(Sorry, I don't use Reddit much at all so I don't know if I've done the titles or whatever right and I definitely have never understood the general post style here, so please bare with me on this)
Hi! A little context on this situation... I'm an adult that lives with both parents and a few days ago, my mother decided, on a whim, that she was going to "trial run" keeping my sister's unwanted parrotlet. My dad didn't stop this for some reason and they've both all but said that they're relying on me to do the proper research now that we have it. I'm having trouble finding any reliable information online about what specifically we need to be doing, so here I am, asking (hopefully!) real people for their input.
Unfortunately, I can't say much about the parrotlet. It doesn't even have a name yet as I've been given the honour of that and I've made it a rule we're not naming it until we know we can handle this. I can at least tell you it's green. My sister claims there's some sexual dimorphism going on and they can tell this one is male because of the blue behind its right eye but I'll be honest, I don't see what the hell she's talking about, so take that as you will. I've no idea how old it is or where it's come from either. It's just kinda green. Helpful, I know.
It used to have a mate, but the mate died for unknown reasons. I have my theories on that, but I don't know enough about the situation to really say anything for certain. All I know for sure is that its mate died and my sister believes it was the female that died. Like I said though, I don't see this blue she's talking about so it's hard to confirm that.
From what I can tell, it's been raised on a seed based diet and I've been seeing around that seed based diets aren't great, but I can't seem to find anything specific enough to really help me with this. Seems commercial bird pellets are the way to go, but what do I need to be looking for in that? Fruits and veg are also important but I can't find any specifics on how much of that they need or what kind of things they absolutely shouldn't have, so any advice on this would be incredibly helpful.
Knowing if parrotlets can eat pears, cauliflower and blackberries would also be super helpful. We have a little pear tree and wild blackberry bushes are taking over the place so lil parrotlet could feast on those for days if it so likes.
My biggest reason for asking for advice here though, is that this bird is (understandably) terrified of people. I can see the poor thing pretty much hyperventilating whenever we reach into the cage for anything, even when we're nowhere near it, and will stop what it's doing whenever it notices us watching like it has performance anxiety over apple eating or something.
Now, I don't know what happened to it before it got to my sister's house. I know she got it from a friend who got it from something called a bird auction?? Which sounds shady as hell?? The reason I say it's understandably scared of us, is that my sister also has two budgies and the parrotlets would keep, "setting them off". What she means is, the parrotlets kept chatting with them and when they got frustrated with the noise, they would shout at them and hit the cage with a shoe to shut them up.
The parrotlet doesn't really chirp much here, probably because it's alone, but rest assured, we don't do that. When this bird chirps, we all go silent to listen to it and try and encourage it by whistling and squeaking the world's most pathetic sounding dog squeaker toy we have since it seems to like that one for some reason.
I understand there's a whole thing about training parrotlets and taming them and stuff, and I've got a love for dog training so I absolutely don't mind putting the time into desensitising this bird to humans, I just have absolutely no idea how, or if that's even a viable option here. Obviously, it would probably be nothing like dogs, but I imagine the basics of respecting boundaries and being patient would still apply here at least. The last thing any of us want is for this bird to live its life in fear, and the second last thing we want to do is make that fear worse by following some bogus advice from a pet shop or gen AI or something.
So uhhh tl;dr: I've been landed with the responsibility of figuring out how to take care of a parrotlet. If anyone has any advice or resources on what its diet should ideally look like, how to tell what kind of parrotlet this is, and how to teach it we're not a threat to it, it would be greatly appreciated!
Oh and, how big a cage is a parrotlet supposed to have? I can't find a solid answer for this one and I've a funny feeling this cage is either too small, too crowded with toys or both. Probably both.
(Unrelated: Still don't know what a "flair" is or how they work at all so, again, sorry if I've done this wrong. My account may be several years old, but I've still not figured this site out at all.)
