|
EssentialBird |
| Environmental Enrichment Ideas |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Leanne Burton | ||||
|
One of the most important things we can do for the birds in our care is to offer them an environment full of enriching activities. This may prevent unpleasant behaviors from developing; it can also go a long way towards curbing or eliminating undesirable behaviors that are already in place. I have significantly decreased both screaming and biting behaviors in my birds with the thoughtful use of environmental enrichment and well-timed extra enrichment activities. Birds that spend the majority of their time in a cage will particularly benefit from an enriched environment. A parrot busily engaged in foraging, destroying or playing is a happy parrot! I hope to present some new ideas that will inspire you to add a little extra zest to your parrot’s life. First let’s discuss a possible alternative cage set up. Not enough can be said for having the largest cage possible. After all, the larger the cage the more room for fun things to do. We have all seen the typical cage set-up with one main perch running side to side and just one or two additional perches. I have found that removing the main perch and installing a variety of short peg perches around the perimeter of the cage, in a stair step-like fashion, encourages more activity in my birds, especially my red tail grey, Baby. I then fill the center of the cage with many wonderful hanging toys, so many that you can’t really see from front to back. One perch allows Baby to reach a favorite cotton rope toy, another perch makes it possible to chew on a sisal knot, and yet another perch offers easy access to a bell or some shred-able cardboard. Some toys she has to reach for and pull out from behind other toys. If your cage isn’t large enough for a circular set up like this, yet you want to add more fun items inside the cage, line one entire wall with toys. Just hang them right next to one another with a few perches that offer easy access. Some birds are easily bored with the same old toys, so put together an extra stash of toys and each day add a new one and remove an old one from the cage. This only takes a minute and yet introduces some daily variety. After you’ve thought of redecorating ideas for the top area of the cage, consider what can be done with the bottom of the cage. Most of my birds do well with butcher paper on top of their grate; however, this must be changed daily to avoid the accumulation of droppings. It gives them a different surface to stand on and can even be chewed on a bit if the mood takes them. I’ve heard of birds that like to crawl underneath the paper to have some private time each day. Some parrots like having a piece of acrylic in one corner to stand on while playing with foot toys. Consider this for your bird if there is a corner of the cage that is usually free of droppings. Your local hardware store should have acrylic and most will cut it to size for you. You can sand the edges with regular sandpaper so that they aren’t rough. Another surface that is a favorite of both my grey, Baby, and my quaker, Bocephus, is a metal shelf. Most birds like hanging out on top of their cage and the metal shelf is like having a bit of cage-top conveniently located inside the cage. Then there’s that space above and beside the cage to think about. I like to hang swings, bird safe branches and ropes from the ceiling or the wall and my birds love to play on these. My friend, Lainey Alexander, makes toy-trees for her birds by hanging multi-branched sections of bird safe trees from the ceiling. If you don’t want to hang your toy-tree, you can also place a large bird safe branch in a Christmas tree stand. Don’t forget to add toys, ropes and ladders between the branches if that is something your bird would enjoy. Placing a towel, butcher paper or newspaper below this area will make clean up easy. You can even use a small, washable rug that matches your décor. If you have the extra space, consider devoting an entire room to your bird. Cindy Kaeser, another friend of mine, did this for her red tail grey, Big John. In this room he has several ropes going from wall to wall. Big John loves climbing on the ropes and hanging upside down. As a result, he gets far more exercise and stimulation than he would just sitting in a cage or on a play gym. Never assume that your bird won’t chew the ceiling unless you just happen to be good at ceiling repair. For any item that you hang, you can create inexpensive ceiling guards out of acrylic. You will need a piece approximately 4 to 6 inches wide and 8 to 12 inches long. This will hang down from the ceiling so anything attached to it will be 8 to 12 inches away from the ceiling. Smooth the edges with sandpaper and drill a hole about 1/4 of an inch from both the top and bottom edges, insert quicklinks into these holes, and you have a very effective ceiling guard. Finally, consider your bird’s sleeping arrangements. A separate sleeping cage offers an extra dimension to your bird’s life. If you don’t have room for a separate sleeping cage, you can place a small cage or travel cage on top of or beside your bird’s day time cage and cover it at night. My favorite set up is to have a large walk-in cage or aviary where a bird has lots of room for movement and play, with a smaller sleeping cage placed inside. My