The Pocket Parrotlet, Bun, & Why He Should Hate Seeds

Bun’s Siblings & Why He Should Hate Seeds

This is Bunny! We named this Parrotlet in the spirit of abundance because we’re reading a book on shifting your mindset to attract more money-
 
Bun, for short, is the littlest tike we have right now. We had a couple clutches before him that taught us that the parents can’t have seeds to feed their babies, (because it’s too dry, hard for his new body to digest). Seeds equal bad news…
Let me back up a little…

Mixed Messages

I’m very into my parrots – and I go out of my way to do what’s best for them. I also have ‘teacher’ in my bones- so I’m writing a book on how to have a blissful parrot-bond; I’m currently wrapping it up and hoping to have a forward from my fav parrot expert! Then I’ll publish it and offer it on my site 🙂

All parrots are different and they all require some differences in their diet. Sometimes, it is important to know the slight, but significant, differences — for example, I read that Eclectus parrots can’t have eggs, which is common for breeding pairs of parrot-parents.

My research is challenging because, as we all know, you can find contradictory information online about anything. Several seemingly-reputable sites online said that Parrotlets don’t do well with pellets and should be given more seeds. My vet agreed that Parrotlets should have seeds – after a lot of veggies and some pellets. For this reason, I cut back on pellets…

My Head Is Spinning

🦜 Parrotlets are the smallets parrot ‘in the New World.’ They generally weigh around 30 grams, which is about 12 pennies. Their size has earned them the nick name ‘pocket parrot’ and their beautiful blue variations (they are mostly greens in nature) ring “blue bird of happiness” to me.

I try to feed them well. Ugh!

So, based on my research, I allowed my Parrotlets to have seeds. Fresh veggies and seeds.

Of course, I figured it out — seeds were not working. It’s just not natural for their diet to have so many seeds; in nature this would never be.

When I’m hand-feeding parrots and when they get closer to weaning, I like to put them with Parrotlets that recently weaned, if I have any. This way their older ‘siblings’ model eating, perching and help them along.

I placed Bun with Annie, who I had just ‘rescued’ because I had figured out that feeding the parents seeds was the problem. Her crop (and her siblings) was packed with seeds, so I had to pull her (take her and her brother out of the nesting box), removing her from her parents, so that I could try to correct this. She was only 5 grams, her brother was 4, and it wasn’t easy. I like to wait for the babies to be old enough so that they have made it past a super-delicate stage and they aren’t eating 10 times a day! But I did it, I fed Annie and her brother as often as needed and did all I could to get her past the problem. It worked!

Well, Annie decided to help me feed Bun, and fed him seeds! This made his crop rock-hard and engorged. She fed him a lot! I had to flush his crop, which I don’t like to do. This means that I put some warm water, maybe with a drop of apple cider vinegar in the water (so that very, very little vinegar goes into the Parrotlet). The mix goes into his crop and then I hold him upside-down to, basically, induce regurgitation or vomiting. Yes, this can be as dangerous as it sounds, a parrot can choke or aspirate. Nerve wracking!

I removed Bun, which I don’t prefer to do even though he was with his brother. I fed them for a few days and then put them back in with Annie. Problem is that my fav expert told me that the seeds I feed my Parrotlets (and other little parrots) should be wet, meaning semi-sprouted or sprouted. Annie, however, is young and I saw that she and the two other young Parrotlets, Chickoraff and Chuck, that were in with her, didn’t know how to eat the pellets yet. Sprouting takes time, so I didn’t have wet seeds to offer. The good news is that they were more willing to eat their fresh veggies than usual. The bad news is that I had to give them some seeds… Can’t let them starve. Parrots have to be transitioned…

