A few months ago I wrote about the relationship of Intelligence vs. Instinct and I pointed to two basic instincts that ALL parrots posess, regardless of species. (All parrots are prey animals....parrots live in flocks...sound familiar?) These, along with eight other basic instincts, will be the foundations for this series. Kind of a "top ten tip list" on why your bird behaves the way he or she does. This article, and its companions, will hopefully shed even more light on parrot instinctual behavior, helping all you parrot owners. Along the way, I bet we answer a few of those, "Why does my goofy bird do that?" type of questions.
In this article, I will be dealing twith the third and fourth "instinctual axiom" about parrots....so look out, Sharon Stone, here comes the parrot version of "Basic Instincts!" The two factors I am discussing are (3. parrots are naturally highly active, curious animals...and (4. parrots are vocal.
(3. Parrots are highly active, curious animals. Yep... it is true and a matter of survival in the wild. Because, in the wild, these creatures will spend a large chunk of their day flying, chewing and playing. They chew on just about anything they can get their beaks around and some stuff they can't. They will gnaw everything, including tree branches, seed pods, fruit, leaves and husks...not only for food but because it is fun! In fact, the activities of chewing and playing are sometimes very difficult to separate. With this information in hand, it is easy to see why I recommend this course of action: when you bring a parrot into your life, you must do two things: (a. provide adequate cage space, and (b. give your bird lots of toys. In fact, I think that either one of these is just as important as the other in terms of your parrot's mental AND physical health.
Now let's think about that. First of all, adequate cage space...what does that mean? Well, I will tell ya! It means you get the largest cage you can possible afford/fit into your home, with proper bar spacing. The reason is simple. If your little birdie doesn't have enough room to exercise, the
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