What a bird breathes, and what kills it
A bird's lungs extract far more from each breath than ours, which is exactly why kitchen fumes kill them. What is dangerous, and how to keep the air safe.
Birds
50 photos across 19 breeds
🦜 Kept birds range from finches that want to be watched rather than handled to parrots with the cognitive and emotional needs of a young child. Lumping them together is the single most common mistake a first-time owner makes.
The parrot family in particular — macaws, amazons, African greys, conures, cockatiels — are long-lived, loud, highly intelligent and deeply social. Many outlive their owners. A bored parrot does not sulk quietly; it screams, plucks its own feathers, and destroys what it can reach.
🤫 Birds are also the best concealers of illness of anything kept as a pet. A wild bird that looks ill is a bird something eats, so the instinct is to look well until looking well is impossible — which means a bird sitting fluffed up and quiet on the floor of its cage is not in a mood, it is at the end of an illness it has been hiding for days. Nothing about keeping birds matters more than learning to read the small changes: weight, droppings, the pitch of the noise it makes in the morning.
🔊 Noise deserves its own paragraph because it is the reason most parrots are rehomed. A conure at full volume carries through walls and down a street. Flock calls at dawn and dusk are normal behaviour rather than misbehaviour, they cannot be trained away, and no amount of loving the bird makes a neighbour tolerate them.
🥬 The diet most birds are sold with is the one that shortens their lives. An all-seed mix is the avian equivalent of living on crisps: palatable, fatty and deficient. Most species need a formulated pellet as the base with fresh vegetables on top, and changing a seed addict over takes weeks of patience rather than a decision.
Any breedAfrican grey parrot (3)Amazon parrot (3)American singer canary (3)Australian king parrot (3)Bengalese finch (3)Black-capped conure (3)Blue-and-gold macaw (3)Blue-crowned conure (3)Budgerigar (3)Caique (3)Call duck (3)Cockatiel (3)+7 more — use the search
Birds, newest first
Cockatiel
Cloud crosses the conservatory the moment the sun reaches the crystals.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Blue-and-gold macaw
Rio crosses the glasshouse twice a day at full speed, mainly for the noise it makes.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Blue-crowned conure
Olive has two perches four feet apart and treats the gap as a personal challenge.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Budgerigar
Mango waits by the window for the spray and then complains bitterly throughout.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Caique
Pickle does everything upside down, eating included, and sees no problem with it.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Call duck
Doris found the single puddle on the entire path and has claimed it as her own.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Bengalese finch
Pip sings all morning from the blossom and takes requests from nobody.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Black-capped conure
Kiwi refuses to walk anywhere she could plausibly fly instead.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Australian king parrot
Rajah waits out the rain on the low branch and comes back glowing the moment the sun returns.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
American singer canary
Sunny starts at first light, from that exact branch, whether or not anyone is ready for it.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Amazon parrot
Pico takes his shower on the perch by the window and requires the whole house to know it.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
African grey parrot
Mabel tilts her head like that while she decides whether to repeat what you just said.
FrostyOtter · 6 days ago
Bullfinch
Cobweb 11 holds the token and that train is not moving until she hands it over. She is aware of this.
FrostyOtter · 1 week ago
Before you get a bird
- Lifespan varies from around five years for a Bengalese finch to fifty or more for a blue and gold macaw. Larger parrots are routinely written into wills.
- Noise is not trainable away. A conure at full volume carries through walls, and flock calls at dawn and dusk are normal behaviour, not misbehaviour.
- Birds need out-of-cage time every day and things to destroy. Foraging toys and rotated enrichment are the difference between a settled bird and a feather-plucking one.
- Their respiratory systems are extraordinarily sensitive. Non-stick cookware fumes, aerosols, scented candles and smoke can kill a bird in minutes.
- Avocado, chocolate, caffeine and alcohol are all toxic, and an all-seed diet causes long-term deficiency. Most species need formulated pellets plus fresh vegetables.
- Weigh the bird. A kitchen scale that reads in grams is the single most useful thing an owner of a small bird can buy, because a tenth of the body weight can be gone before anything is visible to look at.
- Consider a rehome rather than a baby. Parrots are passed on constantly, by people who did not expect fifty years of noise, and an adult bird of known temperament from a rescue is often a kinder and more honest starting point than a hand-reared chick.
- A room a bird flies in has to be made safe first: windows and mirrors covered or obvious, ceiling fans off, other pets shut out, and no open water. Most serious accidents happen in the first ten minutes of freedom.
- A single female bird can still lay, repeatedly, and chronic laying strips calcium and causes egg binding. It is managed by changing light, diet and nest-like spaces rather than ignored.
General guidance, not veterinary advice. Anything about a specific animal is a question for a vet who has seen it.
Birds worth knowing about
A place to start rather than the whole list. Every name is a page.
- Budgerigar
The sensible first parrot: small, cheap to house, genuinely talkative and sociable with its own kind. Keep two. Show-bred budgies are larger and shorter-lived than the wild-type birds.
- Cockatiel
A small cockatoo, which the crest gives away — gentler and much quieter than the big parrots, and a whistler rather than a talker. Fifteen to twenty-five years.
- African grey parrot
The famous talker, and the clearest case of a bird being too clever for a quiet life. Forty to sixty years, prone to feather-plucking when bored, and a genuine lifetime commitment.
- Blue and gold macaw
Enormous, spectacular, and loud in a way that has to be heard before it is believed. Fifty years or more, often sixty, with a beak that will remove anything wooden in the room.
- Bengalese finch
A bird to be watched rather than handled, and unusual in having no wild population at all. Easy, quiet, sociable, and the right answer for somebody who wants birds without a parrot.
- Amazon parrot
Sturdy, confident and a strong talker, with a tendency to bond hard to one person and object loudly to everyone else. Fifty years plus, and prone to obesity on a seed diet.
Guides for birds
The subjects that come up on breed page after breed page, written out properly.
How to photograph your pet
Light, height, focus and patience — what separates a good pet photo from a blurred one, and how to handle black cats, white dogs and animals that never sit still.
Leaving a pet alone
Some breeds were made to be companions and cope badly by themselves. How long is reasonable, how to build up alone-time, and when it is a panic disorder.
Gene pools, popular sires and closed studbooks
A great many of the breed profiles here mention a narrow gene pool. What that actually means, why one stallion can reshape a breed, and what to ask a breeder.
Heatstroke, and the first ten minutes
Heatstroke kills quickly and is entirely preventable. Which animals are at risk, the signs, and the cooling that current evidence actually supports.
Adopting a rescue animal
Rescue animals arrive without a history and settle on their own timetable. What decompression means, what the first three months look like, and what helps.
All 19 bird breeds with photos
Every breed somebody has posted, A to Z.