So, tonight I had to try to flush Bun’s crop — again! “Hurry!” I say to the seeds I’ve got in water, “Sprout!” Just waiting on them! Bun, poor thing! One of the things that I love about parrots, which is true of animals in general, is that they don’t complain. It was tough getting some seeds out of Bun’s crop, I had to hold him upside down several times. It’s stress on a body, but he just made the best of it. His mates all crammed themselves into a coconut in their cage — so cute! — and there is no room for Bun. Plus, the coconut is suspended in their cage, like a hole in a tree for them, but Bun isn’t climbing yet. He’s still in a ‘in the nest’ stage, so he’s not out and about. Parrots go through stages, of course. It’s magical to watch: Bun has started to come out of the plastic box that is on it’s side and offers him a “nest.” (Note, Bun’s ‘floor’ must be solid and maintained clean, so he receives new bedding with each feeding; the solid floor is because baby parrots can’t yet navigate a wire floor.) This morning he saw me and ran out of the box and to me because he saw that it was feeding time! Melt my 💙! Soon Bun will start to flap his wings more often and then he’ll start to perch on a piece of dry vine I have at the bottom of the cage for him. Then he’ll start to climb up to higher perches as he starts to eat and fly.

I love watching Parrotlets fly. They remind me of humming birds because they hover for a second and you can hear their wings hum. They are small, but they still belong to the hookbill family, or the parrot family, which is called ‘hookbill’ because their beaks ‘hook’ over. This translates to mean that they bite. So, befriend these little blue parrots of happiness and you might not get bitten and you might be able to put one in your pocket.

Harvard study shows parrots can pass classic test of intelligence

A new study shows that African grey parrots can perform some cognitive tasks at levels beyond those of 5-year-old humans. The results not only suggest that humans aren’t the only species capable of making complex inferences, but also point to flaws in a widely used test of animal intelligence.

By Peter Reuell Harvard Staff Writer

Usually, calling someone a bird-brain is meant as an insult, but an African grey parrot named Griffin is rewriting the rules when it comes to avian intelligence.

A new study shows the African grey can perform some cognitive tasks at levels beyond that of 5-year-old humans. The results not only suggest that humans aren’t the only species capable of making complex inferences, but also point to flaws in a widely used test of animal intelligence. The study is described in a November paper published online in Behaviour.

The paper arose from a collaboration among cognitive psychologists Irene Pepperberg, a research associate in Harvard’s Psychology Department; Francesca Cornero ’19; Suzanne Gray A.L.B. ’15, now the manager of the Alex Foundation at the Pepperberg Lab; and developmental psychologists Susan Carey, the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Psychology, and Shilpa Mody, Ph.D. ’16.

The classic study uses a two-cup test. A reward is hidden in one of two cups; subjects are then shown that one cup is empty, and those that successfully choose the other cup are thought to employ a process known as “inference by exclusion” — reasoning that the reward is in cup A or B; if it is not in A, it must be in B.

For years, researchers have argued that young children, including infants as young as 17 months, and animals from a wide number of species, including grey parrots, understand this process.

But what’s important about this study is not just that Griffin is, in some ways, as smart as a 5-year-old, but, said Pepperberg, “We also argue that this two-cup task, which has been the gold standard, only tells you about a certain level of ability. If you really want to study inference by exclusion, you have to go to the more complicated three- and four-cup tasks.”

Ultimately, Pepperberg said, tests like these don’t only reveal the intelligence of birds like Griffin, but also help shed light on the roots of human intelligence.

“Birds are separated from us by 300 million years of evolution, and their brains are organized differently than ours,” Pepperberg said. “That’s why this was so exciting — because we were able to show that Griffin was working at the level of a 5-year-old, on a task at which even apes would not likely succeed.”

Researchers’ African grey parrot puts (young) humans to shame in volume-focused tests…

 

The Black Cockatoos unique to Western Australia

As  a bird lover (or animal lover) it sounds like Australia is  a must! Australia is also home to numerous other exotic parrots we love, budgies, cockatiels, Palm parrots, Galahs and several others (as I recall). Enjoy the blog!

