50 Fun Facts About Pet Birds

The Canary Islands, which gave the pet canary its name, take their own Latin name from which animal?

Dogs gave the islands their Latin name, Canaria, the island of dogs, so the songbird is named after a place named after another animal. Why the Romans chose the name is disputed.

Which US president's pet parrot, Poll, is said to have been removed from his funeral for swearing?

Andrew Jackson bought the parrot for his wife Rachel in 1827 and kept it after her death. A clergyman who was at the 1845 funeral recalled it cursing so loudly that it had to be carried out.

Which fruit, safe for people, contains persin, a toxin that can kill pet parrots and canaries?

Avocado carries persin in its flesh, skin, stone and leaves, and caged birds are especially sensitive to it: the toxin damages the heart muscle and leaves them struggling to breathe.

Overheated pans coated with which material give off fumes that are deadly to pet birds?

Teflon, or PTFE, breaks down at very high heat into fumes that are fatal to birds, while people who breathe them usually get only a short flu-like illness known as polymer fume fever.

Which composer kept a pet starling that could sing a theme from his own Piano Concerto No. 17?

Mozart bought the bird in 1784 and jotted its version of the tune in his expense book. When it died three years later he gave it a funeral and wrote a poem in its memory.

Tweety, the canary chased by Sylvester in Looney Tunes cartoons, was first drawn in which colour?

Pink was Tweety's first look, because he began as a bare, featherless baby bird. After three cartoons censors called the character nude, so the studio painted feathers on him.

Which naturalist bred fancy pigeons and used them to explain selection in his most famous book?

Charles Darwin crossbred the birds himself and described them in On the Origin of Species, marvelling that breeds so different all descend from a single species, the rock dove.

Which talking bird did Charles Dickens keep as a pet named Grip and write into Barnaby Rudge?

A raven called Grip lived with the Dickens family in London and is generally considered the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem. Her stuffed body is on show in Philadelphia.

Which item of men's beachwear do Australians and Britons jokingly call 'budgie smugglers'?

Swim briefs of the Speedo type picked up the nickname in Australia, where former prime minister Tony Abbott, a fitness fanatic, was noted for wearing them.

Which Australian pet parrot with round orange cheek patches signals its mood with its crest?

The cockatiel is the smallest member of the cockatoo family, and its crest stands upright when the bird is startled or excited and lies flat against the head when it is angry.

Which red-tailed bird of equatorial Africa is a popular pet because it mimics human speech so well?

The grey parrot can use words in ways that fit the situation, not just at random, and one escaped pet in Japan was returned home after reciting its owner's name and address.

Which small pet parrots from Africa include the rosy-faced, Fischer's and masked species?

Lovebirds get their name from their strong, monogamous pair bonds and the long periods that mates spend sitting side by side. One of the nine species lives in Madagascar.

Which internal shell of a squid relative is hung in pet bird cages as a source of calcium?

Cuttlebone is the buoyancy organ of the cuttlefish, a hard but brittle shell so rich in calcium that it is also fed to chinchillas, reptiles, hermit crabs and snails.

Which patch of skin above a budgerigar's beak is blue in adult males and brown in breeding females?

The cere surrounds the nostrils, and its colour is the usual way to sex an adult budgerigar. Chicks of both sexes look alike, so young birds cannot be told apart this way.

Hedwig, the pet that carries Harry Potter's post, is which species of owl?

A snowy owl, Hedwig was a birthday present from Hagrid in the first book. Real ones breed on the Arctic tundra and, unlike most owls, are often active during the day.

Blu, the pet parrot raised in Minnesota in the film Rio, belongs to which rare Brazilian species?

Spix's macaw was stripped from the wild by trappers, the last wild male vanishing in 2000, and the film echoes the real breeding programme that began releasing birds into the Brazilian wild in 2022.

A parrot's zygodactyl feet, which let it handle food like a hand, have their four toes arranged how?

Two forward, two back is a layout parrots share with woodpeckers, cuckoos and some owls. It turns each foot into a clamp for climbing and for lifting food to the beak.

Which South American pet, also called the Quaker parrot, is outlawed in several US states as a pest?

The monk parakeet is one of very few parrots that build nests: escaped flocks raise communal ones as big as a small car, often on warm electrical equipment, where they are a fire risk.

What is the name for a large enclosure that, unlike a cage, gives captive birds enough room to fly?

An aviary lets its birds fly, which is why the British also call one a flight cage. An apiary, by contrast, is a place where beehives are kept.

Which Australian cage bird was the second bird, after the chicken, to have its genome sequenced?

The zebra finch is one of the birds that can learn new calls, which made it the leading laboratory model for the study of vocal learning. Its genome was read in 2008.

Miners once carried caged canaries underground to give early warning of which poisonous gas?

Carbon monoxide was the main danger the birds were there to reveal. Physiologist John Scott Haldane proposed the idea in 1895, and canaries were going underground within a year.

Which yearly process, which often stops a canary singing, sees a bird shed and regrow its feathers?

Moulting happens at least once a year because feathers are dead structures that wear out. It is gradual, so the bird keeps enough plumage to stay warm and shed water.

A parrot's ever-growing beak is sheathed in which protein, also found in human fingernails?

Keratin forms only a thin sheath, called the rhamphotheca, over the two bony jaws of the beak, and in most birds that sheath never stops growing.

Which muscular stomach chamber grinds up seeds for a pet bird, doing the work of the teeth it lacks?

The gizzard has thick muscular walls and often holds swallowed grit that does the chewing. Every bird has one, and toothless pangolins grind their food in a similar organ.

Which storybook hero learns the secret of speaking to animals from Polynesia, his pet parrot?

Doctor Dolittle starts out treating people, and only after Polynesia teaches him the languages of animals does he become a vet in Hugh Lofting's children's books.

