Our Parrots
Three personalities, three stories
Not show animals. Three unique characters, each bringing their own past, voice and personality.
WILD
The quiet dreamer
WILD hatched in 2012 and spent his whole life until then in a small cage – together with lovebirds. When I first saw him in January 2021, his wings were still intact. I didn’t have a transport box with me and asked the previous owners to bring him to me the next day.
When he arrived, his wings had been brutally clipped – the feathers cut down to the flesh. That took away his ability to fly. To this day, regrowing feathers keep breaking because they lack the support of the whole wing – often until they bleed.
WILD came to me full of fear. No one was allowed to touch him. For a whole month I gave him just one thing: his space and his time, to understand that I am his friend and not his danger. By the end of that month he was already standing expectantly at the edge of the cage as soon as he saw me getting ready – ready for his safety harness and our walk together.
When I moved to Europe, WILD came with me. Flying him over cost no small fortune – but he belongs with me. Today he comes outside with me on almost every occasion.
WILD is a thinker. A calm cockatoo who sometimes sits motionless in one spot for hours, without a single sound – simply gazing into the sky and dreaming. My greatest wish: that one day his wings heal and we can train him for free flight.
SKIPPY
Light and energy
Skippy’s past is shrouded in fog. No one knows exactly where he came from. He was found on the street in Upper Austria – and no one collected him from the shelter. After about a month, I adopted him.
The first meeting with WILD was moving. In the first week, WILD tirelessly tried to play with him. But from the second week on, Skippy made it clear that he has his own territory – and he defends it to this day.
In the house, the two therefore live separately. They “chat” through the window pane and through a grille – close enough to sense one another, safe enough that no one gets hurt.
We don’t know exactly how old Skippy is – his behaviour suggests a birth year between 2021 and 2024. What we do know for sure: he brings light, energy and joy into every room.
RANKI
The Inventor
Ranki didn’t come from a cage, and he wasn’t found on the street. He came from a scientific project on the intelligence of parrots. He lived there in a large group – but from the start he was more interested in people than in the other birds, and he never really fitted in. With adolescence that became clearer, and they looked for a home for him. That is how he came to us in July 2026.
He is half the size of WILD and Skippy, and he flies better than either of them. Skippy is a good flier and still cannot catch him. In the house Ranki keeps his distance from the two of them by choice – not out of fear, but because he decided it that way. Outside he sits with WILD and preens him.
And then there is the game. Ranki decides when it is time to play. He flies over to me with something in his beak, and that is how it starts. What he brings changes: a wooden block, my sunglasses, a pine cone from outside. As long as he can hold it.
Nobody taught him that. Goffin’s cockatoos are studied in research for exactly this – for playing with objects and setting themselves their own tasks. In our living room it looks like this: a bird picks his own toy, and tells me when we begin.
Together
Neighbours inside, friends outside
As opposite as they are at home – outside, far from territorial thinking, WILD and Skippy are close friends. They sit together and even “kiss”.
With Ranki the same thing happened, without anyone arranging it: indoors he keeps his distance by choice, outside he sits with WILD and preens him. We watch only one thing – Skippy and Ranki are never left alone unsupervised. Skippy weighs almost twice as much.
This is exactly the truth we pass on to children: real relationships – between animals as between people – need time, space and respect.
Try it yourself
How loud is a parrot really?
We measured 105 dB on our own cockatoos – ordinary chatter sits around 47 dB. Measure a sound with your phone’s mic and watch live where a parrot lands on the scale.
Would you like to experience our parrots?
Worth knowing
Eight things about parrots almost nobody knows
Swipe sideways. Every card names its source.
Winged toolmakers
Goffin’s cockatoos solve problems that take primates years of practice. At the Messerli Institute in Vienna, three of them pushed a ball into the right hole with a stick — each bird invented its own grip, and one managed it on the first attempt.
Meet Ranki → Osuna Mascaró, Mundry, Tebbich, Beck & Auersperg, Scientific Reports (2022), Messerli Institute, Vetmeduni Vienna.Three islands, nowhere else
Ranki’s species lives wild only on three Indonesian islands: Yamdena, Larat and Selaru. Every parrot has been protected since 1981 — and Ranki’s species one tier above WILD and Skippy, in the strictest category CITES has.
Ranki’s story → CITES Appendix I since 6 June 1981; the whole parrot order in Appendix II. IUCN: Near Threatened.A parrot beat 21 Harvard students
Griffin, an African grey from Irene Pepperberg’s lab, played the shell game against 21 Harvard undergraduates. On 12 of 14 task types he matched them or did better. Only in the two hardest rounds did the adults clearly win.
How clever they really are → Pailian, Pepperberg, Carey & Halberda, Scientific Reports (2020).WILD’s wings
When WILD came to us in January 2021 his wings had been cut back to the flesh. He still cannot fly, and the regrowing feathers keep breaking. That was not an accident. It was somebody’s decision.
WILD’s story → First-hand.Nobody came for him
Skippy was found on a street in Upper Austria. Nobody claimed him at the shelter. We adopted him after a month — and we still do not know exactly how old he is.
Meet Skippy → First-hand.Older than the Second World War
How old a parrot gets depends heavily on the species — but the range is enormous. The oldest documented parrot was Cookie, a Major Mitchell’s cockatoo at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago. He arrived there as a youngster in 1934 and died in 2016, aged at least 82.
Our parrots → Guinness World Records, “Oldest parrot ever”: Cacatua leadbeateri, 30 June 1933 – 27 Aug 2016.105 decibels
A cockatoo gets louder than a jackhammer ten metres away. We measured 105 dB on our birds — ordinary conversation sits at about 47. If you live in a flat with thin walls, hear that once before you decide anything.
Measure it yourself → Our own measurement, on WILD and Skippy.The best sentence
“I am definitely not getting a parrot any time soon.” That is the sentence we most like to hear. An encounter after which somebody buys no parrot has done exactly what it was made for.
Why we do this → First-hand.