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.

This is the Bedrock Edition of the Little Birds mod for Java, by the same maker: the same five birds, colours, models, sounds and art, and the differences are listed below.

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 and use a tamed budgie, cockatiel or lovebird with an empty hand and it sits on your shoulder, through jumps, falls and portals. Do it again, or sneak and 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.

On a phone or tablet. To use a bird (seeds, millet, the shoulder), press the interact button that appears above the hotbar when you look at it. Tapping the bird itself attacks it. For the shoulder, crouch first, then press the interact button.

Settings. An operator types /little_birds:settings in chat: a form turns wild birds' spawning off or makes them rarer. The settings are kept with the world and work at once. Spawn eggs always work.

How it differs from the Java mod. Bedrock can't do a few things the Java way:

• Birds get about in short hops and flights, like Bedrock's own parrot, and rarely walk.
• The flight home to the perch is a straight glide, so it can pass through leaves or a wall.
• A bird you told to sit stays sitting: it doesn't come when called, and sits again after a shoulder ride.
• The bird on your shoulder can trail a little when you run on a server, and shows in first person.
• Wild birds wander off and despawn far from players, as Bedrock's parrots do. Tamed birds never do.
• Settings are the form above, not a config file. Breeding gives no experience.
• A perch placed by a command or a structure isn't known to the birds; place it by hand.

Needs Minecraft Bedrock 1.26.60 or newer (Windows, Android, iOS), no experiments. Open the .mcaddon to import it, then turn on the Little Birds behaviour pack for your world (the resource pack comes with it). Works in single player, on Realms and on servers that carry the packs.

About this add-on

I made this for my own worlds and am sharing it in case it suits yours. It's open source under the MIT License, so you're welcome to read it, fork it or include it in a pack.

Playing Java? Little Birds for Fabric and NeoForge: curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/little-birds

Found a bug or have an idea? Tell me on GitHub.

More of my mods, in short videos: youtube.com/@gabmaybelle