Jewelry + Birds = Disaster?

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Photo by Dave
Location: Waynesboro, VA
Pictured: Camelot macaws “Tusa” & “Comet”, blue throated macaw “Jinx”

I really like wearing jewelry. I wear two rings, my wedding ring and my one year anniversary ring… almost all the time. I have some favorite bracelets, toe rings, my ears are pierced a ton of times, and so on.

Jewelry tends to make us feel done up, or sometimes we have something sacred that we just always want to keep on us. It can be hard when you constantly have a beak looking around for something to break.

This is why I usually wear earrings that pop out fast and won’t take my ear along with them if they get pulled on. Rings on my ears that barely click into place and when pulled on pop right out. That’s a safety thing for me so I can keep them in all the time. The birds never expect it to pop out so fast and always end up dropping them so I’ve been through a lot of those. Necklaces can be hard to wear around birds even moreso because a bird on your shoulder can grab it from anywhere on the back of your neck. And if it dangles down, any bird on an arm can walk in and reach for it.

You can either wear bird proof jewelry, get lucky and have a bird that isn’t interested in the things you wear, carry around toys to occupy your bird and treats to trade your bird for when he DOES get ahold of that something special… or train your bird to “drop it” but sometimes it’s too late with just the mere grab of a bird’s beak.

Training the “drop it” is much like training the “retrieve” which is taught in the Taming, Training and Tricks courses. Only you need to start with items you bird isn’t crazy about and slowly work your way up to things your bird is crazy about to be able to test how effective your training really is.