Q uestion: Our sun conure is now a year old. When we bought him as a baby, his wing feathers were trimmed so he would not fly. Now they have grown back and he is flying all over the house. He really does leave a mess everywhere, and I want to get his wings trimmed. But my husband and son like the bird to fly and say he will be happier and healthier if we allow him to do so. I wanted to know what you think.

Answer: This is one of those questions that involves endless debate. For the record, I personally love to see a bird fly, and I never trim any of my birds’ wing feathers. However, this is to satisfy my desires and has nothing to do with the well-being of the birds. A bird does not need to fly to stay in top physical condition, with the exception of species such as swifts, hummingbirds and nightjars that all have very small, useless feet that deny them the ability to walk. We do not keep them as pets, anyway.

A bird that has a rich environment to climb about and exercise in and is given the proper diet can stay physically fit. Nor do birds have any psychological need to fly when they are well cared for and are happy and feel safe. Just about every zoo in the country has ponds and pens with ducks, flamingos and cranes all walking about in them, and these birds have all been pinioned (a vet will surgically remove the tip of one of the bird’s wings at the first joint, and birds thus operated on will never fly again and are quite happy and healthy). Zoos would not do it if the result would compromise the birds’ physical well-being.

It does seem that birds with trimmed feathers have a lot more freedom than those that can fly. A bird that can fly about the house is usually not allowed out of its cage as much as one that can’t fly. Plus, just about every other day I get calls from tearful pet keepers whose birds have gotten out and are perched 100 feet up in a tree and have no idea how to get down. No pet bird with properly trimmed wing feathers ever flew away from its home. This decision is a personal one, and I cannot say what is right or wrong. Trimmed feathers do fall out when the bird molts and they do regrow, so if you have a bird that can fly and you get the feathers trimmed to render the bird flightless and do not like the result, all you need to do is wait a few months and the bird will be flying again.

Q: I have lived on the South Shore (of Long Island, N.Y.) for the past 70 years, and each year I notice that there are fewer and fewer Monarch butterflies that migrate through my yard. I have planted butterfly bushes and other flowering plants for them to feed off, but each year, there are fewer anyway. Is there anything else I can do to help them increase in population?

A: The flowering plants do help, of course, but what monarch butterflies really need are more patches of milkweed to lay their eggs on, because that is the only thing their caterpillars eat. If there is no milkweed, then no monarchs. Milkweed is a native plant and not a weed. It is not invasive and looks quite pretty. If everyone planted some in their yard or in pots outside, then life would be a bit less hard for the monarchs. There are lots of companies, such as livemonarch.com, that offer milkweed seeds to people who want to be sure that future generations will still be able to see monarch butterflies.

Mark Marrone writes this column for Newsday. Email him at petexperts2@aol.com

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