How to tame a parrot in Minecraft
Published on 5 October 2026
To tame a parrot in Minecraft, feed it seeds: wheat seeds, melon seeds, pumpkin seeds, beetroot seeds, torchflower seeds or a pitcher pod. Each seed has a one in ten chance of working, and never give a parrot a cookie, because it’s deadly.
Below you’ll find where parrots live, how to get one on your shoulder, how to make it dance and why parrots make a handy alarm. Everything is checked against Java 26.3 and Bedrock 26.52.
Where do you find parrots?
Parrots live in jungles and bamboo jungles, and in Bedrock in sparse jungles too. They spawn alone or in pairs, including on the leaves up in the treetops, so keep looking up. They flutter around and land regularly for a rest.
There are five colours: red, blue, green, cyan and grey. You can’t breed them, because baby parrots don’t exist. If you want more, you’ll have to find every single one yourself.
Which seeds work?
| Seed | Where to get it |
|---|---|
| Wheat seeds | Break short or tall grass and ferns, or harvest ripe wheat |
| Melon seeds | Put a melon slice on a crafting table |
| Pumpkin seeds | One pumpkin on a crafting table gives four |
| Beetroot seeds | Harvest beetroots, for example on village farms |
| Torchflower seeds | Sometimes dug up by a sniffer |
| Pitcher pod | Also sometimes dug up by a sniffer |
Wheat seeds are the easiest: breaking grass gives you a 12.5% chance of a seed, and there’s grass everywhere.
- Bring a stack of seeds. Each one has a one in ten chance, so you need about ten on average.
- Wait for the parrot to land. It’s much easier to reach when it’s not flying about.
- Feed it seeds. Hold them and use them on the parrot (right-click on PC) until hearts appear.
- Tell it to sit or follow. Use the parrot to make it sit or stand. A standing parrot follows you and teleports over once you’re more than 12 blocks away.
A parrot on your shoulder
Walk through a tamed parrot, or let it fly to you, and it hops onto your shoulder. You can carry two, one on each shoulder, and the left one always fills up first. In Java it jumps off when you hop onto a higher block, drop off a ledge, take damage, touch water, go to sleep or start gliding with an elytra. Throw an ender pearl, though, and it travels right along with you.
Why never cookies?
Cookies contain cocoa beans, and chocolate is toxic to real parrots. Mojang put that into the game: feed a parrot a cookie and it dies. In Java that happens instantly, in Bedrock after a few seconds of Fatal Poison. Tamed parrots don’t survive it either, so on a server this really isn’t a prank to try on a friend’s parrot.
How to make parrots dance
Put a music disc in a jukebox and any parrot within three blocks starts dancing, a nod to the Party Parrot meme. If it flies more than three blocks away, it stops. In Bedrock parrots even dance while sitting on your shoulder.
One tip: put your parrot next to the jukebox first, then start the music. A parrot that arrives later won’t join in. A jukebox is crafted from eight planks and one diamond, and our guide to the best diamond level in Minecraft helps you find that diamond.
Parrots and sounds
A parrot imitates the sounds of hostile mobs within 20 blocks, such as creepers, skeletons and zombies. So that groan in the jungle might just be your parrot. It works the other way round too: if your parrot suddenly hisses like a creeper, have a look around. Every now and then it imitates a mob that isn’t there at all.
Java vs Bedrock: what’s different?
- In Bedrock parrots also spawn in sparse jungles.
- Bedrock parrots also imitate wolves, polar bears, endermen and zombified piglins. Java parrots imitate piglins and hoglins instead.
- In Bedrock a parrot dances on your shoulder, but with a parrot on your shoulder you can’t go through a nether portal. Put it down first.
- When your parrot dies, Java only tells you. In Bedrock the whole server sees it.
Parrots on a server with friends
A parrot on your shoulder is a bit of a calling card on a server, and a jukebox with dancing parrots near spawn makes a great meeting spot. Leave it sitting at home when you go fighting or swimming, though: in Java it hops off at the first hit or splash. Fancy more pets? Read how to tame a cat or how to catch an axolotl, and see what animals eat in Minecraft for the rest of your zoo.
A dance party with parrots? On your own Minecraft server your dance hall is still there tomorrow, even when you’re offline. See the Minecraft plans.
