Shortly after we brought Maxi home from the bird store, we took her to our avian vet to have her checked to validate our guarantee from the breeder and to make sure she was in good health and that there were no surprises of which we were not aware. Turns out she was great. The best thing to come out of that initial visit with the vet, however, was not the medical information, but, rather, the advice we were able to solicite. This is where we learned about the day/night cage method and for us it has proved really wonderful.
One of the great pillars of common wisdom when it comes to birds as pets is "You need to cover their cages at night so they can sleep." The idea is that it will create darkness and make the birds feel secure and they will sleep. This is true to a certain extent. We, in fact, do cover our birds at night, even in their sleeping cages, and find that they prefer this to sleeping in an uncovered cage. The funny assumption, though, is that all said bird needs is that magic cover and everything is fine, even if you have their cage in the middle of your home theater where you watch blastingly loud movies all night or you keep your birds in the dinning room and just cover them while the dinner party is going on and a zillion people are laughing and make noise. This faith in the cover to put a bird instantly to sleep belies the fact that they do in deed have ears as well. Noise will disturb a bird in the evening every bit as much as it would disturb a human. Most of us appreciate quiet and peacefulness when we are trying to sleep and our birds are much the same.
Sleep is one of natures conundrums. We don't really understand what it is, or where it came from, but we do know that it is extremely important to most animals. It is so important that if an organism goes for extended periods of time with continued sleep deprivation, the end result is almost always a gruesome death. Birds must sleep, and denial of that necessity will, without a doubt, compromise your birds mental and physical condition. This will lead to higher vet bills and a much less amicable companion with which to share a life. Birds get grouchy if they are tired, just like people do. Trust me!
For this reason, we sleep our birds in sleeping cages that are located in a room other than the one where we spend our evenings. This means that we can carry on with our crazy late night human antics and the birds can sleep for the twelve hours of tropical time that they would in their native habitat. Parrots are largely from tropical latitudes, which means that their species have evolved to live their lives without large variations in daylight, no matter what the time of year. In northern latitudes, if pet parrots are awake for every ounce of light around the time of the summer equinox, they are going to be grouchy, difficult, annoyed birdies. Our birds clearly do best, when we do our best to give them a twelve hours up, twelve hours down schedule. In fact, they ask for it! (See my blog about Maxi, for the skinny on that.)
The benefits of using this system are: that your bird gets a "foraging/roosting" routine that, in some respects, mimics their natural behavior in the wild, and, if you sleep them in their travel cage as we do, they are easily adjusted to their travel cage and don't fuss when the need arise for them to climb in. As a travel cage, the sleeping cage is much smaller than the day cage, but this is ok. As our vet explained to us, Diurnal prey birds are very still at night, as one might expect. In addition, they don't defecate at night either. They save it up for a BIG "morning poop." This is also logical because defecation could be a signal for a would be predator at a time when they would be virtually defenseless. All that together, makes the night cage work out really well for us.
Our birds generally prefer not to perch when they are sleeping. We had perches in the cages in the beginning but they never used them. (In fact, the conures clearly prefered to chew them up like toys.) In the conures cage is a soft snuggly birdie hut that they crawl into or under during the night. In Beaker's cage (Blue & Gold Macaw) we keep a pile of rags that he loves to toss around and rearrage and snuggle into at night. (I'll explain more about that in the blog about Beaker.) Ricki (Pacific Parrotlet) has a small plastic perch, which she uses half the time and a layer of paper shreds on the bottom that she will arrange how she likes and sleep in sometimes. The sleeping cages are in our bedroom because it is quiet and dark and separated from the commotion of the rest of the house. We also find that our birds are less freaked out in the mornings, i.e., not as noisy, if we can hear them when they are ready to be let out of their cages, rather than having to sit there, covered in another room, until we wake up and let them out.
Each of our birds sleeping cages are slightly different in content and arrangement and this is because we always try to be aware of our birds and their individual needs. By carefully and patiently observing their habits, we have settled on cages and contents that they prefer. Beaker, specifically, was a challenge to understand for sleeping arrangements. He was a little difficult and ornery, and even had a small relapse of plucking until we figured out exactly how he likes to sleep, but we did figure it out by "listening" to him through patient observation and trial and error.
Our birds respond very well to this system and we have very little trouble getting them to "bed" this way. They seem to understand and identify with the idea that they sleep in a place other than where they spend the day. It creates a clear routine for them and breaks the monotony of a single cage. It helps us communicate with them better as well. They can easily show us that they are ready for bed, by flying or gesturing toward the bedroom, or, as in Maxi's case, actually saying "Let's go night-night," and their anxiety in the morning is lowered by being able to call to us for liberation to their day cages. In the end it creates a "family routine" for all of us and gives us all a framework by which to construct our days.
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