How One Might Prepare for a New Psittacine Acquisition

Once the decision to acquire a specific parrot for pet or breeding has been made, it behoves the new owner to begin some fundamental preparations before picking up the bird and bringing it home. The majority of these arrangements are undertaken so as to decrease or eliminate the tremendous amount of stress that can be placed upon a psittacine when its familiar abode is changed.

Adult birds which are set in their habits, and especially sensitive species such as Amazons, African Greys, Cape Parrots, Hawkheads, large macaws etc., will often experience even more of such nervous tension.

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by Sally Blanchard

You loved that baby parrot and there was no doubt in your mind that it loved you. It was excited to see you and eagerly stepped on your hand. It was the light of your life and so much fun. It gave you his unconditional love. What happened? All of a sudden out of nowhere, it hates you. It doesn’t want to come out of its cage and if you put your hand in the cage, it bites you. If you can get it out, it doesn’t want anything to do with you. Then it started screaming and it is like fingernails on a chalkboard to you. Sometimes if you even look at it, it screams as if you are trying to murder it. You don’t understand because nothing has changed. Someone told you it was just going through a stage, but if so, will it ever end?

Maybe you shouldn’t take it personally, but your feelings are really hurt and you feel betrayed. Why did it suddenly turn mean? Maybe what you read somewhere on the Internet is true, that parrots are essentially wild animals and shouldn’t be pets because they can only be sweet and tame when they are young.

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Personality Profile, by Sally Blanchard

Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffini) are the smallest of the white cockatoos at about 12" from head to tail, only the cockatiel is smaller in the 'too family. This species is also referred to as the Goffin's corella and the Tanimbar cockatoo or corella. They are native to a few islands in the Tanimbar Island Archipelago of Indonesia.

The cockatoo was named after Andreas Leopold Goffin, a Dutch naval lieutenant in 1863. Until fairly recently there was confusion about the taxonomy of the Ducorp’s and the Goffin’s Cockatoo but they are now classified as two separate species. The Goffin’s is classified as CITES I because they are near-threatened due to deforestation and capture for the pet trade. I have read that there are now more Goffin’s cockatoos in captivity than there are in the wild.

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The Blue-throated Macaw is among the most endangered parrots in the world through poaching and habitat loss.  But there are conservation groups that are addressing one of the macaws’ most pressing problems – the lack of nest sites.  Here, Laney Rickman tells how artificial nest boxes have been erected and the successes they have brought to this vital conservation project.

The Blue-throated Macaw (Ara glaucogularis) is an endemic species to Bolivia that only lives in the Llanos de Moxos of Beni, and is considered by Birdlife International 2009, as one of the most threatened species in the world. One of the main factors halting the recuperation of this species has been the lack of potential nesting sites and interspecific competition with the most common and abundant Blue and Yellow Macaw (Ara ararauna). The two macaws share the same habitat, including the rare large nesting cavities, especially considering the human impact in the Beni in the last 100 years cutting down most large deciduous trees.

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