Welcome to Cockatoo Web!

Updated: 2009-01-31

This is the web site for the "Hiking Cockatoo!" Do the birds hike on the path with the humans? No, they are much smarter than that! We do the walking and the cockatoos ride on our shoulders or arms. We posed Mozart for this picture as a spoof! Read about our 3 cockatoos who hike with us: Amadeus, Kaipo and Mozart. The birds love to go out with us and they enjoy meeting people.

We are asked a lot of questions about our Cockatoos from the people we meet hiking. We created these pages to answer those questions and share our experiences with Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. So many people fall in love with our birds and tell us that they want to get one, we feel a responsibility to inform them of the high maintenance that they require as companions.

See the News section below for new stories. Alas, while our Google Picasa albums remain available, our bird cams and photo galleries are unavailable at this time due to a hardware failure. It has been more than a few weeks work to migrate the photo galleries to a new system (from a VAX/VMS minicomputer to an Imac system.) but we expect to have it up in February. Unfortunately, the old web cams are too old to use with the new computer and have to be completely replaced so that will be a couple of months longer.

About the Hiking Cockatoos

I'm Rob Jones and since the first time I encountered a Cockatoo, I've been enchanted by their beauty and intelligence. Here you will find a "Frequently Asked Questions" section that answers many common questions. There are links to our web galleries of pictures taken on our trips to various national parks, and pictures taken on local day hikes in the Washington, D.C. area. We began writing this material as a result of our experiences with our first Triton Cockatoo, Mozart, who died in October 2004. (The sad details can be found on the page about Mozart's illness.) We continue hiking with our Cockatoo companions "Kaipo" and "Amadeus".

I'm not a ornithologist, nor a veterinarian, but I have some avian experience to draw upon. My wife and I have been living with one or more cockatoos for over 17 years and learn something new about them all the time. Like you perhaps, we scan the web for information about them and read magazines like Birdtalk. I'm really grateful for the information that these sites provide us for our interest in these creatures. We also talk to local breeders for their advice and stores like American Bird Company, Featherheads and the Animal Exchange have been very helpful. Over the years we had a number of parakeets and finally a Cockatiel before obtaining our first cockatoo, Mozart, in 1990. In the early 1990s, there wasn't very much information available about Cockatoos. What was I thinking? We had to learn things the hard way, and we made mistakes. Thank goodness that our first Cockatoo Mozart was a forgiving teacher and a wonderful little guy.

We have two Cockatoo companions, "Amadeus" and "Kaipo". They are both Triton Sulphur Crested cockatoos that are captive bred birds whose ancestors came most likely from the island of New Guinea in the Pacific. "In Search of Mozart's brother" tells the story of how Amadeus is related to our first cockatoo Mozart. Amadeus and Mozart came from the same breeder in Virginia, while Kaipo came from a breeder in Florida.

We also have an Eclectus parrot name "Pele" (after the Hawaiian goddess) who does not go outdoors, but that's another story.

Why Hike with Cockatoos?

So why do we hike with our Cockatoos? The simple answer is because they like to hike with us and it is a great way to spend time with them! One thing that I have learned from my experience is that Cockatoos can become very unhappy and depressed unless they can interact with their human companions almost every minute of the day when they are not busy sleeping, eating or playing with their toys. Cockatoos are sociable creatures that enjoy meeting and interacting with people. Leaving them locked up in a cage all day is not going to keep them happy. No matter how many toys you give them, nor how good the diet you provide, they need social interaction to thrive. They like to share activities with their human companions as well as meet new people and interact with them.

Finding activities to share with them can be quite a challenge. Luckily I discovered that hiking is a wonderful way to spend time together, get some exercise and provide the birds with the socialization they need. If you think that the cockatoo doesn't get much exercise riding on my shoulder or arm, then you haven't seen how they like to swing from my hand as we walk along in the forest, never mind the lung exercise they get from screaming as they swing! I should add that I enjoy sharing them with others. It's really fun seeing the smiles and expressions of delight that bloom on the faces of the people that I meet as well as talking to them about cockatoos.

Risks

Yes, there are risks associated with taking them outdoors. Many bad things can happen to them in an uncontrolled setting. We try to minimize those risks so the good effects outweigh the potential negatives. Because we don't use a restraining device (chain, harness, etc.) we have to practice good grooming habits. We are working to train them to wear a harness. No bird goes outdoors without a wing check (to make sure the flight feathers are properly pruned.) Even though their flight feathers are clipped, they can still glide long distances and a sudden wind gust could carry them far away. That's a very scary image. We evaluate the weather conditions to avoid cold temperatures (less than 55F) and wind conditions. We also "read" our birds behavior to get a "sense" of their disposition, and some days we don't take them out just because they don't seem like they are in the mood to go hiking. Sometimes the setting isn't right, the paths are too crowded or too many dogs roaming without restraint and we just turn around and go home.

