Removable Parrot Perches

I wanted to make some natural branch perches that could be screwed and unscrewed from the wall for my son's parakeets. When a chewy bird destroys a branch, they are then easily and cheaply replaced.

Natural wood branch, 1/2" - 1.5" diameter, 6-12" long

Hanger bolts, like these, mine were M4 size

Hanger bolt driver, comes with the pack above

Threaded inserts, like these, also M4 size, make sure they match the hanger bolts

Allen wrench that fits your threaded inserts

Electric Drill

Drill bit - I used 3/32" for the hole in branch for hanger bolt, for the M4 size

Drill bit - I used 3/16" for the hole for insert, for the M4 size

Short bit of masking or blue painter's tape

There are a couple lists of wood species that are ok for parrots to perch and gnaw on. I am in the southeastern U.S so for me, it was easy to find Sweet Bay Magnolia trees that I was allowed to cut branches from. Make sure to only choose branches from trees that you are allowed to cut from, and that won't poison your bird. https://www.mdvaden.com/bird_page.shtml seems to me to be a thorough list, but I am a woodworker, not an avian biologist. If you aren't a tree ID person, I find PlantNet to be a helpful app. I enjoyed choosing a mix of narrower, bumpy and forked branches, since it is good for a parrot's feet to flex differing amounts, which is why not to use dowels as their only perch.

I kept the branch length between 6" and 12" and the diameter between 1/2" and 3/4" for my project since my son's parakeets are small. If the branches were longer, you might run into them sticking out of the wall, (with your face, how do I know?) and the weight of a heavier bird or birds might be too much leverage for the little inserts we are using. I could see a case where a big bird owner would scale the whole project up to larger branches, larger hanger bolts and larger threaded inserts.

It is a good idea to sterilize your branches, since probably, there was a wild bird perching on it outside about five minutes before you cut it, and, germs. I scrubbed the green algae off mine in the sink, then dried them in the oven at 200°F for several hours. Using Sweet Bay Magnolia branches as I did, this gave a heavenly scent in my kitchen.

Hanger bolts are cool hardware. One side is a screw that screws into wood with a pointy tip and diggy threads, while the other side is a bolt, with a flat tip and thinner, tighter threads for threading into metal.

Use a drill bit that is a little narrower than the shaft of your hanger bolt, not including the threads. For the ones I bought, which were M4, 4 mm hanger bolts, I used a 3/32" drill bit. (Sorry for mixing metric and imperial! It's what Amazon had.)

Drill straight into the center of the branch, a little bit less deep than the screw half of the hanger bolt. I should have used blue painter's tape on this drill bit to mark depth, since going too deep isn't optimal.

The pack of hanger bolts comes with a special hanger bolt driver bit. This is good, because a normal Flat or Phillips head driver bit would do nothing useful with this guy. Put that driver bit into your drill, and, by hand, spin the bolt end of the hanger bolt into it. Not too tightly, as I got a couple stuck doing that. (I unstuck them with a pair of pliers, but wrap the bolt in cloth first or you'll squinch the threads down.)

Now, drive the bolt into your pre-drilled branch hole. Gently, and slowly!

It is very important to stop before the driver bit starts spinning pressed hard up against the branch. See that third photo above. At that point, the screw end isn't going in any farther, so you are just spinning it a whole rotation stationary in the hole, which totally strips the wood away that was going to hold your bolt in place.

Note: These threaded inserts are made to go into solid wood or plywood - they would not work properly in drywall. If you need to add a piece of wood to your wall, you could screw on a piece of 1x3 or 1x4 across two or more studs back behind your drywall. The walls I attached these to have a solid wood wainscoting. Another option that might work is getting a longer hanger bolt, and drilling a slightly larger hole through the drywall over a stud, and drilling the threaded insert into the stud itself. Not sure how beautiful that would turn out.

I had to do a practice hole in a scrap piece of wood to determine the best drill bit size for this threaded insert. It should be sized to match the size of the shaft without including the threads of the insert. If it's unclear, go smaller, not larger. For my M4 threaded inserts I found that 3/16" was best - big enough to go in the hole using a bit of pressure with the Allen wrench.

Measure the length of the bolt side of the hanger bolt, and mark that depth on the drill bit with a piece of masking or blue painter's tape. Slightly longer is good, but shorter than the bolt will leave your perch dangling weirdly out from the wall. Drill your hole, stopping at the tape depth.

Threaded inserts are also cool pieces of hardware - like a screw on the outside, like a nut on the inside, and they have a hex spot right at the mouth you can drive them in with. They allow you to get metal threads into a piece of wood.

Using an Allen wrench that fits your threaded insert (I believe the pack linked above includes one), drive the threaded insert into the hole you just drilled in the wall. Again, once it's tightly in, don't keep screwing, you'll strip the wood with those outside threads if you just keep spinning it.

Take your branch and spin its bolt end into the threaded insert you just put in the wall.

I had to play with a couple of them to get it to tighten at just the angle I wanted. When I realized my forked branch was upside down from what I wanted, I had to fully unscrew it and start it 180° differently. If your branch won't go in far enough, that hole probably needs to be deeper, since the bolt end is probably sticking in past the end of the threaded insert.

I had one forked branch with a soft center pith that refused to hold the screw end of the hanger bolt in place once I went to install it. I solved that problem by sticking a couple toothpicks covered in wood glue into the pithy hole, then reinserting the screw and leaving it to dry 24 hrs before installing that one onto the wall.

I have also used this hanger bolt and threaded insert system to make a perch that clamps onto the cage bars.

I cut little square wood pieces out of tulip poplar, (another wood that is bird safe), and drilled them for the threaded inserts. Spin one of these branches into this square through a pair of cage bars and voila, homemade perch.

Matching size wing nuts along with a large washers on either side of the bars would also work to clamp these branch perches against the cage bars.

The highest branch in the room was an immediate hit for my son's parakeets. I hope yours like them too!