Live Life Team
The feathered beauty is for sale – but is the bird legal, The illegal pet trade has exploded since the rise of the Internet, where it is impossible to police the billions of websites selling goods and services. On the Internet, you can find pet birds for sale, ranging from the familiar canary and budgie to true exotics like bald eagle chicks and toucans.
Check Your Local Laws
Before you buy a bird, you need to do a lot of homework. One thing you need to do is discover if that species of bird can legally be kept where you live. You can ask your veterinarian, police constabulary or animal shelter to find out the local laws.
Then, you need to double-check with your landlord that you would be allowed to keep a bird where you live. Many thousands of pet birds are surrendered to animal shelters just because their landlords would not allow birds.
Generalities
In the UK, it is against the law to keep any kind of raptors as pets – even injured ones you have found and intend to release back into the wild. Raptors include hawks, falcons, owls, merlins, ospreys and the golden eagle. In general, no wild bird species native to the UK is allowed to be a pet.
Species that are allowed to be pets include the familiar budgerigars, canaries, finches, parrots, cockatoos, cockatiels, lovebirds, parrots and macaws. These species are generally no longer taken from the wild for the pet trade because there is a large enough breeding population in captivity.
