Having Fun with My Client’s Pets!
by Diane Grindol,
Companion birds are by nature social, flock animals. The time I spend caring for them is important for their well-being and there are many activities we do together.
Canaries like to bathe in a bowl of tepid water and often put on quite a show doing so! Parrots are more complex and very intelligent beings. They like to chew, exercise, eat, take showers and vocalize. They also like almost any activity that makes them the center of attention. Most pet parrots can be enticed to play games.
Fetch With Birds. “Bijou” the Moluccan cockatoo for whom I petsit, for example, is quite a game player. We play fetch, but it’s not the kind of fetch you play with your dog clients. In the parrot version, the bird picks up a toy or ball. Bijou has little pompoms, and other birds use small wiffle balls or soft spongy balls, or foot toys made from a dowel, since they can pick them up. The parrot throws the ball or toy and you run to pick it up. Fetch! This can go on for quite a while, and often the throw by Bijou is very artistic, accompanied by dramatic gestures. She gets excited just seeing one of her pompoms, thinking it might be time to play.
Fetch is a natural parrot behavior. When a parrot (that includes cockatiels and budgies) is out on top of its cage and you supply a toy, it is likely to happen. A wadded piece of paper becomes a toy for this game, a craft stick or a plastic bottle cap.
Let’s Take a Shower! Though it’s really part of the care of a companion parrot, a shower is also something a parrot enjoys so much that it becomes fun. Fun for a parrot is also any time you spend interacting with it, so it qualifies as fun in that way, too! I have a female Solomon Island eclectus parrot that I petsit for named Lucy. Eclectus are special birds, in that the males are bright green and the females are red, so Lucy is a talented lady with soft, bright red feathers that are almost fur-like. They’re vibrant as jewels. To keep them that way, Lucy gets a shower every few days to keep her feathers that way. I pick her up and we head upstairs to the bedroom, where my client (an engineer) has installed a special perch for Lucy in the shower. I turn on the shower and adjust it till it’s warm and not too hot, with a fine mist. Sometimes Lucy just sits there and the spray from the shower lightly falls onto her feathers. Other times, she really gets into her shower. She lifts her wings, and moves directly under the water, vocalizing about her pleasure.
Lucy can talk and she can understand some things I say to her. When I pick her up and tell her it’s time to take a shower, she gets excited, lifting her wings slightly to hurry me along and bobbing her head a little. It makes my job more fun to furnish Lucy with such a pleasurable experience!
Chewing Fun. One of the ways parrots have fun is chewing on things and chewing up things! They’re destructive, and that’s natural. It’s better to guide that behavior than to have chewed up doorframes, windowsills and fine furniture! For Popeye the African Grey, part of my instructions were to lodge empty corrugated cardboard boxes into the bars of her cage each day. By the time I came back the next day, they were chewed to bits, lying in shreds on the bottom of the cage. I also put some wooden peg clothespings in her dishes, and those were turned into toothpick sized shreds over time. I did the same for another 35 year old Grey for whom I petsit. This older Grey would take the clothespins from me as I put them in the cage. She didn’t have quite the woodcutter talents of Popeye, but her vocal abilities were extraordinary. I would play with her by whistling and talking to her. She could perfectly imitate a whistling explosive and liked verbal interchanges – especially when I was out of sight. So I would talk to her around the corner from the back porch when I was watering plants.
At one of my more challenging bird care jobs, I fed and watered 50 birds in outside aviaries for a local bird breeder. Many of his birds had formerly been pets and they showed it. One evening I started my rounds, alone on several acres out in the country. A sexy voice suddenly said “Hey, baby!” very clearly. I was still alone, maybe I was hearing things? I kept feeding. “Hey, baby!” came the voice again, and this time I realized it was a greater sulphur-crested cockatoo who was saying this, sitting at the end of his flight and looking at me. Sometimes it’s a real ego-booster to care for talking birds!
Itchy, Scratchy Pin Feathers. Once a year, parrots molt their feathers. This happens gradually, over several weeks. The old feathers fall out, and new ones come in that at first are “pin feathers,” encased in a keratin sheath. When birds are kept in groups, they preen each other, reaching the itchy pin feathers they can’t reach for each other, such as the ones on their head and cheeks. They flake off the keratin sheath from the pin feathers, exposing the new, fluffy feathers. Many companion parrots live alone and appreciate our help providing this service. I especially remember when Blue, a hyacinth macaw, had obvious pin feathers on his head. Blue lunged at me repeatedly when I fed him. I kept talking to him and kept my fingers out of his way, looking at his pin feathers too. I started to have a pin feather conversation with Blue. He listened, and sat against the side of the cage where I was, a good sign. Knowing that parrots are very visually oriented and great imitators, I put my own head down and scratched my own head. Then I used the same gesture to reach between the bars for Blue’s head. He understood! He put his huge head down and ruffled his feathers up to allow me to preen them. We had a good preening session that day and on my ensuing visits, giving me a way to interact with a bird I couldn’t handle or get out of his cage.
A Warm Meal. When parrots are chicks in the nest, their parents regurgitate soft warm food for them to eat. Adult birds still like warm meals occasionally, a kind of comfort food for them. Part of the instructions I leave for my bird sitters is to warm up cooked legumes for my blue-headed pionus parrot. When I take care of Omar, a yellow-naped Amazon parrot, I start out my visit by finding the Lean Cuisine Omar’s owner keeps in her refrigerator. I put a small amount on a paper plate and microwave it. I put that on Omar’s cage, where I’ve let him out to stretch and walk around while I’m there. Usually he goes right to his warm food and chows down. If he had lips, he would smack them while eating chicken and rice!
Other warm foods I provide for my parrot clients include cooked yams or sweet potato, frozen peas thawed uner hot running water, hard cooked egg, tastes of oatmeal, pasta or rice and baby carrots cooked briefly in the microwave. I let the bird eat its fill then take this food out of the cage, not leaving it in the cage as it could grow bacteria quickly.
About the Author: Dian Grindol, Avian Images, Pacific Grove, CA, is one of the country’s foremost authorities on birds as companion animals. She is a successful author of books and articles on the topic and is also a sought-after speaker.
