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Large and small parrots are available in pet stores everywhere. Parrots are frequently kept as pets, and it is not unusual for individuals to have more than one parrot. Keeping parrots, however, is a demanding business that requires a great deal of time and patience, and it is not everyone who has sufficient amounts of either.
As a young girl, I always had a parakeet and enjoyed teaching him to talk. My parakeet seemed to become attached to me, and was a great source of laughter, entertainment and joy. He danced to music, repeated funny phrases, even mixing up “pretty bird” with “dirty bird” saying “pretty, dirty, bird.” As a nine-year old girl, that would send me into giggles.
He was noisy at times, but would settle down when the cage was covered and slept through the night, quietly entertaining himself until I uncovered him and the day began.
The owner of a budgerigar or canary deals with a domestic bird that has been bred in captivity for generations. The owner of some parrots, however, may have to cope with awild bird that was probably flitting about in the jungles of its native habitat only a fwe months ago.
He has on his hands a bird that has not yet digested the drastic change from a native biotope in the African, Australian, or South American jungles to a cage in a living room; a bird taht will therefore tend to be very shy because its past experience with human beings has been bad.
We’ll discuss in some details how much patience and effort the owner of a parrot will have to invest before you can win its confidence and make them hand tame.
Parrots are “intelligent” and cannot be treated like birds on a lower level of biological development, nor can they be trained like a dog and taught to obey. If they make a nuisance of themselves in the home, chewing on valuable furniture, for example, or nipping holesin clothing or biting through electrical wires, this is usually because they are bored. Only if you parrot is propery occupied will he refrain from doing things that can damage your home or be harmful to him.
Ornithologists, the branch of zoology that deals with the study of birds, agree that the parrot disorder known as “feather plucking” in which the bird plucks out all its own feathers is psychic in origin. Any parrot owner who does not keep this in mind, who leaves his bird sitting in its cage all the time, and talks to it only rarely through the bars will ineviably wind up with a phlegmatic (having or suggesting a calm, sluggish temperament; unemotional) pet that will become both physically and mentally ill within a short time. Also, the bird will give him very little enjoyment because it will learn only a few words or may not learn to talk at all.
Popular varieties of parrots, such as cockatoos, macaws, and Amazons, as well as the small varieties like the lories and lovebirds will be discussed on this site.
Because of their different origins, these birds differ in their natures and in their nutritional needs. It is also crucial that the parrot owner undestand the behavior of his feathered pet, and their amusing, exotic, and appealing behavior and characteristics.
In their native countries, parrots have been kept as domestic birds since time immemorial. In the jungle villages of the Amazon basin, for example, almost every Indian hut has its pet parrot. Indian women take parrot chicks from their nests and raise them on chicha, an Indian beer made from boiled sweet potatoes.
The indiscriminate capturing of parrots by animal dealers and native peoples and the changes in, and destruction of, their habitat have brought some varieties of parrots to the verge of extinction. Dealers will stoop to any method of capturing the birds as long as it is quick and effective. They cut down trees to rob nests and burn a sulfur smudge untul the birds fall out of the trees unconscious and can be picked up off the ground like dropped apples. Some years ago, more than a million parrots were caught every year for sale as pets. Up to 50% of these birds died as a result of capture and shipment from people who did not know what they are doing and don’t care.
Among young birds the mortality rate was even higher. Concern about this high mortality rate caused improvement in shipping and housing conditions over the last decade.
Every imported parrot has to be examined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With commercially imported birds, this routine examination is done following a 30-day quarantine period. After quarantine every parrot is given a numbered band that certifies that the bird has been legally imported and his in fact been examined by a USDA veterinarian as required by law.
Any imported parrot without a band should be regarded as a potentially contraband bird that may have been illegally imported. The most important reason for examining birds after import is to see if they have Newcastle Virus, which is a threat to the U.S. poultry industry.
Spare your parrot the discomfort of wearing his band. Remove it as soon as you ahve your bird at home. He can injure himself with it as he will try to chew it off. It is quite sufficient if you keep the band available among your other documents.
June 2, 2009 10:53 am | 
I believe in beauty.
These Sun-loving flowers are named Helianthus annus: (helios means sun in Greek and annus designates it as an annual. Over the past few years, sunflowers have come into their own as cutting flowers and give beauty to any vase or floral arrangement. There are lots of new cultivars in many shapes – from standard ray flowers to pompoms or fuzzy disks.
Ring of Fire: An AAS (All-America-Selections) winner with striking 5-inch wide pollenless flowers; bi-coloured petals in dark red around a chocolate brown center taper off to golden yellow tips. Grows 4 to 5 feet tall; late-blooming.