quaker, who lives in a large walk-in cage, sleeps in a little “house” inside the walk-in cage. Her house consists of a metal shelf with two rope perches, each forming an arch on top of the shelf, with a towel draped over the top of the perches. Alternatively, you could offer one of the many sleeping hut type products or a nest box attached to the cage. If you have concerns about offering a nest box, just limit access so that the bird only uses it for sleeping. Be creative about offering your bird new or alternative play spaces. Lainey Alexander decided to devote her only downstairs closet to her red tail grey, Melissa, who claimed the closet as her own while the house was under construction. Lainey attached shelves on several levels for holding toys and treats, then installed a toy-tree for Melissa to enjoy. Needless to say, the play closet is Melissa’s favorite place to be! When Cindy Kaeser found Big John sitting on the wastebasket and pulling items out, she decided he needed a wastebasket just for play. She fills the bottom half with crumpled paper bags, then puts in straws, junk mail, and paper for him to sort through. He loves it! Every grey I know likes to chew on knotted rope. If your grey already has plenty of cotton rope, try some untreated sisal which can usually be purchased in rolls from the hardware store in a variety of sizes for under $0.20 per foot. You can use the one inch diameter rope as a perch or you can twist or braid some half-inch diameter rope together. This is an inexpensive way to create out-of-cage tightropes for your bird to play on. I use the smallest diameter of untreated sisal to tie toys or food items onto the cage bars. How many birds do you know that like to play with their food? With a little creativity, you can add some additional interest for their dining pleasure. Try pushing sunflower seeds or almonds into a slice of apple or pear. Wrap a few nuts in several layers of paper towel or butcher paper and tie this in a knot: your birds will know what they are looking for if they watch you do this. You can also use corn husks and tie a little piece of string or sisal around each end. I discovered just how much fun birds have picking, preening and chewing on coconut shells when organic coconuts showed up at my natural foods store recently. Both my cockatiel, Bojangles, and my mother’s red tail grey, Rojo, like to have a pile of greens to walk through, nibble on, and toss. If you have a food kabob, cut a small pumpkin or acorn squash in half and leave some of the seeds inside, then put the halves back together and hang this in the cage. Lainey Alexander’s Melissa enjoys destroying organic rice cakes in her play closet, so include some foods just for their play value. My favorite stores are those where nothing costs more than a dollar. What birdie treasures can be found there! And these items are perfect for Treasure Bags, a wonderful toy idea introduced to me by Naomi Zemont on the Behavior Analysis Solutions email list. Take a small paper bag and fill it with a variety of bird safe items or little food tidbits, then tie the top of the bag with a string. If you make up several in advance, you can keep them handy for when you need to keep your bird occupied or you can leave one for your bird each day as you go off to work. For extra variety, occasionally use small cellophane bags. Cellophane, even just tied around a cage bar, will keep my cockatiel, grey or umbrella cockatoo busy for quite a while since it makes such a wonderful crunchy sound. Baby, my grey, is a very bold bird who is always ready to try anything, but I know other greys that certainly don’t feel that way. Treasure Bags are wonderful for birds that are usually scared of new toys. Once accustomed to the sight of a small paper bag, a timid bird won’t think anything about you tossing one into their cage; the rest is up to them. Small cardboard boxes or even paper towels can be used in the same way. Building positive experiences using Treasure Bags filled with a variety of objects is just one simple way to lessen a bird’s fear of novel things. Once a bird is used to Treasure Bags you can introduce new hanging toys by placing them inside a paper bag and tying the bag at the top with the quicklink still exposed for connecting to the cage. The bag becomes a visual cue and your bird knows that something fun is inside. Possible toys for your Treasure Bags might include little plastic army men or jungle creatures that usually come 20+ to a package and are fun to tongue, chew, and toss. All of my birds love straws, so throw some of those into your Treasure Bags. Small, crumpled paper plates, paper cups, and plastic cups (another good crunchy item) are also good to include. Old-fashioned plastic hair rollers, small brushes, bits of new cardboard or fabric, Mega Bloks or Duplo Legos and bottle caps all fit nicely into a Treasure Bag. To add more of a challenge, place treats inside of small plastic food storage containers or travel-size toiletry bottles. Be creative, because the more variety you include, the more engaging each Treasure Bag will be. Your bird may even find it fun to hide inside the bag itself. My umbrella cockatoo, Pretty Bird, considers a toy box to be an absolute must for the bottom of the cage. Just about anything can serve as a toy box, even a simple plastic container purchased 3 for $1.00 at a discount