Start with an avian examination, not a booking desk
You arrange an endoscopy or hospital stay through an avian veterinarian. Unlike a routine appointment you book directly, an endoscopy is a procedure a vet recommends after examining your bird and deciding that looking inside the body — at the airways, the upper digestive tract, or internal organs — will answer a question that examination, imaging, and samples have not settled. If your usual practice does not offer avian endoscopy, ask for a referral to one that does, and expect the receiving hospital to want your bird's history before confirming a date.
Timing matters too. A stable bird may wait for a planned slot, while a bird losing weight, breathing with effort, or regurgitating repeatedly should be seen urgently and may be admitted the same day. Describe the signs in detail when you call, because that description is what the hospital uses to triage your bird.
Questions to ask before the procedure
Ask what the endoscopy is expected to find or rule out, and what will be done with the answer — whether samples may be taken, and how results will change treatment. Ask how anaesthesia is managed for a bird of your bird's size and condition, who will monitor it, and what the recovery period looks like. Birds are commonly fasted only briefly or not at all before procedures in ways that differ from dogs and cats, so ask for the hospital's exact feeding instructions for the night before and morning of admission rather than guessing.
For a hospital stay, ask what housing your bird will be in, whether it will be kept warm in a heated unit if it is unwell, how often it will be weighed and checked, and whether the team will offer its usual foods. Ask whether you may bring a familiar food or a small familiar item, what updates you will receive and when, and who to call overnight if you are worried. Finally, ask for the expected length of stay and what signs after discharge should bring you straight back.
What to bring and hand over
Bring a written history, not just memory on the day. Include recent weights and their pattern of change, the normal diet in detail, any supplements recently introduced, recent changes in droppings, activity, voice, or appetite, and a list of other birds at home. Hospital teams make real decisions from this information: a bird that has eaten the same narrow diet for years, or that shares airspace with a recently arrived bird, is assessed differently.
Transport your bird in a secure, familiar travel carrier lined with paper you can hand over — droppings on it are genuinely useful to the team. Bring a supply of its usual food for the stay, labelled, since an unwell bird that refuses unfamiliar food may need the diet it recognises. If your bird has had imaging or tests elsewhere, have those records sent ahead so procedures are not repeated.
During the stay and coming home
Expect the hospital to prioritise stabilising a sick bird — warmth, fluids, oxygen, or assisted feeding — before diagnostics, and an endoscopy may move a day if your bird needs to be stronger first. That delay is good care. When you collect your bird, ask for findings in writing, the home feeding plan, what weight checks to do, and the follow-up date before you leave.
Back home, keep the routine quiet, weigh as instructed, and record what you observe daily so the follow-up visit works from facts rather than impressions. Having the history, weights, and discharge notes filed together from the start makes that handover far easier, and KinsLe Pet Passport holds a bird's records in one portable packet so the packet you prepared for admission becomes the same record you update through recovery.