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Can anyone tell me about the Ducorp's cockatoos?

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Re: Can anyone tell me about the Ducorp's cockatoos?

Postby banuvatt » Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:08 pm

The conditions parrots were kept in were more or less the same as a goldfish. As goldfish aren't supposed to be kept in a bowl, neither are parrots supposed to be kept in small, round, and tall cages. Birds were kept in general is pretty poor conditions. Cages were merely for ornamental purposes they had no practical function except to keep the bird from flying away. Birds couldn't use their wings and fly depending on the size. Smaller birds like canaries could only fly for short distances in that cages. I only understand smaller cages as a means to transport a bird from one place to another. For instance travel cages it's more convenient within a shorter time to place your bird in a smaller cage when visiting the vet. China and much of Asia in fact still keep the tradition of keeping birds in small but elegant bamboo cages. The only thing that is suitable for those small, round, tall cages is house plants.
If you don't mind me asking are you Argentinian? You mentioned quaker parakeets. They hate quaker parakeets over there as far as I am concerned. They are considered crop pests. They even allow hunters who travel to Argentina for game bird hunting to shoot them... Which is a shame quaker parakeets are such intelligent creatures with unique personalities.
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Re: Can anyone tell me about the Ducorp's cockatoos?

Postby Pajarita » Tue Jun 09, 2020 8:41 am

No. not Argentina but close, I am from Uruguay. And quakers are also considered agricultural pests there and people are allowed to kill them. Furthermore, back in the 50's and 60's, people could get paid something for each bird they killed - that's why my grandmother would raise the babies so she could release them once they were grown (they were never kept in a cage, they flew all over the house and, when they were sexually mature adults, they would take off from the open patio once the big flocks flew over the house. When I was a child, the farmers used to knock down the nests, grab the babies that were still alive and sell them at the farmers market. The ones that did not get bought would die because the farmers did not feed them as their interest was to reduce the number of birds eating their crops. But this is no longer done as selling animals in flea or farmers markets is now forbidden although you can still find some every now and then.

And yes, people kept birds under terrible conditions! Wrong diet, wrong housing, wrong everything - but it was not done out of malice, it was ignorance... people thought they were doing the right thing. Same as people nowadays still clip or free-feed pellets or keep a single bird all alone all day long, day after day after day. Some people do it because they don't care but some do it because they think it's OK - and the 'fluff' birdsites out there don't help either.
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Re: Can anyone tell me about the Ducorp's cockatoos?

Postby Pajarita » Tue Jun 09, 2020 9:37 am

One more thing that I meant to comment on before and forgot: cockatiels are not cockatoos - they belong to the same family: Cacatuinae but to their own subfamily. And they are not frugivores, they are granivores (and, actually, it is super hard to get a cockatiel to eat fruits regularly)
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Re: Can anyone tell me about the Ducorp's cockatoos?

Postby banuvatt » Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:04 pm

Okay, yes I forgot about that there was some dispute whether they should be considered a cockatoo or not. They are technically considered parakeets at the same time due to their size and long tail. Well, I never said cockatiels were frugivores. When I say parrots I mean parrots in general, generally speaking, most parrots are frugivores. Now some parrots are omnivores as well because they will eat insects. It does make sense that cockatiels are granivores due to them living in the grasslands of Australia. So I imagine lots of plains growing not many fruit trees.
I noticed what you mentioned about the young of quaker parakeets being sold off as pets are true for many other animals as well. Chimps are killed for protecting their young and sold off as bushmeat their young in turn are sold as pets, this is also the same for the orangutan.
I think it's horrible to capture a wild animal when it's young especially to be a pet. It's even worst when the animals that are captured are older because they will get traumatized. This is true for a lot of wild-caught parrots they will have a great fear of humans. Younger animals are more of a target since they are easier to imprint on. So many macaw and other parrots their eggs and chicks are stolen, unlike the quaker parakeet which produces a lot of young a clutch of 6-12. Larger parrots typically only produce a clutch of 2-4 eggs.
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Re: Can anyone tell me about the Ducorp's cockatoos?

