The Parrot Diaries. Bird Bath, Or: Water Water Everywhere

Like most avians, our parrots love to bathe. The macaws mostly prefer showers. Some of our parrots prefer baths. Our Goffin's Cockatoo prefers a water bottle mister. A couple of our parrots prefer bathing in their water dishes.

Our Ruby macaw parrot Mr. Cracker loves to bathe in his water dish. He's a fairly big parrot. By comparison, his water dish is not all that big. The results can be entertaining. As well as a big mess.

We always know when Mr. Cracker wants to take a bath because he starts telling us, very loudly, Bye Bye! He keeps this up until we finally leave his sight. Until very recently, he would only take a bath when no people were around to observe him. We can only surmise that he must have gotten into trouble with a previous owner when he tried to bathe. Thus his desire for privacy. Over time his comfort level has increased to the point that only very recently has he started to bathe with people still around to watch him. But he still tries to shoo us off with his chants of Bye, Bye!