Little Birds

Make your cottage cozier with a bird or two. Little pet birds that make a perch their own and are glad when you come home.

Minecraft's pets follow you around or sit where you left them. None of them live in the house. Little Birds adds small pet birds that make a perch their home: they sit on it by day, sleep on it at night, stay home when you go out, and chirp hello when you come back.

The birds. The budgie, in four colours, the smallest and chattiest. The cockatiel, parrot-sized, in three colours, with a crest that stands up when it whistles hello. The lovebird, small and round, in three colours, which lives in a pair: two that meet pair up for good, keep together and sit side by side on one perch. The canary, in yellow, red or white, which sings its song every morning. The zebra finch, the smallest, which likes company, shares a perch with another finch and answers when one sings. All are tamed with seeds, and each has its own voice, recorded from real birds. Wild ones live in savannas (budgies on jungle edges too), canaries in flower forests, meadows and cherry groves, zebra finches in plains.

The perch. Craft it from string, a stick and a plank. A tamed bird makes the nearest perch its home: it keeps near it, sits on it now and then, sleeps on it every night with its head tucked in, and stays home instead of following you out. Use the perch with an empty hand to call your bird to it. Break it and the bird follows you again.

Glad you're home. Come back after an hour or more away and your bird says hello: a chirp and a bob, or a whistle with the crest up.

Shoulder on request. Sneak-use a tamed bird with an empty hand and it sits on your shoulder, through jumps, falls and portals. Sneak-use it again, or sneak-use a block, to set it down; use a perch to seat it there.

Treats and snacks. Craft a millet spray from wheat and seeds: it tames a wild bird on the first try, draws a bird to your hand, and gets a happy bob or a song. A tamed bird also nibbles carrots, apples, melon slices, berries and beetroot, and a chick fed one grows a little.

Chicks. Feed seeds to two tamed birds of the same kind near each other and they make a chick, in one parent's colour, yours like its parents. It's small, follows its parents, grows up in about twenty minutes, and is too little for a shoulder until then. Lovebirds breed only with their partner.

Settings: config/little_birds.properties turns natural spawning off or makes it rarer.

Minecraft 26.3, Fabric (needs Fabric API) and NeoForge.

Made by Gabby. MIT. Bugs and ideas: the GitHub issues.

If the birds made your house a little cozier: ko-fi.com/gabmaybelleyt