Birds For Dummies. Gina Spadafori

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Detroit Zoological Gardens. In 2019, he was posthumously awarded the Animals in War & Peace Medal of Bravery.

Although lories and lorikeets may be the messiest, no bird can be considered truly neat. Well-designed cages, plenty of newspaper, a hand-vacuum, and a large assortment of cloth and paper towels can keep things under control, for the most part. Again, it’s all a matter of preference, tolerance, and mutual compatibility.

      

You can train many different kinds of birds to eliminate on cue. This allows you to hold them over a wastebasket or other container to capture the mess. For help in accomplishing this nifty feat, see Chapter 7.

      Bring in da noise

      No bird is perfectly quiet. Finches keep up a constant chatter, and canaries have been encouraged through centuries of breeding to sing. Some birds, however, can make you yearn for the relative quiet of a house next to a major airport. Birds use their voices to communicate their feelings — of loneliness, of boredom, of isolation, or of just being alive. Some pet birds are noisy only at certain times, such as in the early morning or at dusk, while others can start up at any time.

      You need to figure out your tolerance levels and balance them with the bird you’re considering. If peace and quiet is of paramount importance to you, no bird may fit into your life. Even the most patient souls may discover that the real screamers push their limits at one time or another.

      Consider, too, your living situation — apartment, attached house, suburban dwelling, or acreage. The walls of an apartment building or attached house do little to muffle the sounds of the loudest birds, and that could lead to trouble with the neighbors — or even get you evicted. If you’re considering chickens or other backyard poultry as companions, keep in mind that zoning and homeowner’s association regulations may prevent the keeping of those birds. As an example, many cities have ordinances prohibiting the keeping of roosters or limiting the numbers of birds that a household can keep.

      

Sometimes bird lovers make matters worse by their reactions to screaming birds. For tips on what to do — and what not to do — with a screaming, noisy, disruptive feathered child, see Chapter 12.

      Talking ability

The ability to mimic sounds is one of the things that makes parrots so popular, but the skill and ability of mimicry isn’t found equally in all parrots. With patience and work, many parrot species can utter a few words or phrases, but if you’re really looking for the gift of gab, be sure to choose a yellow-naped or double-yellow-headed Amazon parrot or an African grey parrot, species especially known for their speaking ability. Even then, you can’t be sure you’re getting a bird who will talk unless he was talking when you bought him. (The same thing, incidentally, goes for the singing skill of canaries. Make sure you hear singing before you buy, if that’s what’s important to you.)

      

For tips on teaching a bird to talk, see Chapter 7. Chapter 12 is the place to go for hints about how to coax your bird to be quiet for a while!

      

What do you call a group of parrots? A pandemonium, of course! They’re sometimes also referred to as a company of parrots.

      Paying attention to price

      The price of a pet bird can be considerable, starting from less than $20 for some small budgies or finches and climbing rapidly into the hundreds of dollars for some of the large common parrots and into the thousands and tens of thousands for species that are especially rare, large, or difficult to breed in captivity.

      

Bargain hunting is usually a bad idea when it comes to birds. Raising healthy, well-socialized birds is time-consuming and expensive, and the prices for these birds reflect the labor that goes into their raising. You have to wonder what kind of corners were cut when you find a price that’s out of line with what’s normal for a particular species in a particular area. Is the bird a medical time bomb just waiting to explode with the stress of a new home? A simmering behavior problem waiting to develop? Too often the answer is “Yes” to one or both questions.

      

Figure out the price you can afford to pay, and then shop for the best bird possible for that money. Don’t fret over the bird you can’t afford, because you can find many wonderful and underappreciated species in every price range, and they make wonderful pets. We’d rather see you spend what may seem to be an “outrageous” $50 on a healthy, well-socialized budgie with great pet potential than $20 on a mass-produced budgie of unknown genetics or health, or $300 on a sick or emotionally crippled parrot of a species that usually retails for considerably more. You’re better off with the well-raised and socialized budgie, trust us. Budgies are cool.

      

Also, consider reaching out to rescue groups for birds in need of a second chance at life with the right forever home. Just as in animal shelters with dogs and cats, numerous shelter birds may be just the right fit for you!

      

The cost of a bird is only part of the hit you take when you bring home a feathered companion. Cages, perches, toys, and more are expensive, and so is that post-purchase veterinary examination, but they all need to be factored in to keep your pet bird healthy and happy. For more on bird gear — what you need, what you don’t, and more — see Chapter 4.

      PET PREFERENCE: CUDDLE-BUG, “WILD” THING, OR BREEDER?

      Most of the birds commonly available as pets today are valued as much for their companionship as anything else. Socialized, hand-raised babies grow up thinking humans are pretty cool, and they want us to be a member of their flock. We become their family!

      The new emphasis on companionship of the pet bird reflects a change in the way many people interact with their birds. In this regard, people often want birds to be family members. Some folks, though, still want birds more to look at than to cuddle, and those people are likely to be happier with birds content to live in an aviary with little or no human contact. Although these are domestically raised birds, to be sure, they’re typically as little interested in us as their wild-born relatives may be.

      A third group, the hobby or professional breeder, may have a different goal altogether. Just like a farmer who cares for the animals she stewards, aviculturists do, too. Often, the intended goal is to allow successful breeding and rearing of young birds. An aviculturist’s sole objective may be to allow their birds to procreate and raise their young. Some breeders want to successfully raise a particular species or subspecies. Others may work to develop new colors or varieties, win prizes at shows, make money (or at least pay the costs of production), and enjoy the intense joy and satisfaction that comes from successfully breeding and keeping healthy birds

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