Tatiana the Cockatoo has her own bedroom—Umbrella Cockatoos live where it’s 12 hours daylight, 12 hours nighttime. Cockatoos are “people birds”, so she’s with me for most of the day. care-wise, it’s: fresh water and water dish 2x day, fresh treat dish (greens, fruit) 2x day, fresh Cockatoo food 2x day, papers at the bottom of her cage, changed daily, grate at the bottom of her cage, cleaned daily, carpet sweeper to the rug her cage is on, daily. New toys, at least once a week—cockatoos are wood chewers, so when she chews up a toy (3-5 days depending on how big the toy is), she gets a new one.
I’ve been living with an Umbrella Cockatoo for the past 27 years. Macaws are the next size up from Cockatoos, and having a Cockatoo means you have a perpetual four year old with an air horn and a claw hammer! A Scarlet Macaw can open a Brazil Nut or a Walnut with their beak, which means you have to find them something more interesting to break than furniture legs—or your fingers. A parrot like Admiral Crackers is a serious investment of your time.
We have one that’s wired into the electrical system. It’s designed to start up if the power is out for 30 seconds, so the place would already be lit up. If they have one of the gasoline powered generators, they have to haul it out, check to see if they remembered to buy gas after the last time they used it, crank it up, and run the cables to the power strips ( so if there’s a power surge it doesn’t fry whatever appliances are hooked to the generator.).
There used to be “decode this” games in the newspapers, where you had the to makes guesses based on the location and frequency of the symbols.