Iago, the pet parrot of the villain Jafar in Disney's Aladdin, was first voiced by which comedian?

Gilbert Gottfried won the part after the film-makers saw him in Beverly Hills Cop II, and the animator gave the bird his half-closed eyes and ever-visible teeth.

Wild canaries are native to just three island groups: the Canaries, the Azores and which other?

Madeira has by far the fewest, at a few thousand pairs. Wild birds are a dull greenish colour, and the bright plumage of pets comes from a mutation that suppressed the dark pigment.

Which English city lent its name to a canary breed and its football club the nickname the Canaries?

Norwich is believed to have got its canaries from Protestant refugees fleeing the Spanish Netherlands, and the football club's chairman, a keen breeder, named his team after the birds.

Pigeons and doves feed their newly hatched chicks on which rich substance, made by both parents?

Crop milk is a semi-solid, cheese-like secretion of fat and protein from the lining of the throat pouch. Flamingos and male emperor penguins evolved the same trick separately.

Which colourful pet parrots have brush-tipped tongues for feeding on nectar rather than seeds?

Lorikeets have tufts of very fine hairs at the tip of the tongue that mop up nectar and pollen, and they can feed from the flowers of about 5,000 plant species.

Snowball, a cockatoo made famous by online videos, was the first animal proven to do what?

Dance to a beat is something only humans were thought to manage until Snowball adjusted his moves when researchers sped up and slowed down his favourite Backstreet Boys song.

Bird keepers call a male budgerigar or canary a cock, so what do they call a female?

A hen is the female of any bird, not just a chicken. A pen, by contrast, is specifically a female swan, whose mate is known as a cob.

A pet budgerigar fed on nothing but seed risks a fatty build-up in which organ?

The liver can turn fatty on a seed-only diet that lacks fruit and vegetables. Vets call the condition hepatic lipidosis, and overweight cage birds that get little exercise are most at risk.

Which pet bird has emerald-green males and bright red females, once thought to be two species?

The eclectus parrot is the most sexually dimorphic of all parrots, and unusually the female is the showier sex. Naturalists did not match the two up until the early 20th century.

Which black Asian cage bird with yellow head wattles rivals the best parrots at mimicking speech?

The hill myna is perhaps the only bird on a par with the best talking parrots. Unlike most pets it is often trapped in the wild, which has helped all but wipe it out in Bangladesh.

Which rainbow-coloured Australian cage bird comes in forms with red, black or yellow heads?

The Gouldian finch was named by ornithologist John Gould in 1844 in honour of his late wife Elizabeth. Males can be told from females by their deeper purple chests.

Which large Asian pet bird is named after the conqueror said to have sent it from Punjab to Europe?

The Alexandrine parakeet honours Alexander the Great, who is thought to have kept one himself. The birds he sent west became prized by royalty and nobles.

Which Virginia-born US president kept several pet mockingbirds, including one named Dick?

Thomas Jefferson's choice of pet is a famous mimic: the northern mockingbird's scientific name, Mimus polyglottos, joins the Latin for mimic to Greek words for many and tongue.

Which disease, nicknamed parrot fever, can people catch by inhaling dust from infected birds?

Psittacosis is caused by the bacterium Chlamydia psittaci, and an outbreak in 1929 and 1930 traced to imported parrots led to a surge of research into the disease.

Which white-cheeked cage bird, once a pest of rice fields, is illegal to keep in California?

The Java sparrow was one of the most popular cage birds in the United States until imports were banned, and its scientific name, oryzivora, means rice-eating.

The Harz Roller, a famous German song canary, delivers its rolling trills in which unusual way?

With its beak closed, or apparently so, the bird produces the soft rolls that give the breed its name. Miners took canaries to the Harz mountains around 1730, and the song has to be learned.

Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, actually raised his canaries at which other prison?

Leavenworth, in Kansas, let him raise canaries and publish two books on bird diseases. He was sent to Alcatraz in 1942 after officials found he had been using his research kit to make alcohol.

The word cockatoo came into English by way of Dutch from which language of Southeast Asia?

Malay kakatua became kaketoe in Dutch and then cockatoo in English, with the spelling nudged along by the English word cock. The original name may simply echo the bird's call.

The red factor canary was bred by crossing a pet canary with which endangered Venezuelan finch?

The red siskin gave the new variety its colour, and red factor canaries are bred for the novelty of that plumage rather than for their song.

When a pet bird's wings are clipped to limit flight, which group of feathers is normally trimmed?

The primaries are the long outer feathers that power a bird's flight, and most parrots have ten on each wing. They regrow in time, so a clip is only temporary.

Which popular cage bird is a purely domestic form of the white-rumped munia, first bred in China?

The Society finch, also called the Bengalese finch, reached European zoos from Japan in the 1860s. Generations of easy living have given it a far more complex song than its wild ancestor.

Which metal, used to galvanise cage wire against rust, can fatally poison pet parrots that chew it?

Zinc is the coating on galvanised steel and is highly toxic to parrots. In people, breathing its fumes during welding brings on a short illness nicknamed the zinc shakes.

Treasure Island's Long John Silver names his parrot after which pirate he served as quartermaster?

Captain Flint is the dead pirate whose buried treasure drives the plot. The bird that rides on Silver's shoulder did much to fix the popular image of a pirate.

Which 1992 law ended America's reign as the top importer of parrots trapped for the pet trade?

The Wild Bird Conservation Act choked off imports of trapped parrots, most of which had come from Latin America, and the European Union took over as the leading importer.

Bird keepers contrast softbills with which other group, a nickname for the parrots?

Hookbills are the parrots, named for the curved upper beak. Softbill, by contrast, is a label based on diet, covering cage birds that live on fruit, nectar or insects.