What this site is, and where it stops
Cockatiel Foundation is an independent lifestyle hub for cockatiel and small-parrot hobbyists, with practical guides on home setup, food routines, enrichment, and gentle training.
That sentence is the whole scope. We cover the parts of bird keeping that happen at home on an ordinary Tuesday: where the cage goes, what is in the bowl, how to make a shredding toy last more than an afternoon, how to build enough trust for a calm step-up.
The word "foundation" means a base of practical knowledge. It does not mean a registered charity, a nonprofit, a rescue, or a sanctuary. We do not solicit donations, we do not run an adoption program, and we do not speak for any breeder, shop, or brand.
We deliberately leave out anything that needs a bird in front of a trained pair of hands: diagnosis, medication, surgery, breeding decisions, and emergency care.
This site does not practice veterinary medicine
Nothing here is veterinary advice, and none of it is written by a veterinarian. A guide can tell you that overheated nonstick cookware is a known hazard. It cannot tell you what is wrong with the bird sitting in front of you.
If your cockatiel is fluffed up and quiet, off its food, sitting on the cage floor, tail bobbing, or breathing with visible effort, stop reading and call an avian vet. Birds mask illness well, so by the time the signs are obvious to an owner the problem is usually not new.
We will not diagnose a bird from an email or a photo, we will not suggest a dose of anything, and we will not offer a home remedy as a substitute for a clinic visit. Finding an avian vet before you need one is the single most useful thing a new owner can do.
What a page is checked against before it goes up
Trust badges are easy to print, so here is the actual process instead. Every claim on this site falls into one of three buckets, and each bucket is handled differently.
- Safety-relevant facts. Which foods, plants, fumes, and household hazards can hurt a bird. These are checked against at least one independent authority before publishing, and we prefer to name it in the text rather than hide it in a footnote.
- Husbandry consensus. Cage size, perch variety, sleep and light routine, training method. These reflect long-standing published guidance from avian and parrot welfare organizations. Where practice genuinely varies, we say it varies instead of picking a winner and pretending it is settled.
- Preference and opinion. Toy rotation ideas, room layout, how to make mealtime less boring. These are written plainly as opinion and are never dressed up as clinical fact.
The public references that safety-relevant material is checked against are listed in the sidebar. You can read every one of them yourself, which is the point.
Where an authority and a popular forum answer disagree, we follow the authority and say so. Where the honest answer is that the evidence is thin or the guidance has changed, we write that down rather than invent certainty. Numbers we cannot source do not go on the page.
Who writes this
Everything here is published under one desk byline: the Cockatiel Foundation editors. That is a working name for the people who research, write, and review these pages, not a stand-in for one named expert. There is no invented biography or stock portrait attached to it.
We would rather tell you what a page was checked against than tell you how many years somebody has kept birds. Credentials are trivially easy to claim on a website and almost impossible for a reader to verify. A list of sources is not.
In the structured data behind each page, authorship is credited to the organization rather than to a person, for exactly that reason.
How often pages are re-read
Every guide carries a date. Pages that touch safety, meaning diet, unsafe foods, household hazards, and anything about a bird's body, are re-read at least twice a year. Everything else is re-read at least once a year.
A page also gets pulled forward out of that cycle when:
- a reader tells us something is wrong,
- one of the references we rely on changes its guidance,
- or we notice two pages on this site contradicting each other.
When a page changes in a way that matters, the date changes with it. Fixing a typo does not earn a fresh date, because a new timestamp on unchanged content is a lie told with a calendar.
How the site pays for itself
Plainly: it costs very little to run, and nobody is paying us to say anything.
There is no advertising on this site. No sponsored placements, no paid reviews, no affiliate links, and no "best cage of the year" roundup quietly earning a commission on every click. We do not sell products, we do not take money from brands, and we do not accept free items in exchange for coverage. That is also why guides describe what to look for in a cage or a pellet rather than naming a product to buy.
The running costs are a domain registration and static hosting, paid privately out of pocket.
If that ever changes, and any page starts carrying advertising or a paid link, it will be labeled on the page itself and this section will be updated before it happens rather than quietly afterwards.
Things we will not publish
- A diagnosis based on a photo, a comment, or an email
- Dosages, treatment protocols, or home remedies
- Invented credentials, degrees, job titles, or years of experience
- Personal anecdotes we did not have or test results we did not measure
- Donation appeals, or anything implying charitable or nonprofit status
- Scare stories, miracle claims, or advice we cannot point to a source for
Found something wrong? Say so
Corrections go to [email protected]. Include the page URL and the part you think is wrong. Pointing at a source helps, but you do not need one to be worth listening to.
What happens next:
- Factual errors get corrected, and the page's review date moves with the fix.
- Anything we cannot stand up comes off the page. A shorter guide beats a confident wrong one.
- Where it is a judgment call rather than an error, you get a reply explaining why it was written that way.
This is a small editorial project rather than a support desk, so replies are not instant. Mail is read in batches and corrections are handled ahead of everything else in the inbox. General questions can also go through the contact page.