This question deserves a straight answer before the details: the risk is real, it is specific to birds, and it kills fast. Non-stick cookware is coated with PTFE, and when a pan coated with it is overheated, the coating releases fumes that are devastating to a bird's respiratory system. Birds breathe far more efficiently than people do, taking in more air, and more of whatever is in it, with every breath. A pan that merely smells hot to you can fill a small bird's airways with fumes it cannot survive, and birds have died while a family noticed nothing more than a pan left too long on the stove.
Why There Is No Warning You Can Rely On
The cruelest part of this hazard is the silence around it. Overheating a non-stick pan does not reliably produce a smell, a smoke cloud, or any signal a person would act on in time, and the bird is usually affected before anyone in the kitchen suspects a problem. A bird that was singing an hour ago can be found in distress or dead with no dramatic event in between. That is why rules based on noticing trouble do not protect a bird. The protection has to be built into how the kitchen runs every single day, including the days when everyone is busy and distracted.
The danger peaks when a pan sits empty on high heat, preheating forgotten while other food is prepared, or when a pan boils dry. Those are ordinary kitchen accidents, not reckless behavior, which is exactly why this hazard claims birds in careful homes as well as careless ones.
If Non-Stick Stays, the Rules Are Strict
A household that keeps non-stick pans with a bird in the home needs rules nobody treats as optional. Never let a pan overheat and never leave a pan empty on a lit burner; if preheating happens at all, the pan stays attended, on moderate heat, for a short time. The bird lives and stays in a separate room from the kitchen while cooking happens, with the door closed and that room aired independently, because fumes travel through shared air. Run the strongest ventilation available whenever non-stick is on the heat, opening windows near the stove as well as running a fan that vents outside, and keep the bird out of the kitchen until cooking is finished and the air has cleared.
Every person who cooks in the house has to know and follow the same rules, including guests and older children. A single forgotten pan by someone who never heard the rule undoes a year of care, so the rules belong somewhere everyone sees them, not in one person's memory.
The Honest Safest Course
Even with strict rules, the risk never reaches zero while non-stick pans remain in the kitchen, because the failure case is a moment of ordinary forgetfulness with an irreversible result. For that reason, the safest course, and the one worth stating plainly, is to take non-stick pans out of the kitchen for good and cook with other materials instead. Many bird households make that change once, feel the inconvenience for a month, and then never think about it again, which is a small price beside a preventable death.
If the pans go, say so clearly to everyone who cooks, and if any non-stick remains for a narrow use, the strict rules stay in force for it. None of that depends on the bird being a stranger to the wider household. Family Sharing through KinsLe extends profile access to family members selected by the owner, so relatives who were not there when the pans left can still open a profile for the bird and know it by name.