Phoenix Landing spotlights PsittaWel tool, new parrot welfare classes

Phoenix Landing is turning parrot welfare research into something owners can actually use, with a June 20 live Zoom on PsittaWel, the new assessment tool designed for companion parrot caregivers. The same June calendar pairs that session with two self-paced core classes, The Good Life and No Place Like Home, giving the organization’s community a practical way to connect behavior, housing, nutrition, and enrichment to daily decisions.

Andrea Piseddu, PhD, will lead the June 20 Welfare Assessment Tool session at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. PsittaWel was published online in Animal Welfare on May 14, 2026, and was developed at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna with input from seven experts, four additional anonymous external experts, and 69 parrot caregivers. The finished tool has 75 questions covering 145 welfare indicators across eight sections: general information, physical health, housing and physical activity, enrichment and exploration, nutrition and maintenance behaviours, social and reproductive behaviours, parrot-human interactions, and maladaptive and fear-related behaviours. The paper says the tool is freely downloadable from Vetmeduni Vienna and notes that further research is still needed to test indicator reliability.

For parrot people, the appeal is practical: PsittaWel is built to help caregivers monitor welfare before problems become obvious, looking at behavior, environment, opportunities, and deficits in a structured way. That is the same logic behind Phoenix Landing’s June classes. The Good Life runs June 13 to June 20 and covers nutrition, behavior, enrichment, health, and basic anatomy. No Place Like Home runs June 20 to June 27 and treats home as safety, health, family, and positive opportunities for birds from parakeets to macaws.

Phoenix Landing says both classes are self-paced core classes open to anyone interested in new ideas or continued learning, regardless of where they live. They also satisfy adoption-process requirements only when the homework is completed, tying education directly to placement standards. The organization describes itself as a volunteer 501(c)(3) parrot welfare group serving Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, and Northeast Florida/Jacksonville, and it says most parrots need a succession of good homes.

The calendar also included a June 13 open house at The Landing in Alexander, North Carolina, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at 31 Landing Place. Taken together, the open house, the Zoom session, and the core classes point to the same shift in the field: welfare is moving from instinct alone to structured observation, exactly where Phoenix Landing wants parrot care to land.