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Hello I'm new here

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Re: Hello I'm new here

Postby Wolf » Wed Feb 01, 2017 6:17 pm

It is interesting as well as sometimes confusing for new owners to read all of the information that is online concerning parrots. The range of this information covers everything that you can think of, but the reason for many if not most of the differences is that some of the information is old and outdated. It was not until around the late 1970's that their was any actual research being done on parrots, until this time the information that was given to us was all derived from studies involving chickens and applied to parrots which are totally different. The reason for this is that in the 70's air travel created a boom in the sales of exotic pets, including parrots and this made grant money more available to those who study wild birds.

We have learned a lot since this time but the results of any of the long term studies are just beginning to come in and being made available to the public and this has lead to a glut of both old and new information which is often contradictory. The 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark is one of these holdovers, just as the practice of laddering a bird to get obedience from it.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
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Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: Hello I'm new here

Postby Lyn F » Wed Feb 01, 2017 7:27 pm

Thank you Wolf. Can you give me a good source of information (other than this forum of course :D )
Lyn F
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 5
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Quaker
Flight: Yes

Re: Hello I'm new here

Postby Wolf » Thu Feb 02, 2017 10:58 am

Lyn F wrote:Thank you Wolf. Can you give me a good source of information (other than this forum of course :D )


This is a very good question and should be an easy one to answer but it is not. There is no single definitive source of information regarding parrots. Sometimes I look up the various parrot or bird magazines and then after reading an article I go to the reference material that is usually at the end of the article which many times leads me to even more references. It may take some time but this usually leads me to specific research papers that were published in scientific journals which are very often connected to a specific university. I look in scientific journals, medical journals especially those that are connected to schools or universities of veterinary sciences. Sometimes I even find things in news stories, but have to be sure to check out the references as most news stories seem to be bent more on sensationalism than on actually giving facts.

Forums can go either way as far as the information that they present, some are more fluff than anything else and some are more interested in giving good information regardless of weather it is what we like to hear. That is one of the main reasons that I particularly like this forum, it does not cater to what I want to hear about how to properly care for my birds. I can go to any section of the forum and especially in some of the longer threads find several different references to various studies that have been done concerning just about anything that I want to learn more about.

If you study enough about parrots in general you will come to realize that parrots do not make the best of pets and that it would have been better for the parrots to have never been considered as a pet, No matter how much time and resources we have not one of us can actually give a parrot the type of life that it deserves to have. By the same token parrots as pets are not going to go away and since these captive parrots are mostly raised in captivity they do not have the skills to be returned to the wild and this means that we have to do the best that we can to give them the best life that we can. Unfortunately it is not really that great for the parrots so we all fall short in caring for them properly.

It hurts to realise that we can't really give them the life that they deserve and it hurts to tell someone that truly loves and care about these birds that no matter how hard they or we try that we are unable to give them an adequate quality of life. It also hurts to know that there are so many of these wonderous creatures in rescues and such or condemned to a life of being moved from owner to owner and place to place because of our lack of understanding them and their nature. While it is true that none of us should have parrots as pets, it is also true that they are in our homes and this is not going to change. Sharing with new owners about this unhappy state of affairs does make it seem that we are trying to keep them from having parrots, but it is shared more as a means of letting them know that these birds are not easy keepers and that they do require more time and personal one on one attention than they were usually given to believe, The hope is that those who really want and care about these birds, will keep this information in mind and do their best to understand and give the birds as good of a life as possible and that often means a constant search for better answers and is something that most of us either do ourselves or we ask questions on the forums so that those who have or are researching about that can share new information with us.

I like to do my own research, but there is so much of it to do that I don't always have the time to do it and when that happens to me I come here and start asking questions, sometimes the response is close to what I thought it would be and other times I leave this forum fuming because the information does not fit in with my thoughts at the time, but then I am usually given a link or two to the research supporting what was shared with me and if that is not there then I often ask for it so that I can check it out for myself.

The second reason for me liking this forum is that the people who stay with it are those who are here for the birds benefit and not mine, they will always share with me what they have learned and not tell me what I think I want to here.

I know that this reply does not fit with what you asked for very well but it does not fit with what I thought I would be able to give either, when I started but it is the best that I have at this time.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
African Grey (CAG)
Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: Hello I'm new here

Postby Pajarita » Thu Feb 02, 2017 11:28 am

Yep, Wolf is absolutely correct on all his points. There is no one good source. Most sites have both good and bad information on them because there are many people posting there and anybody who writes a good post might sound like they know what they are talking about when, in reality, they might not. The other problem is that people think that because their 2, 3, 4, and even 5 year old parrot is doing OK under what somebody else is saying are bad conditions, this makes the info wrong. But it doesn't, it's only that most problems show up a couple of years after the bird has become either sexually mature or active. Good care does not necessarily show benefit to the bird in the short term but it will definitely show it in the long term.

I was born and raised in one of the South American countries where quakers come from. My grandmother would buy a baby or two every December, raise them and allow them to go back to the wild when they wanted to (they were never kept in cages and we had an open air patio off the kitchen as well as flocks flying over the house twice a day every day). I handfed my first quaker baby when I was 10 years old (under my grandmother's close supervision, mind you), her name was Pelusa (lint, in English) and she lived with us for a couple of years, left, came back for a little while and left again for good but we could hear her (she could talk up a storm!) talking every now and then in the trees of the school next block where they would stop in between feeding grounds (a huge cemetery about 3 miles to the right of the house and a huge park about 2 miles to the left).
We have huge flocks of them back home and they are everywhere in the sea resorts (there is a huge nest about a block away from my brother's summer bungalow) and the inside of the country - they are more common than pigeons, I think. My knowledge about them comes from what we all know back home... The country is Uruguay and we have four distinctive seasons so I know they are from temperate climate and not tropical or semi-tropical as they erroneously claim in many US sites. The thing with quakers is that they can be quite aggressive when not happy so an overly hormonal bird (which is what you will end up with if you keep them at 12 hours of light and 12 of darkness all year round) will become a screamers and a biter (they are also very prone to plucking because of this). I also know they eat a lot of fruit because the farmers complain about this all the time and anybody can see the flocks 'mobbing' a fruit tree and eating from it until there is nothing left. My family had an old and huge (and I do mean huge!) fig tree in the backyard of the summer house where we used to go the entire month of February on vacation (February there is like August here). This was the month when the figs were all ripe and we kids used to climb up the tree (without my parents' permission!) and scare the quakers away from them so we could pick them. They LOVED those figs and would not leave a single one left if we did not fight them for them :lol: That's how I know they eat a lot of fruit in the wild (they also love corn on the cob just as much). As to the sticks, that's what they use to build their nests. See these:

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=qu ... &FORM=IGRE
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
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