Eclectus Parrots: Everything About Purchase, Care, Feeding, and Housing (Barron's Complete Pet Owner's Manuals

by Katy Mcelroy

Native to Indonesia and New Guinea, eclectus parrots require a high-fiber diet with lots of fruit and greens. This title, along with all books in the comprehensive and popular B.E.S. Complete Pet Owner's Manuals series, provides advice on feeding, health care, housing, and all other important aspects of responsible pet ownership. Each title in the series is individually written from first page to last by a pet trainer, veterinarian, or other pet-care specialist. All Complete Pet Owner's Manuals are filled with high-quality photos and instructive line art.

95 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2002

About the author

Katy McElroy saw her first wild parrot while living in Australia 30 years ago, and has been keeping and breeding them ever since. She is particularly interested in their natural behavior in the wild, and how this knowledge can enable us to better understand and manage our pets and breeding birds. She owns and operates a commercial aviary, is the author of many articles on parrot behavior, and is a frequent speaker on the advantages of outdoor breeding flights and nest box surveillance cameras to increase our understanding of the relationships between parent birds and their offspring.

Reviews

[Claire Binkley · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mother had told me about this kind of bird several years ago. My family had only owned cockatiels before (I had one on my shoulder from age five until sixteen, and I am nineteen years older than sixteen now). This specific type of bird sounds much more finicky, but they might be just the same as the parrots I saw at the gardening centre, or similar, anyway.

Those ones were probably much lonelier though.

What I like about this book is that it gives the reader clear expectations about this breed of animal, where one may find creatures like it, and it has a clear Index that leads one to where to go for all continued inquiries.

Also, although I've (or my father has) done it with my baby birds I didn't know that tube-feeding was called "gavage" before. So that's fun! (He told me he hated every second of it. BUT MY SISTER AND I REALLY LIKED OUR BABY BIRDS WHEN WE WERE THAT AGE - THEY WERE SO CUTE AND SMELLED KINDA FUNNY)

So this book has been sitting on my shelf mostly (I am not going to lie about this) since it has some beautiful photography of these birds and I like to look at them. It says that the two colours delineate between the sexes. Green ones are male and red ones are female.