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Smart games for tweety-pie

Budgerigars are considered to be highly intelligent. And it's precisely with such animals that it's most important to provide them with their own specific type of activity. That's why you should furnish the cage with lots of exciting implements and spend plenty of time busying yourself with your feathered friends.

One thing above all: a plastic budgerigar is no adequate substitute for a partner. A budgie needs a real chum or he will grow lonely. But don't think anything of it if tweety-pie doesn't play with his comrade, as adult budgerigars seldom do. But besides their partner, they're interested in just about everything with which they can busy themselves - like lattice balls, for example, which you can buy at your local Maxi Zoo store and which should ideally be made from plastic. Budgies are not only able to roll these toys around the floor of the cage; they can even lift them up with their beaks! If you use little balls with a very coarse-meshed lattice, you can also fill these with seed which the birds can then pick out like “piece work”.

Apart from that, these lively little guys think everything that jingles is just great! So treat your pets to a toy with bells on. Simply hang the toy up and tweety-pie and his mate can chime away merrily. And no cage should be without a swing which the birds often use together.

Budgerigars also like clambering for all they're worth, which is why you should buy them a climbing frame. If you'd like to set this up in your home for when the birds are enjoying some “free flight” and not in the aviary, then add a second one to it and connect the two of them with a cord. This lets the budgies scramble around and walk from one frame to the next to their heart's content.

But it's not only physical exercise our feathered friends want – you should also think about their minds. Keep offering these inquisitive little parrots something they don't already know. That can even be as simple as a piece of paper on which you've drawn some colourful images. Many budgerigars will contemplate these sketches with great interest. Now and then you can even let these smart little fellas serve up their own food. Hide some treats in the room and be sure of one thing – tweety-pie and his pal will find them!