Sparky Builds His Dream House

Sparky the Quaker parrot (Portland, OR) continues his quest to build the world's biggest indoor nest. In a video created from photos taken every 60 seconds over 10 days, Sparky demonstrates the skill, intelligence, and hard work that are hallmarks of this species. He has been working on the entire nest project for five years in our dining room. Quakers, also known as monk parakeets, are the only parrots that build nests. In the wild, they build and live in large communal nests divided into apartments for each breeding pair. (The music is from Don Giovanni by Mozart, Sparky's favorite composer.)

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Quaker
• parrot
• sticks
• nest
• building
• Mozart
• time-lapse
• 鸚鵡
• 和尚鹦哥
• パロット
• Mönchssittich
• Conure
• veuve
• Perruche
• moine

[firestar72]

What did you do to get him to build in that spot. My Quaker Coby has started to stick skewers in between my DVDs on the rack. I thought about getting him a milk crate or something to help him out. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Lori

[sparkyvonvogelsang]

A milk crate sounds promising. He likes 12" 3/16" dowels with clothes pins; not twigs or green sticks, etc., which he just throws out, but some birds prefer, we hear. As for where to build, in an empty book shelf, first sticks are kind of tough if there's nothing to stick them in, but that's his method anyway. He likes sticks for the days' work arrayed neatly in the morning in a staging area. If we are around, we'd better realize we're part of the flock and hand him a stick from time to time.

[Lime4jello]

Wow, Sparky is industrious!  What is he in, though? Is it separate from a different cage that you have? And what's it made of? I'm just very curious, because I think my quaker would love something like that.

[sparkyvonvogelsang]

Sparky let us know within the first week when he arrived in our house that he was not going to live in a cage. As a friend commented, "Yeah, why would a bird want to be in a cage?" What you see in this video is one side of our dining room. The erstwhile cage is on the other side. He sorts sticks on top of it and has an array of bird seed, water, and rice and grain mix. Sparky can fly (clipped only in spring) but the only other room he flies into is the kitchen, to socialize.

[SukisMom]

what is the building material?

[sparkyvonvogelsang]

3/16 inch dowels with clothes pins attached. That's what he prefers; anything else gets thrown overboard.

[spiritofthestaircase]

What a fantastic builder. Hope he doesn't get paid peanuts.....

[Book7BrokeMyBrain]

Wow! It looks like he built the entire apartment complex, not just his own place, lol. Awesome.

[yellowroselola]

That's massive!

[yellowroselola]

@spiritofthestaircase hahahaha!

[yellowroselola]

@sparkyvonvogelsang That's adorable!

[chickenetti]

this is awesome! i have a quaker, she loves sticks but she takes her structures apart and redoes them, so they never get big. she prefers chopsticks and drinking straws.

[mrtfunnyguys]

what happend atthe end?

[mrtfunnyguys]

nice work sparky!

[LoveMySpouse]

wow, that is adorable! now he just needs a chick to share his palace with! :)

[OutOnALimbPP]

Sparky is amazing! Ive never seen anything like that!

[ilovemovie1968]

the nest is just way too big for the bird (laugh)

[Cyworldabcd]

i like how he shakes his head in the end :)