Can Birds Eat Red and Green Bell Peppers?
Red and green bell peppers (also called capsicum) are generally not hot and spicy to humans. Bell peppers can also come in a yellow colour. They make a good healthy treat for pet parrots.
Bell Peppers Nutrition
They are a rich source of Vitamins C, A and B6, amongst others.
A great way to give your bird a bell pepper is on a bird kabob! You can put the entire pepper on it and they will enjoy tearing it apart to get to the seeds (some birds will mostly enjoy just the seeds, but others will eat the entire thing). This stimulating food occupies the mind and body at the same time.
But you can also give them other related food items – hot chilis. Unlike humans, most birds don’t have the receptors in their mouth to recognize the hot spicy chemical capsaicin (this is not the same as HEAT – never give your bird hot (as in heat) food).
A hot chili that is full of seeds is a healthy, fun food item for your parrot friend. It might take some time until they get used to the new texture of it, but some birds take to them very easily.
The reason that birds can consume this hot spicy food is based on the evolution of the plant, and how it has evolved to thrive and survive thanks to birds:
“Mammals, sensitive to the chemical that makes peppers taste hot, avoid the Capsicum annuum pepper. Birds, however, are unaffected by the chemical, known as capsaicin, and they happily eat the peppers. This is essential for the plant, since birds release the seeds in their droppings ready to germinate — whereas if mammals ate the seeds, they would crunch them up or render them infertile, the researchers report.”
“So not only are the birds distributing undamaged pepper seeds, they are doing so in just the places the resulting plants are most likely to thrive.”
source: http://news.ufl.edu/2001/07/25/peppers/