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FORAGING - An Essential Form of Enrichment
The more I incorporate food into the toys I make for my parrots, the more I see and understand how important foraging is for them. I can put toys in the cage with all sorts of materials they like and I get some interest and activity. I have observed that their level of interest in a toy increases if I put food on it or in it. I find I can also get them to keep active much longer with a toy that has food incorporated into it.
In this section of the website, I hope to share with you some of my observations as well as my experiences with providing foraging opportunities for my flock. I also plan to take some of the toys and activities from The Parrot Enrichment Activity Books and provide more detailed instruction along with video of parrots actively engaging with the toy.
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| GRACIE FORAGING FOR SEED |
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| Create a Foraging Opportunity
You can place a shallow container at the bottom of the cage for your parrot to forage for treats. With Gracie I started out with mostly seed in the container and a tiny bit of shredded paper, some oat flakes and cheerios covering the seed. I worked up to adding more and more shreddable material. You can see in the photo left she has become accustomed to foraging through a pretty respectable layer of shredded paper to get to her seed.
Seeds are offered in my house as treat food. I like to give them a small amount of seeds in the evening when they go back to their cages for the night. The video below shows you how I started teaching Gracie to forage for seed treats.
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We rack our brains thinking of ways to provide foraging opportunities for our parrots. But sometimes they create their very own on-the-spot foraging opportunity.
These photos come to us courtesy of Lin Westgard. A friend of Lin’s was nice enough to give her a bag of fresh hazelnuts and by the time Lin had changed out of her work clothes and into her play clothes, Elliot was busy foraging in the bag of nuts. He chewed through the paper bag and then through the plastic bag. But aha! It was much easier just to go into the bag from the BIG opening!
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| ELLIOT CHEWS HIS WAY THROUGH TO NUTS |
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| ELLIOT FINDS AN EASIER WAY IN |
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| DITTO HELPS HIMSELF TO TOMATOES |
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| Of course there are always those unscripted foraging opportunities that arise at my house. Like the time Ditto helped himself to my prize tomatoes. I’ve spent the last 30 years living in Alaska and have never been able to grow tomatoes until just this last summer. I purchased one of those plastic greenhouses and a large tomato plant. All summer long I babied that tomato plant and I got it to produce three dark orange tomatoes. I brought them inside to finish ripening on the ledge above the counter. They ripened alright; just in time for Ditto to have fun tearing into them.
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Jerry was sharing part of his dinner with Buddy one evening. He gave him what I thought was a rather large piece of pork chop and I cautioned him that was too much for a parrot to have at one time. Jerry said he wouldn’t eat all of it anyway. As we debated the issue of how large a serving of a single item one should give a parrot; Jerry remarked, “What do you think a bird in an apple tree does? Eat all the apples on the tree?”
That got me to thinking. What does a bird in an apple tree, a berry bush, a strawberry patch, or a corn field do? They forage of course. But they don’t have to unhook a plastic device or figure out how to slide a lever aside to open a chute that spits out a peanut. They fly to an area that has food and they forage in trees or on the ground eating food that they find that is often in plain sight.
With those thoughts in mind, I’ve started arranging opportune foraging areas in parts of the house. I may place a bowl of nuts I’m sorting on the ledge in the kitchen one day. Or put a container of colorful pasta in an open jar on the counter. I will leave a bowl of foot toys and nuts out on an end table. I rotate these items so they are left out at random and not always in the same location. In this way, when the parrots have out of cage time, they are exposed to a variety of foraging opportunities.
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| BOHEMIAN WAXWINGS |
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| DITTO FINDS A BOWL OF NUTS |
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| CARROT FOUND THE DOG TREATS |
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| BUDDY FLYS OVER TO SEE WHAT'S FOR SUPPER |
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Ditto finds a bowl of nuts on the breakfast bar.
We fostered Carrot for awhile before he found a permanent home. Carrot liked to jump in the crock of dog bisquits and toss them out onto the counter.
I was peeling potatoes for supper and turned to get something out of the refrigerator when Buddy flew over to see what I was doing. I'm not in favor of letting him have raw potato and I re-directed his attention to something else after I got the photo. I like this photo because it demonstrates his natural curiosity and how he finds foraging opportunities in normal day-to-day household activities.
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