Postby Pajarita » Wed Jun 10, 2020 10:41 am

Birds that eat insects are not omnivores - this is a VERY common misconception and one of the arguments people use to justify feeding their parrots meat - a wrong argument because the flesh of insects is different from what we consider 'meat', it has virtually no fat and no bad cholesterol while chicken, beef, pork has a lot of both these things that are real bad for parrots. There are only two and possibly a third species of parrot that are omnivores, the rest are all herbivores -even the ones that eat insects. See, when it comes to dietary ecology classification of the species, whether an animal is considered a herbivore, a carnivore or an omnivore is, usually, a matter of degree because there is almost always an overlap. We do not say that horses are omnivores because they eat a few insects mixed in with the grass they eat, do we? Neither do we say that lions are omnivores because they eat the stomach (s) and intestines of the herbivore prey they hunt which is filled with plant material. It's the same with parrots. There are two species, and possibly a third, that are omnivores but only the 'possibly' one is kept as a pet and it is not common at all (the vasa parrot). There are species that end up eating quite a bit of insects during breeding season (like some of the cockatoo species that even dig for grubs) but they are still classified as herbivores because the bulk of their diet is plant material. I am not against feeding a bit of insect protein during breeding season and have done it in the past (this year is all askew because of the lockdown) but just a little bit mixed in with their gloop, not a piece of meat! People feed their birds eggs all the time not realizing that there is not a single species of parrot that eats eggs in the wild and that they are real bad for them - they are a bomb of protein, fat and bad cholesterol. Eggs are fine for omnivores and carnivores but not for herbivores because even leaving aside the high level of the wrong type of protein (not all protein is the same) and the fat, the bad cholesterol is slow poison to them because as they did not evolve to eat eggs, nature did not give them any natural mechanism to get rid of the excess so the body sends it all over the place: deposits in their veins and arteries (heart disease, strokes, etc), in their liver in the form of fatty nodules (hepatic lipidosis), in tumors and xanthomas and even as a white blob in their eyes! I know somebody who used to feed her GAC scrambled eggs for breakfast until the bird was diagnosed with a severe and by then chronic and irreversible heart condition at only 10 years of age - she died a few years after despite treatment.

Diet is a very complicated subject, especially when it comes to birds because they are all and without exception opportunistic feeders, meaning, they will try to stick to what nature evolved them to eat but they will eat whatever is available so as not to starve - even if it is something that will end up killing them in the medium to long term (like the lorikeets in England that have been observed eating ground beef from feeders). Their prime directive is to survive long enough to procreate. Period. Aside from that, they are also all seasonal feeders so their diet will change from one season to another... some of them very drastically, like cardinals, for example, which are 90% insectivore/10% granivore during the breeding season to switch to 90% granivore/10% insectivore during the resting one. Parrots switch their diets too although not as markedly as the cardinals.

And yes, I agree with 100%, it is inhuman to trap a wild animal for whatever reason UNLESS it is to help it. But quakers do not have such large clutches - only precocial birds lay so many eggs because they do not need to feed them when they are babies. A quaker clutch is between 4 and 8 eggs.
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Re: Can anyone tell me about the Ducorp's cockatoos?

Postby banuvatt » Wed Jun 10, 2020 11:57 am

Excuse me, yes I forget that the term was insectivore. The only parrot I am sure that eats meat is probably the Kea. They feed on carrion and are known to be opportunistic predators at times due to its bad reputation of attacking sheep. Hyacinth macaws have been known to eat insects, slugs, and lizards when breeding season is approaching. Feeding parrots meat I understand that it is not natural because they do not normally prey on other animals in the wild. Not to mention as you said it can cause health problems due to their digestive system not being able to properly process it.

There are lorikeets in England? I thought there were only Indian ring-necked parakeets introduced in England?

When I say, quaker clutches being large I mean relatively in comparison to other parrots. I thought Quakers could lay up to 6-12 eggs? In general, parrots don't lay a large number of eggs, especially when compared to members of the Phasianidae family(also known as pheasants) who are probably the biggest family of birds to lay the most amount of eggs. Quaker parakeets being the species of parrot with the largest amount of clutches are probably the reason why they are the most successful feral parrot throughout the world. They can adapt to colder climates as we can see from feral populations being established in Chicago. They don't have much competition with nesting due to their unique way of building nests. (It kind of reminds me of a larger version of a weaver's nest.) But, typically parrots, in general, have smaller clutches this unfortunately contributes to them being threatened in the wild when they are poached for the pet trade, and their natural habitat is destroyed.
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Re: Can anyone tell me about the Ducorp's cockatoos?

Postby Pajarita » Fri Jun 12, 2020 10:44 am

I don't think that quakers have the largest clutches... budgies have an average clutch of 5-6 eggs and they are determinate layers so I think it's a matter of size, the larger the parrot, the less eggs per clutch and the less clutches per year.

Quakers survive because of their nests, their adaptability -which is not common in parrots- and also because they are super smart. It is their communal nests that provide the warmth necessary for them to survive in colder temperate climates but they also come from temperate climate countries themselves so it's not as if they were tropical birds surviving in, say, Chicago weather...
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