The Enrichment Genius: Kris Porter

Kris Porter put together an absolutely incredible book and website about parrot enrichment. There are enough ideas in both to keep your birds busy for years. The book is free and downloadable and it’s absolutely packed with cool ideas to keep your birds happy and busy. You can download the book at her website and you can also watch videos with other great ideas on ways to entertain your parrots.

Click on the photo of Zorba to get to the Parrot Enrichment Website:

The Parrot Enrichment Website! Click on the image of Zorba above.

If you don’t quite understand what “enrichment” is, it’s simply anything that enhances your bird’s life. It’s toys, music, places for climbing, foraging for treats, hanging out with you, sunshine, just anything that is fun and engaging. Kris has found photos, made videos, and explains in depth some of the items you can find in thrift stores, dollar stores and around the house to arrange your bird’s environment for for fun, play and interest.

Something as simple as a cardboard bottle carrier can be enriching!

Buddy, pictured above is foraging around in a cardboard beer bottle carrier that has been stuffed with “Stuff.” Looks like he’s intrigued.

You can sew buttons onto some kid’s used overalls you might find at the thrift store, fill the pockets with bird safe items and hang plastic toys from the straps. Bingo! An engaging activity for next to nothing.

Working to get at the Vegetables

Leigh Ann Hartsfield sent Kris a photo of her Grey Franco climbing up to investigate a basket of vegetables. This Munchkin Basket was zip-tied right to the cage door.

These are just small samples of the incredible array of stuff you can do to enrich your parrot’s environment. It’s a wonderful website and I thank Kris for putting it together for the rest of us.

Kris states, “My goal with this website is to cover all areas of parrot enrichment; foraging, training, nutrition, etc.  Also provide video instruction on how you might encourage your own parrot to learn to forage or engage in enrichment activities both inside and outside the cage.”

Kris? I think you accomplished all of that and more!

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