Im trying to make a play tree for my quaker Charlie and need something to use for a stand.
I thought about use a bucket and concrete (im thinking it will be really heavy), or an umbrella stand (cant find one). I wanted to know what everyone used for theirs and what the pros and cons are.

How about a christmas tree stand? One of the larger ones that can be leveled easily. I got one and a large PVC pipe cut to about 5 feet to place inside it. I haven't done anything with it yet but I believe it will work. Bren

A friend of mine took a piece of plywood, put some 2X4 sides on it and took the limb off of an oak tree and stripped the bark off of it. Then took a big screw and fixed it into the center of the plywood. The branches gave her a place to hang toys and food and water bowls. Make sure the main limb is big enough that your bird can not climb down to the plywood.

You can see the one we made here:

http://www.quakerparrots.com/forum/index.p...p;hl=play+stand

Good Luck!

Here are mine. There are detailed instructions if you scroll through the pinned thread at the top of this topic.

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Uncle Zippy-LOVE your blue headed pionus! I have a friend with one and he is the most fun of all of our birds combined (he has 4 and I have 7). Of course he was gotten young and played with ALOT. Great pic-nice gyms and lovely fids! Bren

We have made several of these play trees, only because they got really fun to make...
It became kind of like a hobby. We hunted around for an old table/dresser/cabinet with storage underneath and my husband bolted them down to one of these. In this picture I found this old dresser at a garage sale for $5 - took it home and put a coat of black
furniture paint on it and it looks just like new... Plus I have drawers underneath to store stuff in...

My husband also put a lip around the edge so that if they sat on the rail backward and pooped, it wouldn't hit our carpet. Good idea hubby!! Cause it worked!

Awww, thanks. Oliver is a total sweetheart too. Does not even know how to bite as near as I can tell. He was surrendered to the SPCA if you can believe it. He's not much for play, but loves to cuddle.

You can get these plastic stackable shelves any where. Dowels, and Stainless Hardware at the home improvement store. Ladders and toys @ the pet store.

Before attaching branches, Google something like:..."plants trees toxic to parrots". I found Oak in the TOXIC LIST!

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I am not handy ( or encouraged) to use my husbands tools and he is usually too busy for fun stuff like bird toy making, so I put my large mulberry branch which is my tree, in a clay flower pot and put large stones in the pot to hold the branch in place.
On a larger tree I made, I filled the pot about half full of sand first, then the large rocks.
My bird likes to crawl aound on the rocks too, so it works well.
I put the whole thing on a roll around cart, and put plastic under that. I can sit a bowl of water on the cart, and T-Bird comes down and bathes whenever he wants.
So the clay pot and rocks worked well for me.
He is usually there for 5 hours or so a day!

Then I attached grape vines, which I got from along our creek where nothing toxic is ever sprayed, and made additional branches for him to chew and crawl on.

All of this is great fun, but he still plucks. arggghhh
Lori