In the last 15 or 20 years, scientists came to the conclusion that birds are intelligent. More recently, they have considered avian intelligence to be in line with that of the primates. Of course, we bird enthusiasts could have told them this all along, and saved them countless hours and dollars spent in research and studies. But what do we know? We only live with them.
My birds have me in a constant state of amazement with the things they come up with to modify their environments, find solutions to problems or to simply entertain themselves. They learn by watching and take that knowledge and add their unique personal touch to create something new.

Linus, my umbrella cockatoo, is very task oriented. He will assign himself a chore and spend the entire day, if necessary, to accomplish it. I have come home from work on several occasions to find splintered pieces from his wood toys jammed into every conceivable crevice in his cage. Sometimes he will unfurl an entire roll of adding machine tape and meticulously layer the bottom of his cage, covering every inch of available space. Sometimes he undoes his quick links and places each hanging toy neatly on his shelf perch in the corner of his cage. This is a bird that always finds something to do. The poster child for independent play.
His very favorite activity is pulling his lightweight cage cover inside of the cage and artistically arranging it. Nearly every day I come home to find it in the same configuration: woven into about 12″ of the cage bars, then wrapped about six times around a perch and finally the end is threaded through the hole in a screw eye at the end of the perch. (A screw eye is a closed metal ring that is attached to a screw. They are the things used to hang potted plants from the ceiling, or maybe, in our case, a hanging playgym.)
He has been doing this forever. Every night, when it’s time to cover him up for bed, I have to slowly pull the length of fabric so that it slides through the screw eye, and unwinds from the perch and through the cage bars without it get caught on anything. Sometimes there’s a tug of war as he tries to prevent me from dismantling that which took him so long to engineer.

One night at bedtime, as I prepared to ruin his day’s efforts, I felt resistance from the end of the fabric and I wasn’t able to pull it through the screw eye. Linus watched very carefully as I pulled and pulled without success. I opened the cage to find a knot at the very end. I stood there with my mouth hanging open, contemplating that my bird had managed to tie a knot. (Meanwhile, Linus excused himself from the cage and took refuge in one of the kitchen cabinets).
I was shocked, but decided that it had to have been a fluke because, surely, a parrot could never prepare a knot. As it turned out I was right. Never again did I see a knot at the end of the cage cover fabric. Instead, what I found the next night was equally as astounding. Linus had bitten a hole in the fabric and jammed a piece of wood into the hole, once again preventing me from pulling apart his creation. This happened again the next night and the nights following that, until the fabric became too shredded to hold anything he pushed into it.

My brilliant bird had discovered from watching ONE TIME, that something placed at the end of the fabric that was larger than the hole in the screw eye would stop me from unraveling his masterpiece. He also discovered, as an added bonus, that he was able to escape every time I had to open the cage to remove his obstruction. How’s THAT for a lesson in avian intelligence?

Q: I am thinking of getting a quaker parrot. Can I put him in the same cage with my cockatiel?
–Linda L., Minot, ND

A: This is just not a good idea. I have both species of birds and find that I have to watch the interaction between both closely even when they are in a common play area. Although they appear to be similar in size, the body type of the quaker is stockier, the beak larger and the personality more aggressive. The quaker is a more powerful bird than the cockatiel.

Even in cases where the birds seem to get along well, you have to consider the possibility that one day there might be an altercation between the two. The more delicate of the two birds, the cockatiel, would be the likely loser.  And being confined in a cage, where there is no possibility of escape, things could get ugly, or worse.

It is inadvisable to put two birds of different sizes together in close proximity at all. Never make the assumption that you know your birds well enough to feel certain that neither would cause an incident. I promise you that you do not know your bird that well. None of us do. A bird regards and responds to its environment differently than we do as humans. We don’t now, and perhaps never will, fully understand their nature.

When I first came to Orlando, I introduced my goffins cockatoo, Theo, to the Womach’s rosebreasted cockatoos and african grey. Theo is smaller than than the other birds and is a bit timid in personality. Sweet and gentle Theo has never bitten anyone, ever – she’s a total marshmallow, and I expected her to come running to me for protection. Imagine my surprise when SHE was the aggressor with the larger birds and had no issues with telling THEM how things were going to be. The Womach birds just rolled their eyes and went about their business.

