Parrot Musings

According to many different parrot publications, there are certain foods that are toxic to birds. Generally, parrot owners are told to stay away from avocado, onions, chocolate, alcohol, and caffeine. We try to provide our parrots with as healthy of a diet as possible, but Max is trying to make that difficult!

She lately has become obsessed with onions. That's right -- one of the food items she's not supposed to eat. For years we've kept our onions in an onion bowl on the island in our kitchen. But apparently those onions have become irresistible to Max over the past few weeks. We'd hear crunching in the kitchen and find her unpeeling the onions! We've since removed the temptation and placed our onions in a parrot-proof area.

Right before this picture was taken, I changed the garbage then threw out all of the onion skins she'd peeled. I reenter the kitchen a few minutes later to find out that she had gone to the bottom of the garbage, pulled out an onion peel, and started destroying it! We know one of her favorite things to do is pull trash out of the garbage and throw it on the floor (like a giant foraging toy), but we really thought it would be safe at the bottom of the can. I underestimated the allure of those onion skins!

She has suffered no ill effects from her obsession and we have taken steps to make sure this won't happen again!