2026

What?

Foraging is how parrots in the wild find their food. When we provide them their food in a bowl and they don’t have to look for it or get to it by breaking apart a husk we rob them of the mental stimulation that this provides them. Remember that in the wild 45-80% of their time is spent looking for food!

 

Environmental enrichment is the process of making the parrots environment an exciting place to explore with lots of things to do. We tend to break environmental enrichment down into types: destruction, nutrition based, training, exploration and interactive.

It is important to bring each of these into your parrots life as they all play important roles.

 

Why?

Foraging and environmental enrichment both aim to allow and encourage parrots to engage their brain and mimic some of the things parrots would be doing in the wild. Making them happier and healthier!

 

 

Important Note!

• Enrichment and how you provide it will depend on the parrot in your care. The enrichment provided to a confident well socialised bird will look very different to the enrichment provided to a new rescue bird in the house which will look different to the enrichment provided to a nervous elderly bird. The ideas in this article are just a guide.

• Remember to always introduce new things slowly and at a pace that suits your parrot. Otherwise, the good that could be done by them may end up being overwhelmed by stress and fear!

 

How?

 

Lets breakdown the types of enrichment to get a better idea of each one! Remember that they can overlap and one toy may cover a few types of enrichment!

 

Type of Enrichment

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Destruction

• Wooden toys

• Foraging boxes

• Cardboard

• The door frame (ideally not)

• If your parrot like to tear it apart its in this category!

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Nutrition

• Chop

• Variety of different foods

• New foods

• Foraging toys and boxes

• Puzzle feeders

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Training

• Trick training

• Vocal Training

• Flight Training

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Exploration

• Flight

• New toys

• New food

• New places

• Time out around the home

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Interactive

• Other parrots

• Training

• Puzzle toys

• Foraging toys

 

 

Important Note!

Be very careful when buying toys from non-specialist retailers.  A lot of toys on the market are made using toxic heavy metals like lead and zinc and even gentle nibbling of these can result in heavy metal toxicity!

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We can see that already there is a lot that we can do to enrich our parrots lives. A lot of these can be made at home or bought online form specialist retailers.