dismiss logic. The very feature that makes a parrot stand out in the animal world: its coloring, is the same one that helps keep it hidden from the eyes of a hungry predator.
Parrots, and many other animals, use pattern and color variation as a means of camouflage. The purpose for bold patterns and vivid colors is to disrupt the outline of an animal’s body. As the predator’s eyes follow the contours of the what they believe to be the body of the prey, a color or pattern change will draw the eye sharply to the left or right, disrupting the image. Some brightly colored parrots tend to have green, yellow or blue undersides that blend into the scenery in the dim forest lighting from below, and rely on this pattern and color disruption for safety from above.

Photo by www.paws4pets.co.uk

In fact, everything about a parrot’s coloring is completely deceiving. Many vibrantly colored feathers do not actually contain what appears to be their predominant color at all, but are instead the product of a trick of lighting. Some colors absorb light, others reflect it, and by making use of the Tyndall effect, which is an illusion created using light, the same illusion that makes the sky appear blue when it is not, parrots have evolved to host the coloring that makes it safest in it’s natural habitat.
Given that most are tree dwellers, it makes sense that the majority of parrots are green, or mostly green. Or are they?  In the book Parrots: A Natural History, authors John Sparks and Tony Soper say: “‘Parrot green’ is produced with the help of a yellow pigment. This is laid down in the surface layers of the feathers and interacts with Tyndall blue to produce the illusion of green. If the yellow pigment is artificially removed, …the feathers turn blue.”
If you were to take one of the back feathers of your blue and gold macaw and hold it up to different angles of direct lighting, you will notice that at certain angles, it is distinctly brown, not blue. Green, blue and purple feathers actually contain none of these colors at all.

Photo by www.birdphotos.com

For anyone interested in the origins and nature of parrots, the above mentioned book is a great read, and much of the the information in this post came from within its pages.

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Your best chance at a healthy and successful diet for your parrot is in the variety of foods you put in her bowl. By rotating the different foods available in the different food groups such as vegetables, fruits and grains, you increase the chances of hitting upon just the right combination, at the right time, for your individual bird.
In the wild, some birds will dine on the same food source for weeks until it is used up, or gone out of season. They then move on to another food. In our homes, birds don’t have the luxury of choice. They get what we serve, and may not always be what they need at that time.

Every species has different requirements for their diet. A macaw needs a diet that is lower in protein and higher in fat than a cockatoo who requires the opposite. Amazons need abundant vitamin A, african greys need calcium, and so on. Even this is a generalization. Within the macaw family, for instance, the hyacinth needs an even higher fat percentage than the average blue and gold. To further complicate things, each individual bird has nutritional needs unique only to them.
This creates a lot of challenges for parrot owners. Since we aren’t able to determine the exact set of needs in a particular bird, and since you will never hear your bird say “Polly want a vitamin D3 supplement”, there’s a lot of guess work involved. The best way to cover all the bases is to offer a bit of everything. Your bird knows what she needs. When she goes through a picky phase, she may be telling you that she needs a change in her diet.

Try stepping outside your comfort zone by trying veggies that you are unfamiliar with. I had no idea what bok choy or kohlrabi was before I had parrots. Throw in the left over parsley. Serve whole carrots and beets with the tops attached. Give a piece of whole grain toast for breakfast, or with peanut butter later in the day for a snack. Has your bird ever tried a parsnip? Mine love them. Try to change the menu as often as possible and include as many foods from as many groups as you can.Your bird will have a healthier diet and be more willing to try new foods in the future.

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Watch a LIVE video demo of me taming our wild, biting Macaw, “Tiko.” (See how I handle “Tiko” as he lunges at me, screaming and biting — how I lovingly calm him down… and mesmerize him so much that he BEGS me to pet him with my BARE HANDS 5 minutes later!) Click for more »

In the early morning hours, as the sun is rising and weather permitting, wild parrots all over the world visit clay licks on tall riverbanks to eat dirt.  This practice has long confounded bird watchers, conservationists and scientists alike, and while all of the benefits of this activity are still a mystery, more and more is being discovered and understood.

Wild parrots forage on plants, their fruits and their seeds as part of  their natural diet.  However, plants naturally produce chemicals, poisons, that protect themselves, their unripened fruits and seeds from violators.  As parrots consume these plants, they can become laden with toxins that can overwhelm their system and interfere with nutrient and mineral absorption.  They get tummy aches.  Their diet is less complete.

Photo by InkaNatura.com

Enter the clay lick.  Not only are the cliffs at the riverbank rich with the minerals that are missing from the parrot’s natural diet, but the clay content in the soil contains some of the same ingredients found in our over-the-counter stomach and digestion ailment products.  Clay coats the intestinal tract and binds to the toxins that have been eaten and passes them through the digestive system so that they are not able to be absorbed into the blood stream.

There are still many questions about the clay licks that go unanswered: for instance, it’s unknown how often a single parrot visits his local clay lick.  It isn’t understood why that, while parrots benefit from a high clay content in riverbank soil, they don’t also ingest other soils that have been tested and shown to have a higher nutritional content.

There certainly isn’t enough knowledge about this behavior for us to be adding clay to OUR parrot’s diets, although some products now include clay in their list of ingredients.  We simply don’t know how much is being safely consumed in the wild.  It makes me wonder what other resources wild parrots and animals are using for medicinal purposes and health benefits that we don’t yet know about.  We owe a huge debt to these pioneers who have taught the human race so much.

Photo by Alan Lee

Field researchers logged in about 1,000 parrots visiting the clay lick in Tambopata, Peru early one morning.  Can you imagine the noise? Most people seem to associate the macaw with clay licks, but, in actuality, there are many species that benefits from them.  Parakeets, amazons, pionus, caiques, african greys, conures, lorikeets and parrotlets are some of the others parrot species that frequent the clay licks as well as many mammals.

Clay licks have become a huge attraction for eco-tourists. There are many eco-tours that make the clay licks a focal point in the tour and lodges have been built locally to house the tourists.  This brings a lot of money into the local economy and helps to support the conservational efforts for these magnificent parrots.

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