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Hazards
Much like small children, pet parrots face a minefield of potential dangers in the typical house and yard. Parrots are curious, playful creatures that love to investigate their surroundings, including objects, plants and the enclosed spaces in your house, such as the area underneath the sink. It’s up to you to protect your bird from situations and substances that could seriously injure or kill it.
Fumes and poisons
There’s a reason canaries made such terrific poison gas detectors in the early coal mines. Like human babies, birds have small, delicate lungs susceptible to respiratory problems caused by strong fumes.
You should consider any product or substance that gives off a vapor potentially deadly to your parrot. Never expose your bird to aerosols, cigarette smoke, or fingernail polish removal. Plug-in air fresheners, fumes from overheated non-stick cookware and other Teflon-coated products (including space heaters), and even pine-scented car air fresheners also can kill birds. If you cannot avoid using these products, make sure your bird is not in the same room and that you ventilate the house thoroughly with fresh air.
Parrots are inveterate chewers, which has lead more than one unsupervised bird to an early demise. Anything containing lead, such as paint in old houses, or zinc, found in cages constructed with hardware cloth, is poisonous.
Keep electrical cords out of beak’s reach. Never let your bird chew indiscriminately on plants, inside or outside of the house; many familiar plants, shrubs and trees are poisonous when ingested. Cactus plants in the home can seriously injure flying birds. Never give your bird chocolate, avocados (including guacamole), or alcohol; all are poisonous.
Birds that have ingested a poisonous substance may have seizures or vomit. A bird that is vomiting whips its head from side to side rather than pump it up and down, the motion used to regurgitate food, an affectionate behavior.
If your parrot acts poisoned or you think it may have eaten or inhaled something harmful, remove it from the suspected source and call your vet immediately. If you cannot contact your regular vet, you can get help by calling the poison control hotline of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at 888-426-4435. A staff of veterinarians will instruct you on what to do. Have your credit card ready to pay the $45 charge.
Accidents
Do not keep your bird in the kitchen, where it could land on a hot stove or be made ill by fluctuating temperatures or fumes, and never place a cage directly against a drafty or overly sunny window. Many species of parrots may come from the steamy jungle, but birds are just as susceptible to heatstroke and sunstroke as any other animal. If your bird enjoys looking outside, as many do, situate its cage a few feet away from a window.
An overheated bird pants with its beak open and may hold its wings slightly apart from its body. Make sure your bird always has access to shade and plenty of cool water to drink. Conversely, do not take an indoor bird outdoors on cold days or allow the temperature in your home to dip below 60.
Keep toilet lids closed to prevent accidental drowning, turn off
ceiling fans when your parrot is out of its cage, and don’t use flypaper or mouse traps. Clip your bird’s wings so that it cannot escape out an open door, or fly into a window or mirror. Head injuries can kill or cause seizures for months or years afterward.
Some bird toys also can harm your bird. Long ropes that come unbraided can wrap around a bird’s neck or foot, causing strangulation or the bird to chew off toes to escape. Jingle bells and chain links can snare toes and beaks. Keep an eye on plush toys and huts to make sure your parrot isn’t ingesting the material.
Other animals
Despite their powerful beaks, parrots are helpless against animals equipped with sharp claws and teeth. No matter how mellow your kitty may seem around birds, a sudden instinctual impulse could change the situation in a flash. Regardless, contact with a cat’s saliva, which contains a bacteria deadly to birds called Pasteurella, could be fatal. A normally docile family pooch can seriously injure a fragile bird with one ill-tempered nip or clumsily placed paw.
The safest, least restrictive household for a parrot is one without cats or canines. For the sake of small birds, especially, you should seriously consider not adding a dog or cat to your menagerie if you already own a parrot and vice versa.
If you must have other animals, following some common-sense rules will help keep your parrot safe. Never allow a bird and a cat freedom inside the house simultaneously. To be on the safe side, never leave a dog unsupervised around a bird that is out of its cage.
Never leave unattended a bird you’ve brought outside. Even clipped birds can flutter short distances and may be able to clear a backyard fence. Even if you are nearby, it takes only a few seconds for a cat or other bold predator to attack. Hawks have been known to target parrots in populated suburban areas with humans only a few feet away. Raptors, including owls, also can seriously injure your bird through the mesh of an enclosed aviary. Protect aviary birds with double walls.
Thinking about adding another parrot to the family? In general, parrots adapt well to same-species cagemates if you gradually introduce the newcomer. However, be careful with larger breeds, such as Amazons and cockatoos, which can seriously injure or even kill one another.
Different species should never be forced to share the same cage and may even need to be kept separate outside of their cages to prevent dangerous conflicts. Smaller birds are no match for a macaw, and lories, although not much bigger than a cockatiel, will fearlessly attack any other bird, including much larger species.
The exception is cockatiels and budgies, which many people have successfully kept in the same cage.