This seems as feasible as any of the other stories I’ve heard, which include:

– He ate tons of chicken. (I think this came from the Ross Russell book)

– On his way to a gig, he ran over a chicken and wanted to cook it up for dinner rather than let it go to waste. (via Yahoo Answers)

– “Charlie Parker would squeak a lot, and that’s why they called him Bird, because his reed would chirp.” (this gem comes from the one and only, Kenny G. This line comes after my personal favorite, “With Charlie Parker, there are just so many different records. I don’t say this to be disrespectful, but when you listen to Charlie Parker, on pretty much any record he’s going to sound the same. He’s going to be unbelievable. He’ll be playing the fastest lines in that style… He was the fastest. Nobody played faster and more clean than him. Except that there was another saxophone player named Sonny Stitt. He was actually an almost exact duplicate of Charlie Parker, except he played it even cleaner.”)

I’ve heard a few others over the years.

What explanations have you heard for how Bird got his name?