Despite the fact that Stewie has been extra vocal in expressing his displeasure with me in the last week and I’ve only been moderately successful in tempering his bad mood, I wrote up some tips on what to do if your parrot screams a lot for the PetKnows blog.

While we might not like that our parrots scream at the top of their (deceptively tiny) lungs, let’s not forget that they are trying to communicate something and that we need to respond accordingly. There’s no single answer to the question “why is my bird screaming?” That’s like asking: “what do people mean when they are talking?” The answer: it depends — both on the bird and the context. That means how you respond to your bird’s screaming can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution either. Your reaction needs to be appropriate to what your bird is trying to communicate.

To help you along in your bird-to-human translation efforts, here’s my interpretation of what my birds are trying to tell me when they are screaming.

What Stewie (loud sun conure) is trying to say when he screams:

  1. Pay attention to me!
  2. Pay attention to me now!
  3. Look, there’s something outside!
  4. Why aren’t you paying attention to meeeee?!
  5. Gimme, gimme, gimme!
  6. I’m a sun conure, and I love the sound of my voice, YAY!!!
  7. Pay attention to me!!!!
  8. Where are you?? I don’t see you. You can’t possible be paying attention to me!
  9. Yay, you’re home. Now you can pay attention to me!
  10. PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEE!!

What Mika’s (pionus parrot) screaming means:

  1. Stewie, SHUT UP!!
  2. For god’s sake someone make that conure shut up already!
  3. ME TOOOOO !!!

If you’ve got a screaming parrot, buy some earplugs and try these tips to curb excessively loud vocalization. And check out the links below for more information.

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