I just love this time of year with my parrots. Currently, we’re singing and dancing to rambunctious Christmas carols while hubby wraps presents. It’s time to think about gift-giving for your beaked family.
Homemade toys are the answer, because, like me, you probably have lots of things around, like wrapping paper tubes to make into foraging toys. Husband wraps with the pretty foil paper which isn’t suitable for them.
Before iPods there were boomboxes. Before boomboxes, there were stereo radios. Precursors to phonographs were Victrolas.
But the way to get tunes in your home long before there was electricity was the natural sound of bird songs.
For years people would place a Canary or other singing finches in a small cage on either side of the room and whoever did that first can take credit for inventing stereo sound.
Canaries are small songbirds coming from the Finch family and were initially found in places like the Azores and believe it or not the Canary Islands.
Sandra wrote: Hi, I just want to say that I absolutely love the Sunday Birdie Brunch and was wondering If I could request a topic on lorikeet diet, scaley breasted lorikeet in flight My cutie loves her daily fruit veg and lory mix. Do you recommend a certain mix for lories? blue lorikeet I have Joy and Wombaroo at the moment, and the textures and ingredients are so different!
Cockatiels are the smallest, actually a miniature Cockatoo, and is from Australia. The only bird more popular with caged bird keepers is a parakeet (budgie).
The Cockatiel is biologically classified as a genuine member of Cacatuidae because they share all of the Cockatoo family’s biological features. They are the only Cockatoo species which can sometimes reproduce by the time they are one year old.
The Cockatiel’s distinctive erectile crest expresses the animal’s state of being. The crest is dramatically vertical when the cockatiel is startled or excited, gently oblique in its neutral or relaxed state, and flattened close to the head when the animal is angry or defensive.
Did you know the sun conure may be facing extinction in the wild, and you can help? There is a real need for more surveys to establish their status in nature. The 2014 estimates published on the IUCN database are between 1,000 and 1,499 mature birds. Some of the last known sun conures live in Guyana, a country with a small human population and a lot of forest and savannah grasslands.
The IUCN page mentions that the trade in wild conures is “ongoing” because “due to the ease with which birds can be attracted to bait (e.g. corn) and the large distances they will travel, it is easy to trap all the individuals in an area.” Quoted from Jamie Gilardi.
Why is DNA so VERY important even for your non-breeding parrot?
About 20% of parrots, like budgies, eclectus, and cockatiels that are sexually dimorphic.
That means that the gender of the bird can be identified by physical differences.
In the case of budgies and cockatiels, they have to reach near-adulthood to exhibit differences while Eclectus are readily identifiable upon feathering out the first time since females are red and blue while males are green.
Oh No! My Conure Went to the Library Alone and Won’t Come Home
Retrieving Escaped or Stolen Parrots: Part Three
A Surprise Flight Lets Mango Fly to the Library Trees and How He was Retrieved
I am a proponent of clipping wings. I know not everyone feels this way, but I’ve had a cockatiel break his neck flying into a mirror when a loud, unfamiliar noise outside frightened him and other bad experiences with flighted companion parrots.
Hello!
We are loyal patrons of WCP and look forward to the Sunday brunch every week. Perhaps this topic has already come up, but it is a question about bird species.
We have 3 parakeets that get along well although they did not grow up together. All are rescues. We are thinking about adding a cockatiel to the family and are wondering about cages. So, the parakeets have a large cage (approx 2.5′ H x 2′ W X 1′ D) and we have a smaller cage (about 1.5′ HWD) that is just lying around empty.
First question: would a cockatiel require a separate cage or could they all sleep together in the same cage?
Second: Assuming that they cannot share a cage, would you recommend the keets in the smaller cage or leave them in their current habitat?
Third: Would cockatiels and parakeets be competitive/territorial in an open space (like an aviary)?
Thank you for any advice you have on this.
Cheers,
Gemma
Why are those feathers on the cage floor? Is it plucking, molting, or over-preening?
We received an email from a subscriber of Sunday Brunch that I am sharing with you below: