Parrots are unique pets in Minecraft. They act like normal pets, but you can also get them to sit on your shoulder. This tutorial should be pretty quick and painless. We’ll cover how to get the parrot on and off of your shoulder. We assume that you’ve tamed your parrot by now. If not, we’ve covered how to tame a parrot in another tutorial. Let’s get a parrot on and off of your shoulder in Minecraft.
QUICK ANSWER
To get a parrot on your shoulder, you simply need to walk into them, and they’ll perch themselves. To get them off of your shoulder, you simply need to lose height in some way. The quickest method for this is to jump or fall. The parrot will fly away.
How to get a parrot on your shoulder in Minecraft
Credit: Joe Hindy / Android Authority
This is simple enough. Simply walk into a parrot that you’ve tamed, and it’ll perch itself on your shoulder. This is repeatable infinitely. Thus, if you knock the parrot off unintentionally, simply walk into it again.
Players can have up to two parrots on their shoulders at once. Simply walk into the second parrot while the first is on your shoulder to achieve this. Fun fact, parrots on your shoulder always look in the same direction as the player when viewed in third-person, and it also appears on your shoulder on your inventory page.
How to get a parrot off your shoulder in Minecraft
Jumping one level down as shown in the screenshot is the easiest way to dislodge the parrot.
Credit: Joe Hindy / Android Authority
Again, this is simple enough. The best and fastest way to get a parrot off of your shoulder is to fall. Here’s a full list of ways to get a parrot off of you, in order from easiest to hardest.
- Sleeping in a bed — Go to any bed and lay down. The bird should fly off of you.
- Jumping — Jumping is the fastest way to accomplish it. However, you need to jump from one block to a block one down in elevation. A standard jump isn’t enough to dislodge a parrot.
- Go into the water — Going for a swim will cause the parrot to leave. The act of drowning also works.
- Taking damage — We’re talking about taking damage from mobs, fire, or any source other than falling.
- Falling down — Any steep drop will do the trick. Falling downhill, flying downward with elytra, or any big fall will dislodge the bird. Even firework rockets work.
- Being submerged in lava — This not only gets a parrot off of you but also catches the parrot on fire. We obviously don’t recommend this method.
- Player death — Dying will cause the bird to fly away 100% of the time.
That’s about it, really. There’s nothing difficult about it. A minor point of clarification. Taking damage dislodged a parrot, and we say that falling damage doesn’t count. The reason is that if you’re falling far enough to take damage, the parrot will leave your shoulder long before you take damage.
How to keep a parrot on your shoulder in Minecraft
Credit: Joe Hindy / Android Authority
The real challenge is keeping your bird on your shoulder. You’d be surprised how often you take a drop steep enough to dislodge the bird. Unfortunately, there is no real solution to this, but there are some tricks you can use to keep the parrot from dismounting.
- Avoid the triggers — The first method we suggest is simply avoiding all of the things in the prior section. Don’t go into lava, fall down a lot of blocks at once, take damage, submerge yourself in lava, or die. That’s easy, right?
- Riding a horse — Riding a horse negates a lot of the above triggers. You can jump and fall on a horse, and the parrot stays put. The only way to dislodge the parrot on a horse is player death or get off of the horse.
Those are about the only two tips we have for keeping the bird on you. Parrots are often finicky, and the parrot unintentionally leaving is a common frustration among players.