Many animals (including birds, dogs, horses) like the sanctuary and comfort of a cage and choose to use them, but obviously it shouldn't be used like a prison.
I would agree with that in most cases. They treat them like their personal house, unless the owner decides to reinforce their use as a form of punishment. Not really any different than building a dog house for a dog.
Not OP but of some bird owners I've see that let their birds hang out in their house / on their shoulders and such the birds willingly go to their cage to rest.
+1 to this. My birds all have open cage doors and they mostly stay in their cage. That's where their food and water is, and they only come out of their cage to go into another one
Many birds with anxiety problems do much better at night in covered cages. The anxiety may be temporary (e.g. a new person/animal in the house) but nonetheless there are good reasons for it, and quite common in some species.
This just seems obvious to me, but I've been around animals my entire life.
Most birds roost in trees to minimise exposure to predators. Is it possible that birds that are used to living with humans might similarly see a cage as a place of safety? For rest or just taking a break from watchfulness?
(I'm personally uncomfortable with birds being caged for long periods or in confined spaces, and I'm not offering the above as a justification. I don't own or live with any animals.)
Well you kind of are, because you're claiming that just because birds willingly spend time in a cage with open doors, it's different than a bird in a locked cage. That's a claim that you're making. So, the question stands, what are you basing that off of?
Even prisoners walk back into their cells. Comfort doesn’t erase confinement.
A bird’s world is the open sky—so an open door doesn’t make a cage any less of one.
That's oversimplifying the topic to some catchy lyrics' lines level.
Birds burn a ton of energy flying (at least the birds in question here, other birds can glide for long times), it's not something they would willingly do to no ends.
Plenty of small birds do not nest in tree cavities. Chipping sparrows[1] for example do not and are of similar size. Hummingbirds also do not. Meanwhile, owls live in nest cavities and most are larger than songbirds.
That said, the going theory about why some birds choose to nest in cavities is lower mortality rate in their young. Birds who nest in boxes typically have more babies per clutch than those that do not so perhaps that's it? I take that more as no one really knows why one species does while another of similar size does not.
Another random observation is most large birds walk and smaller birds hop. That's not always true either, since blue jays hop and crows will walk and sometimes hop. Hummingbirds cannot do either and just shuffle side to side on perches.
I guess I'm trying to say there's exceptions to the rules in bird behavior, but they're more outliers.
I reckon that’s right (though maybe its mostly instinct rather than explicit worry), and I imagine there’s also the risk of being kicked out by a larger species looking for a nesting site.
