Louise Roberts explains there are times when parrots need their privacy
When I got my first parrot, a baby African Grey, I got her before she was weaned. This was before all of the sensible advice about not buying an un-weaned parrot. I had fed her many times at the breeders, but I was still concerned that I might have done something stupid.

So I got her a little travel cage, as a sleeping cage, and put in a folded towel and set it on my bedside table at night. Every night we had a little ritual, I would feed her some globs of a soft mash, cuddle her for a few minutes and then put her in her sleeping cage. I think she was far more secure with this than if I had left her in her regular cage at night, but most of all, it was more secure. I could check to make sure she was OK if I felt the need to do so, and I needed her to be in a nearby sleeping cage for me to get a good night’s sleep. As she got older and more adventurous, and I felt more secure about her health and safety, I switched her back to sleeping in her normal cage.

I have a friend with a rescue Moluccan cockatoo. The bird was pretty tame, but started having all sorts of problems. It was both screaming and becoming aggressive. I knew what the problem was, but trying to convince them was not easy. They thought if they covered its cage with a blanket, it would go to sleep. Its cage was right next to a big screen television. It turned out that my friend worked nights and her husband worked days and both spent a great deal of time watching television when they weren’t at work. This meant that the television was on most of the time and covering the cage didn’t help with the noise as far as the cockatoo was concerned.

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