For bird owners: Should you take your bird outdoors? Don't do it with your bird just because you see us taking our birds out. We never take our Eclectus parrot outdoors, she is better off left indoors where she defends her "nest". If it were easy to get them to wear a halter with a leash, I would use it. It takes a lot of time to condition the bird to going outdoors and getting them comfortable with strange environments. It takes a lot of training to school your bird to stay on your arm and never let go until given a command cue. When you take your bird outdoors you need to have a well rehearsed plan for recall/retrieval in case the bird takes off. Even if you train your bird to wear a harness, things can go wrong and you may still lose the bird, and the harness could become a liability instead of a safety feature. Your bird could end up trapped in the high branches of a tree because the harness had become entangled. What I'm writing here is that there are no guarantees, no secret methods to make the bird come back to you if it flies away. Even birds that have been well trained for retrieval and flying free outdoors are sometimes lost. So I advise that you do what is best for your bird, and not put it at risk just to be able to walk around outdoors with it.

Young birds can be very foolish and jump after a butterfly or become startled by a flying insect. Both Kaipo and Amadeus have jumped off our arm on almost every hike. Usually nothing bad happens and we quickly retrieve them from the forest floor. See the news section below for an experience that was not so casual. After a while, they realize that they are better off remaining on our arms than jumping onto the forest floor. Amadeus has reached the point where he stays in place, but I still manually restrain him when I traverse areas that I feel are risky, such as cliffs or steep slopes, where if he jumped off he might end up in a place from which he could not be reached. Kaipo doesn't like being restrained. Because he is difficult to groom, I haven't been taking him out hiking very much. The problem is that when they become frightened or startled, they will jump and run to try to avoid whatever scared them. This was not a problem with our first Cockatoo, Mozart, who never left my shoulder or arm while out hiking with me. But he had become overweight and had destroyed his major flight and tail feathers. Nothing could separate him from me, he even held on when I fell a few times (without injury.)

How long have you had them?

During the past two years two new Cockatoos have joined our family. The first is "Kaipo", a male Triton Cockatoo who joined our family in October 2005 from the Featherheads store. See "Stalking the Blue Eyed Triton" on the CockatooWeb pages for the story. The second, Amadeus joined our family in September 2006 from the American Bird Company store. An interesting fact about Amadeus is that he is a younger brother of our first cockatoo Mozart, coming from the same parents. Mozart came to us in 1990 from the American Bird Company. Pele, the eclectus parrot, came to us in 2000 from the Featherheads store in Sterling, VA.

News

Dec 2008: Pele Lays 2 Eggs

In early December 2008 Pele laid two eggs. This is her 3rd egg-laying event. The first was in early 2004 and the second was in December 2007. Since we do not have an Eclectus male, the eggs are of course, unfertilized. It happened about a month after the Vet modified her daily medication because of the return of the severe twitching. The dosage of the Potassium Bromide was increased to 0.2ml and liquid Prozac was added to her daily regime. This combination seems to be helping her. While the twitches in her legs and wings have diminished to a very low level, they are still present. But the twitching persists, the intensity rises and falls over the period of several weeks. We allowed her to incubate her eggs for about 28 days before removing them. While she was incubating the eggs she had one severe twitching incident during the night which caused her to bite her leg hard enough to draw blood. There were noticeable blood stains on her paper towel on the bottom of the cage in the morning as well as on the eggs.

Sept 2008: Pele's Focal Seizures Return

Last September we started our Eclectus parrot "Pele" on a new medication, Potassium Bromide, for the "focal seizures" that the Vet thinks is the cause of the leg biting behavior. Shortly after we started the medication it suppressed the seizures and gave her a normal life again. Prior to the medication she had been experiencing strong twitches in her legs every 3-6 seconds. We think that she was biting her leg in an attempt to stop them. With the new medication the twitches stopped and she stopped biting her legs. Her blood chemistry did not show an effective level of the medication, but since the twitching stopped, the Vet recommended that we keep her daily dosage at the 0.1ml level. The medication is in liquid form and we give it to her on a favorite cracker ("CheezIt") or a small piece of Biscotti.

In June, the seizures returned and she damaged her leg to the point of bleeding. On the Vet's recommendation we increased the dosage from 0.1ml to 0.2ml. This did not immediately stop the twitching, but she has improved. We had to put her plastic collar back on to prevent her from biting her legs. The twitching waxes and wanes without any apparent pattern. But the incidents seem to be getting further apart and we hope that they will eventually be under control again. This medication is sometimes used with cats and dogs, and has been used on pidgeons, but we're in uncharted territory with an Eclectus Parrot for the right dosage. There are other drugs that can be used, but they are more toxic. So we are hoping that the new dosage level will suppress these seizures.

On a follow-up examination the vet suggested using Prozac in addition to the Potassium Bromide because the twitching was not suppressed. He does have some misgivings about possibly over medicating her, but we agreed to wait and see how the new combination is working.

Jan 2008: Companion Parrot Foundation Skills Training with Steve Martin of Natural Encounters, Orlando, Florida

I found a companion parrot training course offered by a world class animal trainer, Steve Martin, from Natural Encounters Inc., near Orlando, Florida. In addition to producing the Disney World Flights of Wonder show, NEI provides professional training and show design for zoological institutions. The course covered the basics of Operant Conditioning techniques with an emphasis on positive reinforcement techniques. Read more about the experience...

