Enrichment for Pet Birds - RSPCA
Let them fly
Birds need to be able to fly freely every day. The best home you can give them is a large aviary (an outdoor cage or enclosure), with plenty of space for flying. If you don’t have an aviary, your bird will still need a large indoor space where they can fly safely.
Clipping your bird’s wings is not good for them. It will stop them from being able to behave naturally and can harm them. To find out more about why you should avoid doing this, please check out our page on letting your bird fly freely.
Foraging for food
In the wild, birds naturally forage for their food. Helping to give them a similar experience in captivity can make all the difference to your bird’s wellbeing and will help stop any abnormal behaviours.
- You can buy foraging toys made for parrots, such as pipe feeders or puzzle feeders. Your bird will enjoy working out how to get to the food hidden inside them.
- For homemade foraging toys, roll up bits of food in newspaper, push it into cardboard tubes and then wedge them in your bird’s cage bars for them to chew on.
- Pine cones are good for dotting tasty bits of peanut butter or margarine in the crevices.
- Giving smaller meals, more often and in different places, can also help mimic feeding in the wild.
- Food frozen in ice blocks will give parrots the chance to chip away at the ice to get to the food.
- You can also try scattering their food, changing to different sized pellets and offering different types of vegetables and fruits (though you shouldn’t give them avocado as it’s poisonous to them – see our diet page for information on dangerous foods to avoid).
Keeping parrots busy
Parrots are particularly intelligent, so they need things to occupy their minds and keep them physically active. You can buy or make lots of toys to stimulate them. Make sure these are safe and made from non-toxic materials and paints.
Buy or make toys your parrot can hold in their foot, or hanging toys to put in their cage or aviary.
Make your own toys from untreated wood, paper, cardboard, pine cones, unwanted books, natural fibre rope and cardboard boxes.
Short lengths of natural fibre cord or rope hung in the cage or aviary will encourage your parrot to chew.
Twigs from safe fruit or nut trees, with bark and leaves left on, make good toys and can be used to make perches too.
Ladders, ropes and nets in large cages, aviaries or flight areas can encourage your parrot to climb.
As most parrots love climbing, their cage or aviary should have horizontal bars and bird-safe, unsprayed branches of pine, elder and willow too.
Bathing
To keep your bird’s feathers in good condition, give them a good spray with a fine mist of plain, room-temperature water from a plant sprayer every few days in the morning. This will encourage them to preen, like grooming their feathers, which helps keep them clean.