Where Are Quaker Parrots Legal? A State-by-State Guide

Somewhere in Connecticut, a government official sat down with a list of animals too dangerous or too destructive to keep at home. Cobras went on it. Alligators. Gorillas.

And a green parrot that weighs less than a tin of beans.

That is not a joke — the Quaker parrot, Myiopsitta monachus, sits in Connecticut’s Category Two alongside crocodilians, vipers and great apes. It is one of the strangest facts in American pet law, and it tells you something important if you are thinking about bringing one home: the rules for this bird are unlike the rules for any other parrot.

Most sites will tell you Quakers are “illegal in thirteen states” and leave it there. That number is wrong, and worse, it is wrong in both directions. Some states on those lists allow you to keep one with a permit. At least one state on those lists banned them but let existing owners keep their birds. And one state is quietly on its way to making them legal again.

So I went and read the actual regulations. Here is what they say.

First — why does anyone ban a parrot?

It is a fair question. Nobody bans cockatiels.

The answer is the nest. Almost every parrot in the world nests in a hole in a tree, which limits how many of them there can be — no hollow, no babies. Quakers are the exception. They are the only parrot that builds its own home, weaving enormous communal nests out of sticks and thorny twigs, chamber after chamber, until the whole structure can weigh hundreds of pounds and house dozens of birds.

Free from needing tree hollows, a small escaped flock can settle almost anywhere. And what they like to build on, more than anything, are electricity poles and transformers. Sticks bridge live components. Substations short out. Neighborhoods lose power, and sometimes there are fires. Utility companies spend millions a year pulling those nests down.

Add a fondness for maize, sorghum, sunflowers and citrus, and you have a bird that agricultural states take very seriously indeed. It is not that they think Quakers are dangerous to people. It is that a handful of escapees in the right climate can become a permanent, expensive problem.

Knowing that makes the rest of this page make sense. Every rule below is a state deciding how much risk it is willing to carry.

The three tiers

Here is the part almost everyone gets wrong. There is no single list of “illegal states.” There are three quite different situations, and which one you are in changes everything.

1. States where you cannot own one at all (11)

No permit, no application, no route in. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wyoming.

A few of these are worth knowing in detail:

California does issue permits for restricted species — but only to zoos, researchers, exhibitors and a handful of similar institutions. There is no pet permit. There is no application you can fill in.

Georgia is the one every other website gets wrong. Georgia banned Quakers on 4 December 2022, but wrote in a protection for people who already had one: if you held a current wild animal license on that date, you may keep your bird under that license. So “illegal in Georgia” is true for anyone buying today and untrue for a family who has had their Quaker since 2019.

New Jersey puts it about as plainly as a state can. Quaker parrots may not be kept as pets or for hobby purposes for any reason.

Maine and Wyoming are interesting because neither has a Quaker problem — the winters see to that. They banned the bird before it could ever become one.

2. States where you need a permit (4)

Legal, but only with the state’s written permission first. Idaho, Kansas, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

Rhode Island is the friendliest of the four. Its rules exempt parrots generally from permitting, then name the Quaker as the single exception that needs one — and an ordinary private person can apply.

Kansas files the Quaker in a list otherwise full of zebra mussels, quagga mussels and carp. A parrot, sitting between marbled crayfish and the Asian raccoon dog. Possession is prohibited without an importation permit from the secretary.

Wisconsin is the one to watch. It is prohibited today — but in August 2024 the state’s own Invasive Species Council formally recommended moving the Quaker parrot from Prohibited to Unregulated. It was the only bird or mammal in that recommendation. The Department of Natural Resources is working through the rule change now, and that process takes years, so nothing has changed yet. But Wisconsin appears to be on its way to allowing them again. If you live there, this is worth watching.

3. States where they are legal, with a condition (3)

New York classes the Quaker as a regulated invasive species rather than a prohibited one, which means something quite specific: you may legally possess, buy, sell, breed and transport one. What you may not do is release it. Given the famous wild flocks that have lived in Brooklyn for decades, New York decided that banning the pet would achieve nothing while punishing thousands of ordinary owners.

Ohio has my favorite entry in this whole exercise. Ohio does not regulate the Quaker as wildlife at all — the Department of Agriculture designates it a destructive or dangerously harmful plant pest. A parrot. Officially a pest of plants. You may keep one, provided its wings are kept clipped or it is otherwise incapable of flight.

Virginia changed its rules on 1 September 2025, and hardly anyone has noticed. No permit is required for a Quaker that was captive bred and wears a seamless closed band — the solid ring slipped onto a chick’s leg in its first weeks, which cannot afterwards be removed or faked. It is an elegant piece of rule-writing: the band proves the bird was hatched in captivity, so legitimate breeders carry on freely while there is no market for anyone trapping wild birds.

4. Everywhere else

In the remaining states — including Florida, where I raise mine — you may keep a Quaker parrot as a pet with no state permit at all.

Two things still apply anywhere. Cities and counties can have their own rules, and they sometimes do. And if you are moving or traveling, the state you are driving through matters as much as the one you are driving to.

Interested in a Quaker Parrot? If your state is in the clear, you can see the Quaker babies we have available right now, with current ages and prices. We only ship where the bird is legal, and we will check your state with you before you pay a deposit.

If you are buying one

Check your own state first, on this page and then with your state wildlife agency. Rules change — Virginia’s changed last year and Wisconsin’s may change next.

If you are in one of the eleven, please do not try to work around it. A bird taken by the state does not come back to you — a seized Quaker cannot simply be rehomed to another family, and in California the rules also allow the department to bill the owner for its care. It is a sad, expensive way to lose a companion you were planning to keep for twenty-five years, and it is entirely avoidable.

There is also a quieter reason. Owners in banned states often will not take a sick bird to a vet, because they are frightened of being reported. That is how a treatable problem turns into a serious one.

And if you are somewhere the answer is yes, a Quaker is a wonderful bird to live with — funny, talkative, absurdly clever, and far more personality than a bird that size has any right to carry. You can see our hand-raised Quaker Parrots here; we ship to every state where they are legal.

Last checked: 7 August 2026. Every rule above was read in the state’s own regulation, not copied from another list. Laws change, and this page is not legal advice — confirm with your state’s wildlife or agriculture department before you buy, move, or travel with a Quaker parrot.