Complete Psittacine by Eb Cravens

Water is the stuff of life. It moves and flows within us, keeps us hydrated, aids digestion and excretion, helps cool our bodies, is used to keep us clean. Yet, for a lot of parrot keepers, water is just something there by habitual necessity, rating a distant second to the all-important food bowl.

I have seen this countless times when visiting, photographing, or taking care of other people’s aviaries or flock of pets. I’ve seen tiny plastic macaw water cups barely big enough for a Greenwing beak. I’ve seen outdoor breeding cages with water bowls green with algae growth or floating discarded seed hulls from days before. I’ve helped fill up other friend’s water dishes from the only source available – an old, weathered vinyl garden hose, which makes the liquid spurting out the end taste like heated plastic. I’ve watched those ‘otters’ of the parrot world ‘psittacines’ that love to bathe once or twice every day like lories and lorikeets, and have to deal with enclosures giving fresh water from a drinking tube apparatus with no chance to splash themselves wet!

All this makes little sense to me. I guess I am just born under a dedicated ‘water sign.’ I consider fresh, clean, pure water for drinking indispensable in my abode. And from my earliest days of bird keeping in the 1970s, I followed one rule: “My parrots get the best possible drinking water I can provide from a container or dish I would drink out of myself.

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