The Black Cockatoos unique to Western Australia

On an unusually wintry spring morning we travelled to Martin for the tour day weekend held at Kaarakin, a West Australian Black Cockatoo conservation centre.

If you’ve followed my instagram account you may have noticed a couple of photos of a largish black bird. This is because a flock of Forest Red tailed Black-Cockatoos have taken a keen liking to the Cape Lilac tree in the backyard. Watching their daily comings and goings over a period of four months has been entertaining turned exciting when we spotted a juvenile in the flock. Eventually they stripped all of the seeds from the tree and having no intentions at making a friendship with us they moved on.

A fact that may surprise some including myself is there are three species of the Black Cockatoo unique to south west Western Australia – Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoo, Baudin’s Black-Cockatoo and the Forest Red-tailed-Cockatoo.

The tour took us through the park, past resident animals of kangaroos, emus and peacocks, a legacy of the old Cohunu Park which has now moved to Byford. As it turned out the animals were too big to be transported and home is now at Kaarakin.  A group of dedicated volunteers have been working since Kaarakin opened on the site years ago to transform the park into more of a natural habitat for the animals. The old wombat concrete enclosure was a sad sight and as were the bird cages, a sign of past mind sets focused on human entertainment over conservation and protection of animals. Thank goodness that is long gone in this area!

Kaarakin is a not for profit organisation working for the rehabilitation and conservation of the Black Cockatoos. During the tour we pass by two large enclosures, one housing cockatoos that will be released back into the wild and the other where the cockatoos are unable to be released due to their sustained injuries. In this enclosure human interaction is tolerated however those deemed okay for future release have very limited human interaction to aid their overall chances of survival.

Kaarakin’s small army of volunteers and part time staff members partner with institutes like Murdoch University, Perth Zoo and the Department of Parks and Wildlife. To call their work amazing is an understatement – it’s legendary.

The very last stop on the tour is the interactive aviary where we’d be able to get up close to the birds and as we later realised, this was definitely our favourite part of the tour. There were a series of question checks and spraying of shoe soles in the best interests of the birds before we entered.

Being the first tour for the day, the birds were excitably active and a few gathered close by. Now if you’ve experienced the loud calls of these birds in the forest let me say up close the piercing noise is something you must witness! Especially being surrounded by half a dozen chatty birds.

The birds within the interactive enclosure are fairly tame and as we walk in a few fly above us, others continue feeding and one decides to land on a ladies head!

It was remarkable to see the appearance of these birds up close, their feather colours, the way they ate, their claws and bills. In the wild this is virtually impossible and if you see a Black Cockatoo on the ground it more than likely means it is sick or injured.

The strong powerful bill of the Black Cockatoo is capable of extracting the seed found in a eucalyptus nut, its favoured food source. Interestingly each of the three species attacks the nut differently. We learnt by inspecting the discarded nuts on the forest floor we can identify which Black Cockatoo has been around the area.  This is knowledge any nature lover will get excited about and yes I too was a little excited at the prospect of using this whilst on the trails in Western Australia!

The Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoo (pictured below) chews off the top of the nut. The Baudin’s Black-Cockatoo has a longer and narrow bill with the ability to almost surgically extract the nut. The Forest Red tailed Black-Cockatoo, well, it makes a mess of the nut.

While the Baudin and Carnaby look very similar with white markings and are each identified by their bills, the Forest Red tailed is differentiated by the red colour on the tail and it’s call is a sharp boisterous ‘karak’. The female and male forest red tailed are further distinguished with the male being black all over and a red colouring on the tail. The female has beautiful yellowish and pale orange specks as pictured below.

The Forest Red tailed Black-Cockatoo is also the smallest of the three species and we able to see this in the enclosure during the tour.

Have you ever seen a Black-Cockatoo cuddle, well you are about too- this male Forest Red tailed Black-Cockatoo had wrapped his wing around in an adorable show of affection to one of the staff members.

