The Baby Bird Fallacy
As a breeder, especially one just getting started, I should probably write an entry about how you should only ever buy baby birds and how adult birds are only going to make you miserable.
I can’t do that with a straight face or even a vague sense of a clear conscience.
We’ll skip all the “so many birds need homes” thing. It’s always great to do something altruistic, but it’s also important to take on what you can handle and matches what you’re looking for. If you’re getting your first (and perhaps only) bird, the neurotic screaming mess of a green wing macaw that someone died and left their kid may not be the way to go solely because you feel Guilt™.
So, really, what’s the difference? Which do you choose? Cute new baby bird? Or that lovely old soul that needs a new place to perch?
I often hear “I want a baby bird so I can bond with it,” sometimes followed with, “and so I don’t have to deal with any issues.” This tells me this person has some expectations that might need managing.
A baby bird will absolutely get attached to you very quickly. It will see you as a parent figure and will trust you quickly if you’re not a jerk to it. But it’s also pretty easy to break that trust, and depending on what species you’re working with, you may have signed on to a year or more of constantly having to teach boundaries, redirect, and manage emotions (sound like a toddler? I’m looking at you, macaws). You may also find that the target of that bond shifts when the bird hits sexual maturity. Maybe even to a person that wants nothing to do with it.
Some people mistakenly believe that if they get a sweet, quiet, gentle baby, it’ll just stay that way as long as they don’t “mess up” somehow. Babies grow up and start exploring, though. They start vocalizing. They start testing out their beak strength. Now, a baby bird is very shapeable, and smaller birds seem to respect boundaries set better than larger birds (though your mileage may vary). You can teach it to do lots of things, and you can easily teach boundaries and towel training and nail clipping without losing a fingernail… or the whole finger. You can also teach it incredibly bad habits without even trying. Ask me how I taught my macaw to pinch me, so I’d entertain him by saying ‘ouch.’
In reality, the issues you’d have to work out with an adult bird are often issues that someone else didn’t work through when it was a baby. They either didn’t know how or thought, like many, that the solution to behavioral issues was “get a baby bird and there won’t be any.” This mindset happens a lot with dogs, too. Puppies raise themselves, right?
An older bird, on the other hand, knows what it’s about. Granted, it may be about biting you in the softest parts of your hand in response to stimulus you’re struggling to identify. Or it may be about flying at your spouse’s face or screaming at the color blue. But if that bird bonds to you? More likely than not, it will stay bonded. And once you figure out its quirks, you can work through them and develop a bond with a fantastic new companion. Maybe you’ll find that bird that talks like you always wanted, or one that likes to dance with you! Birds are adaptable, and can learn new habits and behaviors, contrary to what many people seem to think. It just takes patience and persistence (you know, just like training a baby).
So ultimately, it comes down to what works for you, and maybe even how the stars line up. Can you afford a baby bird of the species you’re after? Were you looking for a baby when someone asked you to take an adult that needed a home? Do you have the time to invest in teaching a baby every little thing it needs to learn? Do you have the patience to work on getting an adult warmed up to you?
