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Patricia Sund is a Columnist for "Bird Talk" Magazine and has a popular Blog called "Parrot Nation," where she writes about life, birds, and her adventures in the world of Aviculture, including volunteering as a Keeper at the Cincinnati Zoo. She has written for Phoenix Landing's "Phoenix Beakin'", "The Alamo Exhibition Bird Club," the AFA "Watch Bird,"as well as for the Rocky Mountain Society of Aviculture. She has written internally for American Airlines as well as having written, directed and produced a play called: "Loves People-Loves to Travel."
Patricia has completed Dr. Susan Friedman's online course: "LLP: Living & Learning with Parrots," and both Beginning and Advanced Levels of the "Natural Encounters" Companion Parrot Training Seminars.
Patricia Lives in Hollywood, Florida with her two Hoodlum African Grey Parrots, Parker and Pepper and her parrot-poop dodging, rescued ShihTzu: Mattie.
When asked why she has parrots in her life, she always responds the same way: "I've been a Flight Attendant for almost 23 years; I guess I'm used to serving food, repeating myself, cleaning up crap and getting hollered at."
en·rich·ment
The act of making fuller or more meaningful or rewarding.
A gift that significantly improves or enhances the quality of life.
Enrichment, in terms of the lives of our parrots, refers to simple actions we can take to vastly improve their lives in captivity and is an integral part of responsible parrot care. It has everything to do with how we keep our parrots happy, healthy and active as well as intellectually and instinctually challenged. To do this we must first understand their physical, mental, social and psychological needs and then, based on this understanding, devise activities and provide our parrots with enrichment devices that help them meet all of these requirements. Enrichment offers the benefits of decreased stress, improved mental and physical health and reduction of behavioral problems.
Effective enrichment activities and devices make our parrots lives more interesting by stimulating natural and instinctual behaviors, encouraging physical activity, presenting them with mental challenges and allowing them to make decisions/choices as well as to develop a sense of control over their environment.
Parrots living in the wild are focused on four primary things:
In captivity, all of the challenges they would be faced with in the wild have been conveniently solved for them. Unfortunately, in simplifying their lives we’ve also deprived them of the opportunities to do many things for themselves that would make their existence more fulfilling. It's critical for our bird’s well being that we attempt to provide them with opportunities to face many of the challenges that they would face in the wild.
According to Dr. Joy Mench, director of the Center for Animal Welfare at UC Davis, "for animals left without anywhere to go and nothing to do, it is not surprising that these animals begin to demonstrate what are known as abnormal and "stereotypic" behaviors, actions similar to those seen in people who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder and other psychiatric disorders".
The good news is that studies conducted on Orange Wing Amazons at UC Davis (Cheryl Meehan) have demonstrated that providing enrichment devices to satisfy your birds instinctual needs to forage and chew as well as devices to stimulate movement and exercise can reduce stress and help avoid or eliminate undesirable and abnormal behaviors such as feather picking.
Fortunately, many of the solutions are fairly easy to implement and there are a growing number of products available to assist parrot owners accomplish many of these objectives. Some specific examples of enrichment activities we can undertake are:
Additional suggestions on enrichment activities are provided throughout our series of articles.