Parrots of the same species sometimes squabble, just like humans do, and often will simply opt to move away from each other. Different species have different levels of aggression and territorialism and might always regard another species in its cage as an invader. Just as wild birds run off other species that come too close to their nesting site, so might a captive bird.  It isn’t worth the risk.

The cockatoo is one of the most challenging of the many parrot species. They are an enigma. They are a white, fluffy ball of contradiction. They are emotionally complex, highly intelligent, and devilishly manipulative. They keep you guessing on a daily basis as they strive to out-maneuver you. The relationship between an owner and his cockatoo is like a crazy dance choreographed by Mother Nature. Oh, how I love these birds.

WHAT SETS THE COCKATOO APART?

I don’t know how many times I have read a book or an article where the phrase “parrots and cockatoos” is used.  Why the segregation? Are cockatoos not parrots? Of course, they are, but there are some distinct physiological and behavioral differences that make them unique.

Physical differences:

• First, and most evident, is the crest. Aside from the cockatiel, who may or may not be a distant cousin, depending on what literature you are consulting, they are the only parrot with a set of muscles whose sole purpose is for raising the long feathers on their heads to an erect stance. A cockatoo’s muscular structure also allows the the beak to be nearly concealed by surrounding feathers in moments of contentment.
• A cockatoo is the only species of parrot with feathering that is white, or contains pink. Along with the cockatiel and the african grey, they have powder down feathers that have the power to unleash on your house the most hellacious mess ever seen outside of your teenager’s bedroom.
• Also, if you’ve ever been the recipient of a cockatoo bite, you will have noticed how it differs from other bird bites. On the lower mandible are two prongs that, when combined with the pointed top mandible, give the cockatoo the advantage of being able to hold and tear in three separate places. I speak from experience on this matter.

Cockatoo behavioral traits:

The cockatoo is the diva of the avian world. Dramatic and vocal, a cockatoo might throw a tantrum befitting a princess because her oatmeal is 2 degrees too cold, or because she objects to your shirt’s shade of blue.
Needy and demanding, the cockatoo might hold on furiously to your shirt collar (perhaps the same one she just found fault with) when cuddle time must draw to a close. Good luck getting to work on time.
Notoriously hard to read, a cockatoo can send signals so minute and vague that a mere human doesn’t stand a chance, leaving their owners scratching their heads as to why she was bouncing and happy one minute and hissing the next.
They are frightfully destructive. Being a tree cavity nester, they love to chew wood, any wood, and lots of it. However, this doesn’t exclude your curtains, carpet or laptop from their to-do list.
Have I mentioned the foot thing yet? Cockatoos are surprisingly at home on the floor. Where most birds get to feeling very small and vulnerable when placed there, your cockatoo will take ownership of the floor and anything on it, including feet, and he may ask you, impolitely, to remove yours from the area.

READING COCKATOO BODY LANGUAGE:

The ability to effectively read your cockatoo’s body language is the owner’s most essential tool. It is something that can only be learned through exposure to this species. Being told what to look for is almost inconsequential, as every individual cockatoo has it’s own way of asserting it’s opinions about life. However, there are some signs that are universal. Take a look at this video. There is footage towards the end that will show you unmistakable territorial and aggressive behavior demonstrated by this bird who clearly wants the cameraman to go away. He doesn’t, and has taken quite a risk in not doing so. Had my cockatoo presented to me in this way, I would have been long gone.

I find that feather positioning, a means of determining the disposition of most birds, to be ineffective in reading a cockatoo. When the crest is raised, for example, it signals an excited bird. The problem is, an excited cockatoo doesn’t necessarily mean an angry cockatoo, and they will frequently raise their crest when they are stimulated by conversation or playtime.  It is the positioning and movement of the body: neck stretched out, nervous pacing, wings away from the body, that is much more telling in this species.

When I feel I am getting an unclear signal from my cockatoos, I look to their eyes. I find that that there is a great deal of expression and information there.The shape of the eye will usually tell me everything I need to know. When a cockatoo is contented and all is right in their world, the shape of their eye is completely round. Anything other than that tells me something is on their mind. A squint tells me that something is not to their liking or is making them uncomfortable. Then there is the “glarey eyeball” as Dave and Jamie put it, or the “stink-eye” as I refer to it. It can be read as: “What are YOU looking at?” or “If you’re smart, you’ll back off”.  Either way, it’s a clear warning, even when issued by my mild mannered goffins cockatoo.

