Shortly after the arrival of our first rescue parrot, the most important piece of information that could ever be shared with me about bird care, was dispersed by a veterinarian through a personal email on an online message forum. In helping me with assist our new rescue with adapting to our home, she reminded me that companion birds are prey animals, and need to be treated as such.

 

The meaning of that one sentence to me was profound, and coloured the future of my interactions with birds.

 

We live in a society now that has humanized our dogs and cats, another irresponsible error in anthropomorphism by human beings, who mean well, but refuse to acknowledge that the animals we house are very different than ourselves. The drastic error in anthropomorphism of our dogs, in itself, rings clear in the unnecessary number of dog bites and euthanizing due to behaviour problems, in any given day.

 

Avian companions suffer a double whammy in many homes, suffering both being judged against our furry animal companions, but also, being judged against the human standard that we measure our canine and feline companions by.

 

If anything I can ever share, please remember this: our avian companions are not like humans, nor are they like our feline and canine friends.

 

We’ve learned to measure a certain standard of behaviors in our companion animals based upon what we expect, in general, from our dogs and cats. But both these species are defined by one common characteristic: they are carnivores, and therefore, react via their predator instincts, and top-of-the food chain position. Often, unless homes are shared with other prey animals such as rabbits or rodents, the expectation of birds to act like dogs and cats is unrealistically high.

 

Our wild avian counterparts are driven by the fact that they are prey animals. Watching the wild birds in your yard will show that; even chickadees, somewhat social and bold, as a general rule, don’t linger long enough to become tamed.

 

Given this one simple idea, it should come as no surprise to anyone sharing their home with a bird that their companion, when stressed or upset, will resort to aggressive behaviours such as biting. In many ways, this is the only mean that birds can communicate with "their people", because so many humans fail to read the subtle behavioural cues that their birds communicate with in the first place.

 

When we bring birds into our homes, we take away their natural defence system of flight by clipping wings and caging them. While there are obvious safety reasons for both of these actions, we need to keep in mind that by doing this, we have removed from our companion their instinctual means of keeping safe. This leaves the second default mechanism of "fight" remaining.