Last Updated on February 16, 2023 by Mitch Rezman

Hi, a year ago someone gave me a pair of parakeets. I gave them a big cage, and tried working with them, individually. They are almost 4 years old, and are happy to see me, but not interested in being held, or scratched, and that is ok.

I have an African grey parrot, who has lived with me for 26 years, she interacts with me and my family and is really pretty funny and wicked smart.

Other day, I received another pair of keets; this time, the female has been trained to step up. Dreamy! The previous owner worked with the male, but he just was not interested; perhaps because he lived in a pet store alone for a long while.

I know birds need one on one interaction and a couple of hours of ‘ambient’ attention, but how can I set a schedule up to let all out to play at the same time? No, not in the same cage. My parrot eats with us at the table, sometimes goes places with me, has a ‘walking cage’ (small wire dog crate strapped on top of a wheeled walker) that I take her for walks on the road with.

How to interact with the 2 who are not interested (but do want to meet the latest 2) and the 2 new ones (when quarantine time is over) They all have toys, food, regularly clean cages, chopped veggies, and during warmer weather, they go out on covered porch in their cages. How can I set up a schedule for ‘bird time’ with these birds, and include my grey,

Arlo, so she doesn’t get ‘jealous’ or feel like she isn’t important? Don’t know if this is well worded, so hope you get my drift. Thanks, Sherry

Great questions Sherry.

I know we all long to morph into a Walt Disney movie where songbirds help mice sew gowns and can count but unfortunately birds will be birds.

We had a very similar situation in our home. Several months after our cockatiel succumbed to cancer we felt it was time to get another bird and thought it was best to let the bird find us.

Soon after talking about this a man walked into our shop and said there is a little bluebird stuck in a tree across the street I’ll get them down if you can give me a ladder and a net.

We didn’t give it a whole lot of thought but we ended up with Bacon our first budgie. Bacon had clearly been outside for a while and wanted nothing to do with humans. We put him in our cockatiel’s old cage and he was clearly miserable alone. We suspected he was pretty young, probably a pet shop convict. We thought he was a boy so we rescued a girl budgie.

In a day or two, they were best of Bud’s and we moved them into a larger flight cage as a permanent residence.

Then came Peaches our Senegal parrot who found us. Having spent seven years in a rescue, caged 22 hours a day, we weren’t sure how she was going to go and decided on a test rescue.

It went amazingly well, she’s in love with me and hates everybody else including my wife but wants nothing to do with the budgies.

We then started talking about getting a second pair of budgies to fill up this nice big cage. Once again while attending the National Caged Bird Club Show, I stumbled upon a pair of budgies that someone was looking to rehome. We thought that they were a boy and a girl.

We now have one boy and three girls and although it’s been said that girl budgies typically take charge there seems to be plenty of love to go around between the for birds unable to watch them between computer monitors on a regular basis and they are non stop high-energy movers and talkers (budgie talk).

My Spidy a sense tells me you should keep the two new more socialized birds in a separate cage. If you merge the two pairs you probably are going to lose the two new ones to the cult that they will form amongst themselves.

editors note from Oxford Dictionaries: Among or amongst? (going off-road – queue in rumble strip sound)

Among is the earlier word of this pair: according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it first appeared in Old English. The variant form, amongst, is a later development, coming along in the Middle English period.

Is there any distinction other than spelling between among and amongst or are they completely interchangeable? The good news is that, with regard to their meanings, there’s no difference whatsoever between among and amongst.

They’re both prepositions which mean:
situated in the middle of a group of people or things:

We saw a factory tucked in among the houses.

Dad has agreed to cook and that frees me up to mingle amongst my guests.

endnote (no more rumble strip sound)

A pair of budgies or more really doesn’t need one-on-one interaction they are happy to thrive in their own little flock

Our Senegal wants nothing to do with any of them and couldn’t care less. Our goal is to clip the wings of all four of them, bringing them down to earth literally and figuratively while seeing if we can interact with any of the clan before they fly away.

Peaches our sennie is on a small play stand on the dinner table. She eats with us at mealtime and definitely enjoys our company.

So I think it best play is to keep the original pair budgies on autopilot. Socialize as best you can with the new pair and just keep your grey around because my guess is he or she is more concerned about his or her relationship with you than with any of the other birds.

Hope that helps

mitchr
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