Behaviour

There are numerous difficulties in studying wild parrots, as they are difficult to catch and once caught they are difficult to mark. Most wild bird studies rely on banding or wing tagging, but parrots will chew off such attachments.[26] Parrots also tend to range widely and consequently there are many gaps in knowledge of their behaviour.
Parrots have a strong, direct flight. Most species spend much of their time perched or climbing in tree canopies. They often use their bills for climbing by gripping or hooking on branches and other supports. On the ground parrots often walk with a rolling gait.
           DIET
         The diet of parrots consists of seeds, fruit, nectar, pollen, buds, and sometimes arthropods and other animal prey. The most important of these for most true parrots and cockatoos are seeds; the evolution of the large and powerful bill can be explained primarily as an adaptation to opening and consuming seeds. All true parrots except the Pesquet's Parrot employ the same method to obtain the seed from the husk; the seed is held between the mandibles and the lower mandible crushes the husk, whereupon the seed is rotated in the bill and the remaining husk is removed.[26] A foot is sometimes used to help holding large seeds in place. Parrots are seed predators rather than seed dispersers; and in many cases where species are recorded as consuming fruit they are only eating the fruit to get at the seed. As seeds often have poisons to protect them, parrots are careful to remove seed coats and other fruit parts which are chemically well defended, prior to ingestion. Many species in the Americas, Africa, and Papua New Guinea consume clay which both releases minerals and absorbs toxic compounds from the gut.[28]




Parrots at a clay lick in Ecuador.
The lories and lorikeets, hanging parrots and Swift Parrot are primarily nectar and pollen consumers, and have tongues with brush tips to collect this source of food, as well as some specialised gut adaptations to accommodate this diet.[29] Many other species also consume nectar as well when it becomes available.
In addition to feeding on seeds and flowers, some parrot species will prey on animals, especially invertebrate larvae. Golden-winged Parakeets prey on water snails, and famously the Keas of New Zealand will kill juvenile petrels and even attack and indirectly kill adult sheep.[30] Another New Zealand parrot, the Antipodes Island Parakeet, enters the burrows of nesting Grey-backed Storm Petrels and kills the incubating adults.[31] Some cockatoos and the Kākā will excavate branches and wood to obtain grubs.