The Caique Site
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The Caique Manual
14. Bathing your bird. By all means give your bird a bath. Most caiques love to bathe. In the wild they are subject to frequent showers in the rainforest. They also leaf or sap bathe. For this they rub the sides of their heads and bodies along a wet limb or leaves. If they have a fresh limb available, they will sometimes strip off the bark and bathe in the sap. Indoors, they usually do not have tree limbs available, but this does not discourage them. This may explain why caiques seem to have a shoe fetish. Most caiques like to get on your shoe and rub back and forth over it. In the wild they probably do this with tree limbs. When they use water for bathing, each individual caique has its own bathing technique. Some like to jump around in a bowl in the bottom of their cage. Others wait for you to turn on the faucet of your kitchen sink and then romp around under the water as it streams out. Others like to be spritzed with a spray bottle. Others like you to lay a damp cloth on a counter or other flat surface so that they rub themselves all over. Still others want to take a shower with you. Just be sure the water is not too hot and it can dry off fairly quickly afterwards. If you keep your home cooler than 65°F during the winter, you ought to buy a heat lamp, preferably one of the red or ceramic types, to help your bird dry. (Avoid lamps with the Teflon outer membrane. This membrane is intended to contain the glass if the lamp shatters, but the fumes from this Teflon can be just as deadly as those from a Teflon skillet.) If you have a baby caique that has just weaned, it may be reluctant to bathe. This is normal and may last a year or more. You may have to be more aggressive about giving this baby a bath, especially when you begin to think you have a black-bellied caique. Curiously, caiques in the wild are frequently reported not to have the nearly gleaming white breasts we all know, but are a bit on the scruffy side.
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