Pet Birds
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50 free Pet Birds trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Birds have shared our homes for thousands of years, kept for their song, their colour and, in the case of parrots, their uncanny knack for talking. Budgerigars, canaries and finches are some of the most popular pets on the planet, and every one of them has a surprising story, from where it first lived to how it ended up in a cage on the kitchen windowsill. This quiz covers the whole world of companion birds. Expect questions on the best-known pet species and how to tell them apart, on everyday care such as diet, household dangers and health, on how a bird's body works, and on the feathered pets of presidents, composers, novelists and film characters. It is written for bird keepers, would-be owners and quiz fans alike. The opening questions are friendly to beginners, and the later ones will stretch people who have kept birds for years.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Canary Islands, which gave the pet canary its name, take their own Latin name from which animal?
Dogs
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.
Q 02Which US president's pet parrot, Poll, is said to have been removed from his funeral for swearing?
Andrew Jackson
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.
Q 03Which fruit, safe for people, contains persin, a toxin that can kill pet parrots and canaries?
Avocado
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.
Q 04Overheated pans coated with which material give off fumes that are deadly to pet birds?
Teflon
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.
Q 05Which composer kept a pet starling that could sing a theme from his own Piano Concerto No. 17?
Mozart
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.
Q 06Tweety, the canary chased by Sylvester in Looney Tunes cartoons, was first drawn in which colour?
Pink
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.
Q 07Which naturalist bred fancy pigeons and used them to explain selection in his most famous book?
Charles Darwin
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.
Q 08Which talking bird did Charles Dickens keep as a pet named Grip and write into Barnaby Rudge?
A raven
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.
Q 09Which item of men's beachwear do Australians and Britons jokingly call 'budgie smugglers'?
Swim briefs
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.
Q 10Which Australian pet parrot with round orange cheek patches signals its mood with its crest?
Cockatiel
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.
Q 11Which red-tailed bird of equatorial Africa is a popular pet because it mimics human speech so well?
Grey parrot
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.
Q 12Which small pet parrots from Africa include the rosy-faced, Fischer's and masked species?
Lovebirds
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.
Q 13Which internal shell of a squid relative is hung in pet bird cages as a source of calcium?
Cuttlebone
Q 21Miners once carried caged canaries underground to give early warning of which poisonous gas?
Carbon monoxide
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.
Q 22Which yearly process, which often stops a canary singing, sees a bird shed and regrow its feathers?
Moulting
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.
Q 23A parrot's ever-growing beak is sheathed in which protein, also found in human fingernails?
Keratin
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.
Q 14Which patch of skin above a budgerigar's beak is blue in adult males and brown in breeding females?
The cere
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.
Q 15Hedwig, the pet that carries Harry Potter's post, is which species of owl?
Snowy 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.
Q 16Blu, the pet parrot raised in Minnesota in the film Rio, belongs to which rare Brazilian species?
Spix's macaw
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.
Q 17A parrot's zygodactyl feet, which let it handle food like a hand, have their four toes arranged how?
Two forward, two back
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.
Q 18Which South American pet, also called the Quaker parrot, is outlawed in several US states as a pest?
Monk parakeet
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.
Q 19What is the name for a large enclosure that, unlike a cage, gives captive birds enough room to fly?
An aviary
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.
Q 20Which Australian cage bird was the second bird, after the chicken, to have its genome sequenced?
Zebra finch
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.
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.
Q 24Which muscular stomach chamber grinds up seeds for a pet bird, doing the work of the teeth it lacks?
Gizzard
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.
Q 25Which storybook hero learns the secret of speaking to animals from Polynesia, his pet parrot?
Doctor Dolittle
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.
Q 26Iago, the pet parrot of the villain Jafar in Disney's Aladdin, was first voiced by which comedian?
Gilbert Gottfried
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.
Q 27Wild canaries are native to just three island groups: the Canaries, the Azores and which other?
Madeira
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.
Q 28Which English city lent its name to a canary breed and its football club the nickname the Canaries?
Norwich
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.
Q 29Pigeons and doves feed their newly hatched chicks on which rich substance, made by both parents?
Crop milk
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.
Q 30Which colourful pet parrots have brush-tipped tongues for feeding on nectar rather than seeds?
Lorikeets
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.