One of the more notable movements is the lack of movement, which is always concerning to me. When mine come to a dead stop in the middle of an activity, and stare at me or something else, I have the distinct sense that they are plotting their next move, which is usually an unfavorable one. One of the birds in the above video did this – just stopped, foot still raised in the air.

Cockatoos, especially the white ones, are not for everyone. While many birds of other species can carry the behavioral traits as listed above, a cockatoo will surely have several, if not all, of them. It takes a certain kind of personality to mesh successfully with these high maintenance birds. This fact is the reason that they are the parrot most relinquished to rescues and sanctuaries throughout the world. They will test your patience to the limit and delight in doing so. If you don’t have a sense of humor about their activities and behaviors, you are surely sunk.

Should you be the sort to be able to handle the many demands of cockatoo ownership, then you, like me, will find it to be the most rewarding of all of your avian relationships. There is nothing like the special brand of love you get from a cockatoo, as it has been hard won and painstakingly maintained. I am heading downstairs to get in some cuddle time right now.

Visually sexing a parrot is never 100% reliable, with the exception of the dimorphic eclectus, whose genders are entirely different colors and were thought to be two different species in the wild for the many years before they became a popular companion parrot.


While DNA or surgical sexing are the only guaranteed ways of determining your bird’s sex with certainty, well, that and finding an egg in the pellet bowl, there are a few parrots that allow us to make an educated guess visually.

In the cockatoo family, it’s in the eyes. The females typically have a lighter, chestnut color to their eyes, which is most easily seen in strong light. The male’s eyes are a very dark brown, nearly black. Additionally in the male galah, or rose breasted cockatoo, the eyes rings become rough in texture and tinged with pink (although this is not the case with some males who do not get enough exposure to sunlight.)

The male standard cockatiel will have a bright yellow head, with clearly defined orange cheek patches, while the female’s head coloring is less distinct. She will also have barring marking the underside of her long tail.

In the budgie, the male typically has a light purple colored cere (the area around the nostrils), and the female’s is shades of pink to brown.

I had heard several years ago about a method of visually sexing african greys, but I had for one reason or another thought it to be too unreliable because of the way feather color varies in that species.  I had actually snooped under the tail feathers of several greys of unknown gender and never found those tell-tale silver tipped feathers.  I suppose it is possible that all of them were male.

Someone sent me this link recently, and as I have questioned my friends with female greys, most have reported that theirs have this feather coloring. I feel that it is a fairly safe bet that if your has these feathers, it is likely a female. If it doesn’t, I think the bird should still be considered of unknown gender.

I don’t know the exact hatch dates of any of my birds, so we celebrate their birthdays collectively each year on Thanksgiving day. Since I also don’t know the hatch dates for Jamie and Dave’s budgies, Nikko and Visa, who are in my care, they will celebrate with us tomorrow.
I  chose Thanksgiving day as their pseudo-hatch dates for two reasons: 1) because I am so very grateful (usually) for their presence in my life, and 2) because there is always yummy treats to offer them.
Thanksgiving is the one meal each year where gluttony is entirely acceptable, and while I shouldn’t admit it, it is the one meal where I allow caution over their diets to fly out the window. I am always going on about how important it is to feed your birds a strictly healthful diet. I adhere to that policy every single day – except Thanksgiving. This one day a year, I close my eyes to the butter in the mashed potatoes, the marshmallows on the yams, and the gravy on the turkey. (Cut me a break, it’s their birthday!)

In years gone by, I have served the birds their meals in various ways, but usually the cockatoos eat at the table with me while the smaller bird tear through their meals at a separate table. I have learned to put down a drop cloth no mater what the size of bird. My cockatiels and quaker make an industrial sized mess that will stand up against any high school cafeteria food fight. And it is no fun picking dried stuffing out of the carpet.

It’s a fun day for everyone, and surprisingly guilt-free for me, given how seriously I take their diet.  Everyone has has a big fat crop, myself included.

Please be very careful on this day, especially during the preparation of your meal. The kitchen is a dangerous place for your bird on days when every burner on the stove isn’t in use, and when you aren’t preoccupied with cooking and house guests.  And remember, tomorrow it’s back to fresh veggies without all the trimmings!

Finally, for any of you who missed this gem last year, this is what you can expect from your parrots during Thanksgiving preparations…

Thanksgiving With Parrots  (author unknown)

Have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving day.