Complete Psittacine by Eb Cravens
I had a consultation with a Greenwing Macaw owner whose seven year old parrot was constantly squawking whenever its owner was in the next room. We talked diet, and we talked caging, and we discussed the psittacine’s long time bird room ‘friend,’ an elderly hen Blue and Yellow Macaw. “What is an owner to do?” and “Why would this start to happen now?” were just two of the questions asked of me during a serious conversation about the companion macaw.
It was not an easy task, especially from afar, to get a handle on what was happening with this bird. The only solid appraisal I could intuit was that (1) the squawking was not something that just began spur-of-the-moment, so to speak, and (2) this macaw was obviously very unhappy.
In the world of captive birds, where behavioural problems are increasingly apparent, it is far simpler to figure out when a pet or breeder psittacine is dissatisfied, disgruntled, or distressed, than it is to ascertain why such is taking place. “Find the cause, and you will have the cure,” I like to say. And in order to do so, one must closely examine the life the parrot has been forced to lead.