What parrots are and where to find them
Parrots are small, brightly colored flying mobs that live in the jungles of Minecraft. They are passive, which means they will never attack you, and you can tame one to follow you around or ride on your shoulder. A parrot won’t fight your battles, but it makes a fun companion and doubles as an early warning system for danger.
Parrots only spawn in jungle biomes. That includes the regular jungle, the sparse jungle, and the bamboo jungle. They appear on grass blocks, leaves, and logs, usually in small numbers, so a single jungle trip might only turn up a couple of them. If you want a specific color, you may have to do some hunting.
There are five color variants: red, blue, green, cyan, and gray. The color a parrot spawns with is random, and you can’t change it later, so the one you tame is the one you keep.
Jungles can be dense and dark, and parrots tend to perch up in the trees, so scanning the canopy is often the fastest way to spot one. Their bright feathers stand out against the green leaves once you train your eye for them. If your jungle seems empty, try lighting up the area and waiting, or move to a neighboring jungle chunk and look again.
How to tame a parrot
You tame a parrot by feeding it seeds. Four common types work: wheat seeds, melon seeds, pumpkin seeds, and beetroot seeds. Torchflower seeds work too if you have them. Hold the seeds in your hand, walk up to the parrot, and use them on it.
Taming isn’t guaranteed on the first try. Each seed you feed has a chance to tame the bird, so you may need to feed it several times before it works. When the parrot is tamed, red hearts pop up above its head, and it will start to treat you as its owner.
Because seeds are cheap and easy to farm, taming a parrot costs you almost nothing beyond a little patience. Bring a stack of wheat seeds from any grass you’ve broken and you’ll have plenty.
One thing to know up front: parrots cannot be bred. There is no way to make baby parrots by feeding two of them. If you want more parrots, you have to tame each one in the wild.
Putting a parrot on your shoulder
Once a parrot is tamed, you can carry it on your shoulder. Walk into the parrot, or let it walk into you, and it will hop up and perch. You can have one parrot on each shoulder, so a matched pair looks great while you explore.
A shoulder parrot stays put while you walk, sprint, and climb. It hops off if you take damage or step into water, so a parrot is not something you want riding along into a fight or a swim. If yours vanishes after a creeper blast or a fall, that’s why.
You can also tell a tamed parrot to sit or stand by using your empty hand on it, the same way you would with a wolf or a cat. A sitting parrot stays where you left it. A standing parrot follows you and will teleport to you if it gets too far behind.
That teleport behavior is the easiest way to move a parrot home. Tame it, keep it standing, and walk back to your base, and it will keep catching up to you as you go. If you’d rather not risk losing it on the trip, attach a lead and pull it along, or carry it on your shoulder across dry land and away from water.
What parrots actually do
The most useful thing a parrot does is imitate the sounds of nearby hostile mobs. When a zombie, skeleton, creeper, or other hostile mob is close, your parrot mimics that mob’s ambient noise. If you hear a faint zombie groan coming from your shoulder, something dangerous is nearby even if you can’t see it yet.
This makes parrots handy in caves and at night. The imitation isn’t precise enough to tell you exactly where the threat is, but it’s a good heads-up that you’re not alone. Many players keep a parrot around just for this.
Parrots also dance. Put a parrot near a jukebox, play a music disc, and it will start bobbing and spinning to the music. Several parrots near the same jukebox all dance together. They stop when the music ends or when they move out of range. It does nothing useful, but it’s one of the nicer touches in the game.
In the air, parrots flap to slow their fall, and they don’t take fall damage. A wild parrot can drift down from the treetops without getting hurt, and a standing tamed parrot will fly after you across gaps that would hurt a wolf.
Never feed a parrot a cookie
This is the single most important thing to know about parrots: feeding one a cookie kills it instantly. Cookies are made with cocoa beans, and the game treats chocolate as poison to parrots, the same way chocolate is toxic to real birds. The damage from a cookie is more than enough to drop a parrot’s health to zero in one bite.
There is no warning and no saving the bird once you do it. If you keep cookies and seeds in your hotbar, double check what you’re holding before you use it on a parrot. A lot of players have lost a favorite parrot this way.
Drops and other details
A parrot has 6 health points, which is 3 hearts, so it doesn’t take much to kill one. When a parrot dies, it can drop a feather or two, and you’ll get a little experience if you killed it yourself. Feathers are useful for arrows, but there are far easier feather sources than hunting parrots, so most players leave them alone.
You can attach a lead to a parrot to keep it from wandering, which helps if you’re trying to move one home without it perching and unperching. Tamed parrots stay loyal to you and won’t be claimed by anyone else.
Tips and common mistakes
Bring more seeds than you think you need. Taming can take several feedings per bird, and if you’re after a specific color you might tame and skip a few you don’t want.
Don’t carry a parrot into combat. Since it hops off the moment you take damage, a shoulder parrot in a fight tends to flutter away and get lost. Tell it to sit somewhere safe before you go hunting mobs.
Keep parrots away from water if you want them on your shoulder. Stepping into a pool or getting caught in rain runoff will knock them off.
If you’re building a base in or near a jungle, a couple of tamed parrots make a good living alarm. Let them stand near where you mine or craft and listen for mob sounds you didn’t make yourself.
Java and Bedrock differences
Parrots behave the same way across both editions in the ways that matter most. Seeds tame them, cookies kill them, they perch on your shoulder, they imitate hostile mobs, and they dance near jukeboxes in both Java and Bedrock. If you’ve learned parrots on one edition, the basics carry over to the other.
Frequently asked questions
Can you breed parrots in Minecraft?
No. Parrots cannot be bred in either edition. Feeding two parrots seeds will not produce a baby. The only way to get more is to tame wild ones in the jungle.
What do you feed a parrot to tame it?
Seeds. Wheat seeds, melon seeds, pumpkin seeds, and beetroot seeds all work, and so do torchflower seeds. Each feeding has a chance to tame the parrot, so you may need a few.
Why did my parrot die when I fed it a cookie?
Cookies are poison to parrots. Feeding one a cookie deals fatal damage and kills it instantly. Only ever feed parrots seeds.
How do I get a parrot off my shoulder?
Take any damage or step into water and the parrot hops off on its own. There’s no separate button to remove it.
Do parrots really warn you about mobs?
Yes. A parrot imitates the ambient sounds of hostile mobs within range, so if you hear a zombie or skeleton noise from your bird, something is nearby. It doesn’t tell you the exact direction.
What colors do parrots come in?
Five: red, blue, green, cyan, and gray. The color is random when the parrot spawns and can’t be changed.
Where do parrots spawn?
Only in jungle biomes, including the regular jungle, sparse jungle, and bamboo jungle. They land on grass, leaves, and logs, and often perch up in the trees, so look at the canopy as well as the ground.
A parrot is one of the few mobs that’s worth taming purely for company, with the mob-warning trick as a bonus. Just keep the cookies far away from it, and pick a color you’ll be happy to see riding along for a long time.