Understanding feather loss, vocalization, and other parrot behavior problems

When a parrot vocalizes excessively, plucks its feathers, or exhibits aggression toward the people it lives with, is the underlying cause medical, behavioral, or both? In this interview, following her American Veterinary Medical Association session on psittacine behavior problems, Valli Parthasarathy, DVM, PhD, DACVB, of Synergy Veterinary Behavior in Portland, Oregon, unpacks the most common behavior problems she sees in pet parrots and how clinicians can get to the root of them.

Parthasarathy discusses clues that can help distinguish medical causes from behavioral ones, including why feather loss in areas a bird cannot reach could point to an underlying medical issue rather than self-plucking, how open wounds or sores from self-mutilation can make a case both medical and behavioral, and why seemingly excessive vocalization may simply be a bird contact-calling the caregivers who make up its flock.

Below is a partial transcript, lightly edited for clarity.

dvm360: What are the most common behavior problems you see in pet parrots?

Parthasarathy: The most common behavior problems that I see are aggression…excessive vocalization…destructive behavior, and feather-destructive behavior. Often, the primary veterinarians see a lot of feather-destructive behavior before I do, so the cases that come to me tend to be ones that have a more specific behavior presentation.

dvm360: When a parrot presents with some of these behavior issues, maybe feather-picking or self-mutilation, how do you determine whether the underlying cause is medical, behavioral, or both?

Parthasarathy: It'll start off with a good evaluation by the primary veterinarian. What I would always recommend is [to look] for physical discomfort, pain, [and] any organ changes in function; run blood work; do imaging if necessary or indicated; get a history from the clients to find out if there have been any [recent] changes in mobility or activity; and then get skin and feather biopsies, making sure that there are no obvious pathogens or histological changes that could be contributing to why this bird is doing it.

Sometimes it's evident in terms of the patterning of the destructive behavior....