Willow wreaths
A homemade toy – useful both for exercise and chewing and also pretty – is a willow wreath. A wreath takes about 40 minutes to assemble and will last a few months before the stems are chewed back to the wire. You need a metre or so of stout fence wire, bent into a circle or an old hula hoop will do as well. Depending on their thickness and length, you need 20 to 40 stems of willow. You just weave them round and round the wire, tying loose ends in with a thinner piece of wire or twine. Once the stems have been in position for a day or so, you can take off the ties, and decorate the finished wreath with flowers, fir cones or plastic balls. Parrots seem to appreciate willow – perhaps they are aware of its medicinal properties, and if you have no willow trees handy, an equally simple swing can be made from a broom handle cut in half. Plastic chains make excellent swing ropes. My parakeets in the aviary also like swinging on a tyre with the inner tube removed.

Homemade parrot trees and towers
Parrot towers and metal perches are splendid contraptions, but can hurt the budget. You do not need a great deal of DIY expertise to construct your own parrot tree. I have used a sturdy metal bucket and a clean stem of a tree. You can use sand or cement to anchor the tree in the bucket. For smaller birds, like conures, you can use a chimney flue.

One owner I know ties live branches to the tree and hides the parrots’ food amongst the leaves. Her three pet birds took to this foraging idea immediately.  Another friend, wanting a high and stable perch, bought a hat stand from Ikea, anchored it into a base tray of pea shingle, and hung toys and food bowls from the top wooden struts. Her African grey, Cleo, will stay on this perch and play, rather than destroy objects in the sitting room.

Another comparatively easy tower to make is one made of various widths of PVC tubing. You can cut it with a ratchet tool and stick lengths together using unions or plastic cement. Stainless steel quick links are the best and safest to use when making parrot items. You use these to vary the toys and objects that you hang from the plastic tube frame.

Many pet parrots will have to spend a large part of the day with their owners out at work. This is where ingenuity can really help keep your birds happy and content in your absence.  My birds have the radio station, Classic FM, playing when they’re alone. Casper can whistle several bars of Mozart and also the da-da-de-dum of Beethoven’s Fifth.

Out-of-date phone books, catalogues, shiny magazines – don’t discard them. Let your bird have them as part of its shredding activity. For small birds you will need to saw them in pieces, but a macaw can play with a full size phone book for several days. The same applies to boxes and cartons. It doesn’t take long to wrap some corks in paper and hide them in a box which you slip into another box. It takes longer for the parrot to work out where the cork is hidden. I have watched a Blue and Gold Macaw work her way through six boxes to get at the honey stick in the innermost. And no, she didn’t clear up the mess of wrappings, string or cellotape. Formerly, this bird had screamed frequently for attention, but now fully occupied for 30 minutes, she was a more contented pet.

Outings
Well socialised birds do get bored with the same environment. Outings with a well trained bird are great fun. The best present you can give your birds costs nothing – your presence. I am not one of the tiny numbers of owners who can take their birds out and free fly them. A back pack is costly but you can  easily convert an old rucksack by putting in a screen window and a perch. But I do take mine out wearing harnesses. They are accustomed to stay still on my shoulder. I am often asked, ‘Are they real?’

Photos: Dorothy Schwarz

An earlier version of this article appeared in the Parrot Society magazine in summer 2008

Resources and references
The Parrot Enrichment Activity Book by Kris Porter only available on the web
Foraging opportunity and increased physical complexity both prevent and reduce psychogenic feather picking by young Amazon parrots by C.L. Meehan, J.R. Millam, J.A. Mench, Applied Animal Behaviour Science 80 (2003) 71–85

Good Bird Magazine! Empower the Human/Animal Bond with positive reinforcement
P O Box 684394, Austin, TX78768
Email: info@goodbird.com www.goodbirdinc.com

An excellent DVD on how to provide a foraging tree has been compiled by an American vet
CAPTIVE FORAGING: DVD 
by  Scott Echols DVM, Dipl ABVP M.  Available from Amazon or Northern Parrots