The juvenile pictured below was inquisitive but not quite willing to be persuaded to perch on either one of us. All the same his chants and head shakes in peacock fashion were very entertaining. Derek replicated the same to which the juvenile curiously put one claw on his arm and took it off several times.

Flocks of Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoos and Baudin’s Black-Cockatoos are becoming less of a common sight around the place and recent research from Birdlife Australia indicated these guys could be no longer in the Perth/Peel region by 2029 at the current 15% per year rate of decline.

While it’s wonderful to see these birds in my backyard, the reality is the Cape Lilac tree they feed off is an introduced exotic tree and at this stage there is little known about the long term effects to the birds. Also the new backyard visitors is a an indication they are losing their native forest and moving into urban areas to source food and suitable nests. We could also says it’s fantastic they are learning to adapt but we can’t let this lead us into thinking it’s okay to remove large pockets of their true habitat.

Loss of their regular stomping grounds through forest clearing or fire affects breeding habits missing crucial opportunities to breed from one year to the next. To put the breeding issues into perspective, it takes 80 plus years for a tree to develop a hollow suitable for the birds to nest. Raven attacks and nest competition from other animals including the introduced European bees are also ongoing threats. The good news though, is that artificial hollows are proving very successful in supporting the breeding of these birds and rehabilitated birds released are being taken in by wild flocks. The future is hopeful because of these conservation efforts.

If you have cockatoo visitors at home you’ll have trees with food, consider an artificial hollow and a water source for the birds. If you live in Perth and have space to do so, consider native trees and plants in the gardens because not only do they help the Black-Cockatoos and local native wildlife they also create a healthier environment at home for you and the family. If you have large pockets of land you may consider DPAW’s Land for Wildlife scheme The Black Cockatoos unique to Western Australia | WayTooMuchCoffee.com

 

Yes, There Were Parakeets in North America

Interesting to learn that we had a parakeet in the US. Although parakeet just means parrot with long tail, I tend to know “parakeets” as budgies. I love finding out that we had native parrots here!

Enjoy the blog!

Charleston Currents – HISTORY: Carolina parakeet

S.C. Encyclopedia  |  Now extinct, the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) was a dove-sized (about thirty-five centimeters long) bird with a bright green body, yellow head, and orange face. Mark Catesby, an English naturalist living in Charleston, painted the parakeet in 1731, thus providing the first scientific description of the species. The species was abundant in early America, and its range extended to New York, Colorado, and Florida. The Carolina parakeet was well known for its ability to withstand harsh winters, due to the winter availability of its main foods: cockleburs, thistle seeds, and sandspurs.

The parakeets nested in tree hollows, usually in mature bottomland forests composed of cypress or sycamores. Although it is believed that a high fraction of the population did not breed each year, low reproductive rates may have been balanced by longevity. Many captive Carolina parakeets lived ten years, and one was believed to have attained thirty years.

Several theories exist regarding what caused the extinction of the species, including hunting, loss of mature swamp forests, competition with imported honeybees for nest holes, reduced food supply, and disease. Disease has been generally accepted as the main cause. The parrots were highly social and often roosted together, which would explain the rapid spread of a disease. In the 1800s naturalists noted declines in parakeet numbers, and by 1900 it was apparent that the parakeet was rare outside southern Florida. One of the last verified sightings occurred in June 1938 when Warren and Hollie Shokes saw a pair with a young bird in the Santee River swamp of Georgetown County. Thus, South Carolina was the site of both the first sketch and a final sighting of the Carolina parakeet.

— Excerpted from an entry by William Post.  This entry hasn’t been updated since 2006.  To read more about this or 2,000 other entries about South Carolina, check out The South Carolina Encyclopedia, published in 2006 by USC Press. (Information used by permission.)

Carolina parakeets, illustrated by John James Audubon in 1833. Via Wikipedia. Charleston Currents – HISTORY: Carolina parakeet

Charleston Currents – HISTORY: Carolina parakeet