Is Birdkeeping Growing Up? Or is the way many of us keep our birds changing? By EB Cravens

Every few months or so, someone will contact me or arrange a visit here to collect ideas and form a plan for building an outdoor planted aviary for their pet parrots or adoption birds. We will discuss location and vegetative choices, sunroofs and wire choices, hanging wall furniture, rocks, hollow logs, ground covering, predator safety and how to go about mixing species while minimizing dangers from over aggressive psittacines.

I love doing this type of consultation work in view of the fact that it has been twenty years since I began keeping my hookbills in expanded, foliated habitats. The going has been slow among some avicultural enthusiasts - some owners still insist that psittacines such as cockatoos and macaws, cannot be kept with living greenery without destroying it! And, of course, not that many commercial breeders have any interest in making the effort to provide creative planted spaces for their charges.

Yet now after a couple of decades, I am beginning to see that every one of these endeavors to try and establish a quality environment for one’s birds is a solid indication of the positive evolution of parrot keeping in the US and abroad.

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