Jan 2008: Kaipo glides up into a tree

On a recent hike with both Amadeus and Kaipo, we were completing a two hour hike. Kaipo became startled as I passed two hikers and jumped off my arm at the top of the Green Trail stone stairway on Sugarloaf Mountain. This happened despite the fact that he just had his flight feathers clipped two days earlier -obviously not enough! As I stood on the steps shocked by what he had just done, Kaipo sailed gracefully down the hill with wings fully extended (without flapping) only to land in the branches of a tree below me. He was perched out of reach about 15 feet above the ground. Kaipo seemed somewhat bemused about sitting in the tree and showed no interest in descending.

This was one of the situations I had always dreaded. When I reached the tree I realized that I would have to climb up to retrieve him and I had to figure out how to secure Amadeus while I did so. I would have to literally stuff Amadeus into my backpack to secure him while I tried to climb the tree. Luckily, a young fellow named Sean came by with his girlfriend and offered to climb up the tree to retrieve Kaipo.

It took a great deal of effort to climb the tree but even after getting up into the tree, Sean could not reach Kaipo directly. He offered Kaipo a branch to perch upon, but Kaipo attacked the branch. He had no idea that we were trying to help him down and moved a little further up the branch. With the daylight fading, Sean had to shake Kaipo off the branch on which he was sitting. He was successful. Kaipo fluttered to the ground and I pounced upon him. Kaipo was shaken up, but not injured. Sean was able to climb down without injury. Thank you Sean for what you did.

Now that I have taken a Companion Parrot Training course and learned some strategies I will be working on recall behaviors and training them to accept a harness. How about free flight training? No, that's too dangerous with all the hawks around -we have a pair hunting in our back yard. We were lucky this time, Kaipo did not land at the top of a very tall tree, and someone with tree climbing skills came along at the right time. It could have ended badly.

Dec 2007: Pele Lays Eggs!

Pele, our female Eclectus parrot, has been making steady improvement since a recent diagnosis of focal seizures and treatment with Potassium Bromide. For 3 years she has had a hard life, continually biting her leg and suffering from severe twitching and toe tapping. The problem got so bad she had exposed the tendons in her leg. Not only has the leg mutilation stopped, and the leg healed up nicely, but she's feeling well enough to try to make some babies! Unfortunately, there are no pretty green boys around to fertilize the eggs. We've made a movie of the time lapse and you may view the 46 second video on Video.Google. That egg did not survive very long on the bare metal cage floor. After a few days it broke and we removed it. She laid another and then started incubating it. After about a week the egg was a bit worse for wear, being rolled around on the metal cage floor grid and the egg disappeared except for a few shell fragments. We think that she consumed most of it.

Oct 2007: Susanna Contributes to PDD Quilt

She created six blocks for a Quilt to be auctioned to raise funds for the Research to StopPDD Campaign. Proventricular Dilatation Disease (PDD) is a terrible disease of the digestive tract which affects Cockatoos, Macaws ("Macaw Wasting Syndrome"), African Greys, and other birds.

Link to view the StopPDD Site donated blocks.

Sep 2007: Amadeus has a little sister

It has been over a year since Amadeus joined our home. When he came home with us, he had two male siblings from the same year. This year his parents have produced a single female chick. In December she was 4 months old and being cared for at the American Bird Company. While we were tempted to bring her home with us (there were some suggestions about fixing her up with Kaipo) she remained at the store to find a good home elsewhere. In January 2008 we learned that she has found a home.

Other Pages

We have outgrown our Verizon DSL web site space, the DSL connection to our home server for the Photo Galleries is slow, so we have begun to use the Google Picasa Web Albums:

For pictures of Amadeus growing see the first 8 months pictures on our Google albums.

We have started another Google Album for the Hiking Cockatoo training experience.

2007-05-02: See Amadeus on the Search for Lady Slipper Orchids on Sugarloaf Mountain.

Of course, we still miss Mozart.

Both of these cockatoos share a room (in separate cages) with Pele, a female "Eclectus" parrot. You can watch them on our Bird cam page.

Pele has already "adopted" these two Cockatoos as her family, and has no hesitation about squawking at them if they are too close or squawking at us if she thinks we are mishandling her "kids". Unfortunately she has been sick and seeing a lot of the Veterinarian during the past two years. The good news is that in the past months she has made steady improvement and may have overcome her health problems.

The Cockatoo Pages still provide information about Mozart and information for questions you may have about Cockatoos as companion animals. We'll be updating these pages to encompass our new companions. (We have been developing a new page design to keep up with current web page technology.) Kaipo and Amadeus have already begun their training for hiking with us, and they have been out on several day hikes at Sugarloaf Mountain and Harpers Ferry.

On this Site

• Stalking the Blue Eyed Triton Cockatoo: found at last, a new companion!
• Bird Cams and Photo Galleries temporarily unavailable
• FAQ: Some Answers to Common Questions about Mozart the Cockatoo

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