The short answer for a Bourke's parrot
Never share avocado, chocolate, coffee, tea, alcohol, salty snacks, onion, garlic, or fruit pits and apple seeds with a Bourke's parrot. Every item on that list is dangerous to pet birds, and a Bourke's small size turns a casual nibble into a serious amount — the safest rule with this species is that human food is simply not bird food.
Why a small grass parakeet is at outsized risk
A Bourke's parrot weighs about as much as a few tablespoons of sugar, and that single fact drives this whole list. Toxicity runs on amount per body weight, so the corner of a chocolate biscuit that means nothing to a person, and little even to a large macaw, lands in a Bourke's parrot at many times the relative strength. Small parrots also eat quickly and quietly, often at dusk when this crepuscular species is at its most active and its owners are cooking dinner — the exact hour when seasoned vegetables, dips, and snacks are within beak reach of a cage or a shoulder.
The never-share list for a Bourke's parrot
Avocado heads the list — flesh, skin, and stone are all unsafe for parrots, and guacamole counts in full. Chocolate follows, in every form from cocoa powder and dark bars to chocolate cake and drinking chocolate; the darker the chocolate, the stronger the danger. Caffeine in coffee, tea, and energy drinks is unsafe even in sips, and alcohol in any amount has no safe place near a bird this small. Onion and garlic — raw, cooked, or powdered in seasoning — damage birds' blood and should never reach a Bourke's, which rules out most savoury leftovers, gravies, and ready meals at a stroke. Salt is its own hazard: crisps, salted nuts, crackers, popcorn with salt, and processed meats deliver far more salt than a small bird's kidneys are built to handle. Finally, the seeds and stones of fruit — apple pips, cherry, peach, and apricot stones — should always be removed before any fruit is offered, and rhubarb and dried beans kept away entirely.
How unsafe food usually reaches a Bourke's
Deliberate feeding is rarely the route; access is. A Bourke's parrot out for its evening flight lands on a kitchen worktop dusted with cocoa or salt, samples the guacamole beside the crisps, or is offered a corner of seasoned roast vegetable by a guest who means well and does not know the rules. The practical defences are placement and habit: no food preparation beside an open cage, the bird's out-of-cage time kept out of the kitchen during cooking, fruit for the bird prepared with pips removed as a reflex, and every visitor told plainly that the pretty little parrot takes no human food at all, however politely it watches them eat.
If a Bourke's parrot eats something on the list
Treat any known nibble of avocado, chocolate, caffeine, alcohol, onion, or garlic as urgent in a Bourke's parrot — do not wait to see whether symptoms develop, because in a bird this small they can move fast once they start. Warning signs that raise the urgency further include fluffed sitting with closed eyes, vomiting or head flicking, droppings that change sharply, wobbliness on the perch, or breathing with an open beak.
Making the warning stick for the whole household
The person most likely to feed a Bourke's parrot something unsafe is not its owner but a kind guest, a grandchild, or a sitter working from a short note that forgot this page. Writing the never-share list into the bird's standing care instructions — not buried in a drawer, but where feeding duties are handed over — closes that gap. In KinsLe, Care Teams lets you attach the never-share list to your Bourke's parrot's care tasks where everyone who feeds it will see it, so the rule travels with the bird rather than living in one person's head.