After nearly 20 years of daily parrot feeding I seriously still get a buzz from seeing my birds getting stuck into the fresh food that I prepare for them daily. Cleaning and re-perching, yep - that's a chore, feeding - definitely not. I have written about the value of foraging foods in a number of past blog posts but I wanted to revisit the idea with `5 Fab Foraging Foods’ – stuff that anyone can grab from their local produce and supermarket that get parrots working for food in ways that better replicates the functional foraging behaviours we observe from them in the wild.
- Fresh Figs – Expensive little fellas but packed with gooey goodness. These represent everything that is good about a true forage food – inedible external layer hiding seed filled fleshy delight with the right texture to appeal to most species. A nice idea is to use a knife to `score’ the outside and just feed whole to let them do the rest of the demolition job on it.
- Sugar Snap Peas – Another pricey piece of produce but again, a great replicator of nature’s parrot perfect packaging that demands some work and perseverance to get beyond the fibrous pod and into the peas inside.
- Passionfruit – As with fresh figs, the best way to feed these to motivate work is to score the fruit casing with a knife and let them do the rest. I actually find that my birds don’t seem to eat much of the passionfruit at all. But the sight of an obliterated mess of purple and gold tells me that they whilst there was probably no nutritional value to be gained they had plenty of fun doing `stuff’ other than making noise and pulling out feathers.
- Chillies – Parrots lack the capsaicin receptors that result in us humans experiencing the sensation of `heat’ when eating peppers. Packed full of vitamins they can be a great addition to the daily diet. In all the years I have been feeding parrots I have seen every variation on the theme when it comes to consuming foods like chillies. Some eat the flesh, some only eat the seeds, some show little interest. Worth persevering and trying different colours as well to pique their interest.
- Seed Sticks – Yep, not kidding. I’ll probably be lambasted by all the Parrot Police out there who want to rave about ridiculous restrictions on feeding anything not derived from ritually blessed organically certified soils of the hippy hinterland or picked from trees facing the mystic light shards of the northern summer solstice. But seriously, these humble little original bird treats are cheap, convenient, novel fun – especially for parrots that rarely get exposed to seed in their regular diet. In most cases very little is actually consumed and they really can be a highly effective redirector for destructive behaviour – particularly useful to have handy when you need a little quiet `busy’ time from your parrot. Just be sensible with the stick selection and the way you use them; choose the varieties with minimal sunflower seed, avoid the wire stick versions and only use the type shown in the pic above (Trill and Bird Munchies are best), only provide with a purpose (not as a substitute for the more nutritionally beneficial items of their daily food intake) and present for short windows of opportunity to access instead of leaving them in the cage for extended periods of time.
