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Top 10 Best Pet Bird Breeds and Their Characteristics

Budgies are the most popular birds. But which other bird species can you keep as a pet? What do they look like, what are their characters like, can they sing or talk? What do they need?

animalfunfacts.net provides breed profiles for the 10 most popular birds that can be kept as pets. There’s a factsheet for each bird that will give you information about its size, lifespan, personality, how to keep it, whether it can be hand-tamed or can learn to talk, and how noisy they are.

Birds have very different characters. Budgies, for example, are playful but calm. They can often be hand-tamed, just like cockatiels. But they can also be pretty loud. Monk parakeets are good at talking, while lovebirds are very lively. Zebra finches are easy-going and make charming music but can’t be hand-tamed or taught to talk.


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All Bird Breeds:

Which Birds Are Best for Beginners?

If you’ve never had birds before, you should begin with low-maintenance birds. Generally, this means that the cage doesn’t need cleaning too often, the animals are easy to handle and aren’t too loud. This is particularly important for beginners. Now, birdcages have to be cleaned regularly no matter what species they are. How the animals are handled often depends on the humans. So, if you’re tense and impatient, or patient and calm, or behave like the animals should be able to trust you. Monk parakeets and cockatiels are especially loud. The Bourke’s parrot and the canary are calmer.

Can You Keep Birds Without Letting Them Fly?

If you’ve never had birds before, you might think “do the birds absolutely have to be let out to fly?”. After all, they don’t have to fly around to find food. It’s in the bowl already. If someone brought you food and drink to the sofa every day, would you be ok with never leaving the sofa ever again? We don’t just mean for a couple of hours, we mean weeks, months and years. Birds want to move. Birds want to fly. So, the answer is no. If you want to keep birds, you have to understand that birds need to fly EVERY DAY. You should therefore consider how you can give them what they need in your home.

Which Bird Needs the Least Space?

Out of the birds we introduce here, cockatiels, monk parakeets and white-capped parrots need the biggest cage. The Pacific parrotlet and canary can deal with a slightly smaller cage. Still: a cage is always a cage. It can never be big enough. The ideal situation would be if you had a free/unused room that you could turn into a bird room. So you could let the birds fly around to their hearts’ content.

Don’t forget: all birds must be kept in pairs where possible!

Search no more! We’ve come up with some great names especially for birds in our pet name database. Take a look!


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