Sharpe has a cockatoo though, so I’m guessing his house isn’t without that precedent already.
Sharpe, I grew up with birds, my mom was a bird freak and raised (and sometimes sold) many. We had everything from budgies to cockatiels up to cockatoos. Never Macaws, but I think that was due to my dad’s objection to continually building out the bird room.
We had a green cheeked conure for a while. Relative to the others he was playful, and I would say a medium level of shrieking. Well below our sulfur crested cockatoo. WELL below that level. Higher than a cockatiel, but they aren’t really that loud.
For scale, when our cockatoo was in shriek mode, you could hear him or at least know what it was at least 50 yards away from the house when he was angry at something, with the doors and windows shut. I don’t think you could ever hear our conure outside the house, but certainly he would voice his displeasure if he didn’t get to go to whatever room you went to.
I’m going to proceed this by saying I have owned birds all my life, love them to death, and my current bird—a sour-tempered parakeet named Humbert J. Humbird—I loved so much, that I paid thousands of dollars to move him with me from Germany when I moved back to the States. He’s now 10 years old, which is pretty good for a parakeet.
That said, I think Hum will be my last bird, because I’m more convinced than ever that parrot-ownership is essentially unethical. The truth is, parrots of all types bond so strongly with their owners, that anything less than 24/7 attention can be tantamount to abuse. Even if you can manage that, though, you can’t control factors like: will you die? Will you get sick and have to give the bird up? And when those things happen, the truth is, most birds essentially go insane with unhappiness.
Again, I’m a bird owner myself, so I’m not shitting on anyone who (like me) loves birds. But I’d strongly advise anyone thinking of buying a NEW one to reconsider at this point.
Today I took Rocket the Derbyan Parrot and Peanut the Meyer’s Parrot to the parrot store for their seasonal wing-clipping. They had a Black Palm Cockatoo in the store, first one I’ve seen in person and the bird was just very visually striking and impressive. It said “hello” in one of the most distinct voices I’ve heard from a parrot. I’m not looking for another bird, since I recently adopted Peanut, (and of course Black Palm Cockatoos cost over $10K) but it was a pretty cool experience. Sadly, I did not think to take a pic.
You’re not wrong. I had a bare eyed, sulphur crested cockie mix for a while. When we first got him he was a sweetie. He would say hello to the wife and I when went into the pet shop. Eventually the wife bought him for us. When we got him he was around six months old. Old enough for the shop to drop his price to $1200. At some point large parrots get too bonded to the pet shop owner to sell. Their price actually goes down as they age. Beaker was hand raised from his hatch.
The theory was that since he was a bare eye, who are mellower birds, that he would be easier to deal with. When he hit two years old, and got his hormones going as they do, he went from bonded to me to my wife. They have an amazingly strong three point bite. And Beaker decided that he was going to kill me.
We had to rehome him. He’s doing fine now. But not here. And I still have the scars on my hands and ears. They really love ears. As food it would seem. I miss him a lot.
I agree on most of this. It’s what we had. Loud … well I feel like loud just doesn’t describe what things can be like. Ear splitting, eardrum piercing, obnoxiously booming. Quincy was like that maybe 1-2% of the time when he fell into the second part you mentioned, destructiveness. He wasn’t really that bad. Rambunctious and inquisitive. Some examples: feeding the dogs things we left on the counter, picking our early attempts at feeble locks on his cage, opening the silverware drawer and throwing things onto the floor, etc. He would do stuff like this then nod his head real fast as he squeaked, almost like laughing. He was having fun, of course.
But the other 98 percent moments were the most loving bird my mother ever had. Very engaging, loving, and a seeker of anything fun. He wasn’t much of a talker, maybe less than 10 words. He could whistle a little, but that was just asking for repetition at his highest volume later once he got the hang of it. He loved to be rubbed, he liked hugs, he liked to walk up and sit on your lap while you were watching TV so you would flip him over and rub his chest. A great bird, but yep, loud.
I had to look them up. Wow, that’s one beautiful parrot. I also love these guys but they have similar astronomical pricing:
So I’m having an issue with Pinkerton the Rose Breasted Cockatoo. Basically, there are times that, for reasons I can’t tell, he raises his crest to Red Alert and does 1 of 2 things:
1)If he’s on me, he will without warning nip my ear or the back of my head, hard enough to pinch painfully, but not hard enough to draw blood. I cannot tell what sets him off or how to tone him down. Sometimes he settles down, sometimes he has to go to the cage.
