There are hundreds of veterinary practices in Toronto and only a handful of them will look at a parrot. That is the whole problem with searching for one, and it is worse than it sounds: several clinics that used to advertise bird care have quietly stopped, and their old listings are still all over the internet — including, until today, on this page.
So in September 2026 we went through every clinic we had ever listed and read each one's own website. What follows is what they say about themselves, not what a directory said about them four years ago.
The short version
In Toronto proper, five practices publish a bird or exotic service: The Links Road Animal & Bird Clinic in North York, Greenwood Park Animal Hospital on Gerrard, Animal Hospital of High Park on Weston Road, Boardwalk Animal Hospital in the Beaches, and Amherst Veterinary Hospital in Scarborough, whose avian pages are gone but whose site still names birds among the animals it cares for (checked October 2026).
Three clinics we used to list no longer say they see birds. Bathurst Animal Hospital names the exotic species it treats and birds are not among them, though it will microchip a bird. Riverdale Animal Hospital says only "a small animal practice including exotics". South Etobicoke Animal Hospital asks bird owners to call ahead and check the right support is there — and the website we used to link for it, tdvg.ca, no longer exists.
None of that means they will turn you away. It means the thing you would have relied on — a published statement that they see birds — is not there any more, so phone first.
The part nobody tells you: emergencies
This is the finding that changed how we think about the whole page.
No general emergency hospital in Toronto publishes an avian or exotic service. We checked the department lists of the Veterinary Emergency Clinic on Yonge Street and at Sheppard, Toronto Animal Health Partners in North York, and VCA Canada's emergency hospital in Scarborough. Internal medicine, oncology, neurology, cardiology, ophthalmology, surgery, critical care — all of it. Not one avian or exotic department between them.
The nearest 24-hour door that says, on its own website, that it takes birds is 404 Veterinary Emergency and Referral Hospital in Newmarket — "emergency and critical care for avian/exotic pets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week". That is a real drive from downtown Toronto at 3am, and knowing it in advance is worth more than almost anything else on this page.
The other out-of-hours option is Campus Estates Animal Hospital in Guelph — the clinic that Britannia in Mississauga, Bowmanville Veterinary Clinic and Scott Veterinary Clinic in Brantford all independently name as the place they send a bird emergency, and one of the very few with a page of emergency procedures written for pet birds. Read the difference carefully, because it matters at 3am: Newmarket is a walk-in emergency room, and Guelph is emergency care by appointment, any hour, on a second number that is not their daytime one.
Both are on the full Ontario list, with addresses and numbers that dial:
Every avian vet in Ontario we could verify →
Find yours tonight, not on the night
The single most useful thing a bird owner can do is make one phone call while nothing is wrong. Ask four questions:
- Do all of your vets see birds, or only one of them? If it is one, ask which days they work. That is the real answer to "are you open".
- What happens if my bird is ill at 2am? A practice that treats birds by appointment usually has no avian vet in the building after hours, and a good one will tell you exactly where they would send you.
- Is there a separate area for hospitalised birds? A cage next to a barking dog is a stress problem on top of a medical one.
- Do you see pet birds regularly, or occasionally? "We can look at it" and "we see twenty a week" are different sentences.
Then put the answer in your phone. Under the bird's name, so you do not have to think.
When it is today, not next week
Birds evolved to hide illness, because in the wild a bird that looks sick is a bird that gets eaten. By the time a parrot looks unwell to you it has usually been unwell for a while. Any one of these is a phone call today:
- laboured or open-mouthed breathing, or a tail that pumps with each breath
- sitting on the floor of the cage
- not eating, or eating far less
- feathers fluffed up for long stretches rather than briefly
- bleeding, or any visible injury
- a sudden change in behaviour — a noisy bird gone quiet, a bird that will not come out
The last one matters more than it sounds. You know your bird's ordinary day better than any vet does, and "not himself" is a real symptom.
Getting there without making it worse
- Keep the bird warm. A sick bird struggles to hold its own temperature.
- Use a secure carrier, not the cage. A cage in a moving car is a bird being thrown against bars.
- Handle as little as you can. Catching and restraining a bird that is already struggling to breathe makes things worse.
- Keep it quiet and dim. Less noise, fewer people, no radio.
- Bring a photo of anything you noticed — the droppings, a wound, the way it was standing. It is far easier than describing it.
What we do, and what we are not
We board birds. We are not a hospital and we do not give medical advice.
What we do is notice. Your bird stays in a room with people in it, so a change in appetite, droppings or behaviour gets seen the same day rather than at the end of the week — and when you book, we take your own vet's details and they are the first call if anything happens during a stay. Our full emergency procedure is written down rather than decided in the moment.
If your bird has a condition to manage, tell us when you book and we will talk it through properly before you commit to anything.
Common questions
What is an avian veterinarian? A vet whose practice includes birds. Some hold board certification in avian medicine, which is a formal specialist qualification that has to be renewed; many excellent bird vets do not have it and see birds every day.
Can a regular vet treat my bird? Some will and some will not, and the honest answer is that most general practices see very few birds. Bird anatomy, drug doses and anaesthesia are genuinely different. Ask before you go.
How often should a bird see a vet? Once a year for a well-bird check, even when nothing is wrong — because "nothing is wrong" is what a sick bird looks like.
Do avian vets treat every kind of bird? Most companion birds, yes — budgies, cockatiels, conures, greys, amazons, macaws, lovebirds, canaries and finches. Poultry and wild birds are often a different practice again.
Related
10 types of conures · Top 5 cheapest talking parrots · What to do in a bird emergency · Bird boarding in Toronto
