Foraging Bowls
Here’s one of my most simple ideas, but it is one of my birds’ favorites. When I give my Eclectus parrots a bunch of foraging toys, including a bowl, the bowl is the thing they always go to first. Basically, it’s just a bowl with lots of stuff in it, edible and non-edible. Here are some of the things I put in:
- Wooden beads and sticks
- Shredded paper (bought, or from my shredder of junk mail)
- Popcorn
- Dried food such as pellets and other treats. Phoenix Foraging’s Green Chunks and Purple Corn and Crispy Rice Snacks are a favorite
- Edamame beans in the pod, cooked and dried
- Dried fruit
- millet
- nuts, including almond slivers and pistachios in shell (one or 2 per day! we don’t want any fat birds!)
- sesame sticks
- greens, like collards and kale
- cooked corn kernels
- crumbled rice cakes
- pine nuts in shell
- small foot toys
- Wooden shapes, from the craft store, such as the thin wooden stars in this pic
- cranberries
Here’s an example of 2 I made for my birds, in 5 minutes, before work. This will engage them for at least an hour, and they will keep coming back to dig, again and again (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