store. You can also attach additional food bowls to the cage just for holding toys. This is the preference of my grey, Baby, but a separate toy box offers many more options. Consider rotating toy boxes, each with a different set of toys. If you only have one toy box, each day place one or two new items in with the usual toys. Your bird will learn to anticipate discovering something new each day and will enjoy going through the toy box to find it. Sprinkle a few dry fruit pieces, plain popcorn or seeds amongst the toys in the toy box to encourage your bird to forage. Another excellent time-occupying toy concept that Naomi Zemont shared with me is the Foraging Tray. The original idea came from Susan Loebel who braided large pieces of fabric, placed these in a tray and tucked special items inside the folds of the fabric. Some birds may enjoy this toy more if the fabric pieces are stretched tight and attached to the tray at each end. You can tie the ends of the braided fabric onto quicklinks and clamp these on the sides of the tray. The fabric can easily be washed if needed. Naomi modified the Foraging Tray idea for her own birds and used a CorningWare lasagna dish filled with a couple of inches of walnut shell litter. She then hid buttons, beads, nuts in shell, and many other fun items inside, burying some completely and allowing others to poke through the walnut shell litter to entice her birds. Naomi sifts out the toys and bakes the walnut shell litter in the oven for an hour at 250 degrees to ensure it is free of any harmful microorganisms. You may even want to bake it before offering it to your birds. If you use either of these trays inside the cage, place them in an area that is free of droppings. No matter what kind of store I find myself in, I’m always looking for bird-safe play items. Wiffle balls can be stuffed with paper, rope, or Shredders and either hung from the cage or left to be tossed around on the bottom of the cage. A toy that I reintroduce every so often, which is a favorite of both my cockatoo and my grey, is made from a strip of One-Wrap Velcro®, formerly Get-A-Grip® Straps. This product has hooks on one side and loops on the other, therefore it will attach to itself. I roll this into a ball and my birds love the feel and noise made when they unzip the pieces apart. Another fun toy can be created by tying a bit of sisal really tightly around a handful of straws. This causes the straws to stick out in all directions and is a very inexpensive destructible toy. If you buy all natural toilet paper or paper towels from a natural food store and tie untreated sisal around the middle of the roll, your birds will have to rip and tear the roll apart rather than being able to unroll it. This toy is a good one for outside the cage: take a small peg perch and attach it to the top of the cage, then drop the roll down over the perch so that the roll is stationary and can’t be tossed off the cage. Even if you don’t do any gardening, pick up a pair of plain cotton gardening gloves the next time you are at the hardware store. These gloves can be used similarly to Treasure Bags, but they require the bird to work a little harder to remove the goodies. Let’s not forget all the wonderful natural products that are available for your birds to enjoy. Pinecones make wonderful destructible toys and even good head scratchers according to my grey! Polished rocks are fun for birds to explore with a tongue and are inexpensive to purchase at your local garden or hardware store, but be sure to select a size that your bird will play with safely and not ingest. I buy 1 x 4 untreated pine which serves as both a chewable toy and a perch, sometimes both at the same time. Split or small logs from bird safe trees can also serve the same purpose. Another wonderful idea from Lainey Alexander is to take a bundle of small sticks from bird safe trees, tie them with rope or string and then tie the bundle to the inside of your bird’s cage. Lainey’s grey, Melissa, likes to bury pieces of the sticks in the feathers on her back; Riley, her eclectus, crumbles the sticks; and Monk, her Princess of Wales parakeet, daintily snips off the tips. Providing environmental enrichment also has advantages for you. Special toys and treats that keep your birds engaged in foraging, chewing and playing can be used to occupy them for a period of time when you aren’t available for interaction. If your bird uses inappropriate noises to gain your attention at certain times, preempt these behaviors by providing fun foraging or chewing toys. I have also found that a highly enriching environment greatly decreased my cockatoo’s biting behaviors. Be sure to praise your birds often when they are engaged with their toys as this provides even more reinforcement for desirable behaviors. The most important thought I can leave with you is to take cues from your birds when considering how to enrich their lives. When you listen to what your birds want, you will find it easy to provide them with entertaining items and to create play spaces they will enjoy. And doesn’t it also enrich your life when your birds are content? The more we try to look at our birds’ environments from their perspective, the closer we can come to providing them with a higher quality of life in captivity. Resources
First published by the Grey Play Round Table(R) African Grey Magazine 2003.
|
||||