2)If I’ve let him down on the floor to run about, he will attack my feet, again biting hard enough to pinch painfully, but not hard enough to draw blood. I did have one incident recently where I was trying to stop him approaching the feet with a finger aimed at him and a firm “No!”. “No” actually works on him reasonably well as to keeping him off the keyboard etc., but in this instance he responded to my “No!” and pointed finger by chomping down on my pointed finger, for the first time in my experience with him drawing blood. He then proceeded to rampage about, crest up, until I put him in the cage. At least he stepped up onto finger without too much trouble or chasing.
The hard bite is a bit of a red line to me. Anyone with bird knowleddge/experience have any tips?
He is now 2.5 years old and should be out of adolescence from my understanding. I’ve read up a bit but haven’t really seen any good info on this particular behavior.
Not yet. He can live a very long time. He’ll be adolescent for a couple more years yet.
Parrots in general and cockies in specific like to get a reaction. He nips because you react to nips. Either a yell or a jump, this is fun. And it reinforces the action. As impossible as it may seem, you have to avoid the yells and jumps. Believe me, I understand just how hard it is.
Research Clicker Training. The sooner you change his behavior (and yours) the better it will be for both of you. Good luck!
Haven’t heard from Dan in a long time. Hope he’s doing well. Oh in case anyone is curious, the video is of the birds in Dan Rutter’s backyard. He has the website dansdata.com. He hasn’t posted for a while. Last heard he was writing a book.
Sharpe I grew up with parrots, I really, really wish I had something to offer for help. All I CAN offer is that you should talk to your vet. One thing that concerns me is you keep saying, “he,” and it leads me to the same problem we had growing up. Male parrots after puberty can be aggressive. It sucks, and it’s one of the reasons my Mom went through to finally decide to place our Cockatoo elsewhere. They bond to a sex and suddenly during puberty they just get … messed up. Hell, we do too. But for a pet, that is hard to take.
I don’t know if that’s it, but I would keep that in mind. Again, talk to a vet. Make sure it isn’t environmental or food related.
I should point out that this happens only occasionally. It seems to happen less frequently if I spend more time with him, so it may just be an attempt to gain attention. For the time being, I’m going to follow RichVR’s advice and work harder on not reacting to these efforts. I was already doing that to some degree but per RichVR’s suggestion, it is something I can put more effort into. Also, I’m trying to regularize the time I spend with him. I’ve been spending a decent amount of time with him but in recent months due to work commitments, etc., it’s gotten somewhat irregular.
Quote for truth with a parrot. They pick up noises and phrases they know get your attention. Ours rang like a phone, yipped like our small dog and most annoyingly, if left in a room alone would yell just like my sister would. “Moooooooom!” “Daaaaaaaaad!”
I mean, it worked. Someone would go get him and bring him to the perch stand we had in the living room. But man it was loud. We fed that behavior.
My ex-wife and I used to breed parrots. We lived on an acre in an agriculture area and had a huge aviary. At one point we had about a hundred assorted cockatiels (mostly), cockatoos, African grays, and conures.
When we divorced I got custody of Hoppy (cockatoo) and Quaker (quaker parrot). Hoppy became insanely jealous of my then-girlfriend-now-wife and would go apeshit any time she entered the room. I eventually had to return him to the ex.
So Pinkerton has been responding relatively well to the new regimen of “don’t react emotionally to parrot aggro.” Basically when acts he aggressively, instead of scolding him or shouting in surprise, I just put him back in his cage, and then balance that by giving him some additional out-of-cage time later after his bird brain has had time to forget. Basically, react to the bad behavior by removing him from temptation, but then balance that so that he isn’t being neglected.
He’s definitely settled down a fair amount and now it’s hopefully just a matter of maintaining consistency for long enough for him to establish better habits.
Good to hear that you’re correcting his behavior. Man that’s so tough. Kudos to you guys, Sharpe. I meant to ask, is he actually Male or do you guys know?
Another thing we found hard with parrots (and birds in general,) if they didnt have color markings for sex, it’s really hard to know.
Aside from having to have a blood test done to determine the sez, the biggest problem we had with birds is that it’s tough to know when they are sick. Usually by the time they start showing symptoms, they’ve been ill for a while.
