| A Thought About Parrot Sleep Requirements |
| How Do You Cure a Parrot With a Split Personality? More sleep! This probably sounds like a silly tip to a lot of you, but it seems to me that quite often when I am talking to people about their parrots I find they keep them in the family room close to the TV. Granted, it is important for parrots to be with the family during waking hours for the attention and stimulus they crave and need, but sleep time is different. Let me tell you about my experience with my first parrot, little Kiwi, the Pacific parrotlet. When I got Kiwi, he was about a year old. He�d been raised by my friend, Sue Goldman, and was a nice enough little fellow. He was a bit nippy at times, as are a lot of parrotlets, but it could be controlled by how he was handled. Of course I was besotted by him and he became extremely bonded to me, however after I had him about a year, give or take a few months, I began to notice a definite change in his personality from Dr. Jekyll-Bird to Mr. Hyde-Bird. He became meaner and meaner and bit me all the time. He screamed at everyone and screamed at no one. He had temper tantrums over the slightest cause and in general, he was beginning to act like the Psycho-Bird from Hell. I thought it was just his �terrible teen years� when a lot of birds, so I understand, get very hormonal and hateful. I was in the habit of covering Kiwi each night about 9:00 and assumed that underneath that blanket, the little dude was snoozing away, even with the TV blaring and lights on until midnight. After all my dogs could snooze with a freight train going through the room. Kiwi�s personality kept deteriorating and I began to get worried that I had been way too permissive and he was just a �boss bird� and needed to be taken down a peg or two. I thought if Sue clipped his wings that he would be more dependent on me and sweeten up a bit. Well, it definitely did not help his temperament, and worst of all he could still fly, only a lot lower and a lot closer to my dogs. Finally, I was doing some reading in one of my parrot books and ran across the phrase �Parrots need 10 to 12 hours of quiet sleep each night. If they are in a room with noise and traffic during sleep time, then they should be removed to a sleeping cage in a quiet room.� Well, DUH! I had read this sleep requirement information when I first got Kiwi, but it had left my memory bank and I was treating him like my dogs. Let me tell you that, �A PARROT IS NOT A DOG!� In the wild, with the exception of the nocturnal Kakapo of New Zealand, they area definitely creatures governed by the sunrise and sunset. Since nighttime is about 12 hours long, that is how long a parrot sleeps. Awake with the sunrise and asleep with the sunset. As parrots have not been in captivity long enough to beceome genetically altered and considered domesticated, then I think we always need to consider what our birds would be doing if they lived in the forest, woodland or savannah. It makes logical sense to me. Happy ending to this story: I have an extra bedroom and now it is the computer/birds� bedroom. Both my parrots go to bed in their bedroom in their sleeping cages, which are small, cheap cages I acquired for that purpose. Ariel, the poicephalus, seems to require more sleep than Kiwi. Whether it is a �species thing� or just her peculiarity, I put Ariel to bed between 6:00 or 7:00 and Kiwi, who needs his alone time with his mother, follows her at around 8:00. They get up and ride on Mom to their daytime cages at 6:30 a.m. Surprisingly, enough, they don�t scream or pout but eagerly jump into �the bed� at bedtime! Not surprisingly, my little Pirhanna/Parrotlet has once again morphed into his old sweet self, which means he only bites me when he wants something he isn�t getting, or I pick up the other parrot when I am holding him. I didn�t say he was perfect, but at least he is not insane now. Gone is the screaming, the temper tantrums and the extreme jealousy and territoriality that I had been experiencing for the past few months. My suggestion? GET YOUR BIRD A BEDROOM! |
| Sleepy Kiwi |
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