gavagai
Moving in
Hi all. I have a long history with birds, going back most of my life to around my 11th birthday. I'm going to share my whole horrible history, including the various things horrible things I did in the process of learning to keep birds.
Beginnings
Before I had birds I'd had fish, which I'd bought with my own money. These were goldfish and beta fish which I kept in bowls on the pet store's instructions, and of course they died. I didn't know that the pet store had given me inaccurate information, which meant that I got my first birds at the same pet store.
I got birds because I'd been visiting Parrot Jungle for years, and when they opened a lory-feeding exhibit I fell in love with the lories and wanted to get one (or more). My parents resisted this initially because I couldn't keep my room clean, which made them think I couldn't take care of an animal (despite the fact that I'd followed the pet store's instructions on the fish as long as I had them), but eventually I wore them down. I started by getting books and magazines on parrots, and then persuaded them to let me start with a budgie, a few months before my 11th birthday.
When my parents saw that I could care for a budgie, I persuaded them to get me lovebirds for my 11th birthday. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware at the time that you shouldn't buy lovebirds in pairs and also that non-hand-raised lovebirds don't make good pets, and the local pet store only sold parent-raised birds in pairs. With the first pair I got (every lovebird I've had is peach-faced) one almost immediately killed the other after I took them home, meaning it was the store's one week health guarantee, so I brought them back and got another pair. (The bird who was killed was the sweetest lovebird I ever had, making it very sad.) The next pair one plucked the other, but they seemed to be contented, and the pluck-er lovebird was very friendly.
However shortly after I got the second pair of lovebirds I accidentally killed the budgie (or I'm 95% certain I did, though my brother got two budgies from that same store which didn't live a normal budgie lifespan either). I was devastated over having accidentally killed the budgie (I still hate myself for it), however eventually it more or less faded, and I managed to keep the lovebirds alive for a year.
My Growing Flock
Almost a year after I killed my budgie, my family went camping, and as I was tearing up newspapers for tinder I saw an ad in the classifieds rehoming a Senegal Parrot. I took it as a sign, since I'd wanted a Senegal after reading about them in Bird Talk, and I persuaded my parents to get a Senegal parrot. They agreed to get him but got him as a family bird, since he was friendly with all new people he met. (I thought this was an inherent trait with Senegals based on both the article and what the people giving him up told us about him, but I've seen people here saying they're one-person birds.) Until my parents divorced, my father cared for him, but my father and the Senegal had a falling out which meant that the Senegal came to hate my father. Though he liked everybody else, including strangers, my brother lost interest and my mother never had any, meaning that he gradually became my bird anyways.
The lovebirds made it through their first winter with me providing the a heat blanket, however the next winter the bald lovebird died. It might have been stress, but I read somewhere that parrots need a minimum temperature of 70 degrees (a figure I now know varies considerably with the species), and persuaded my mother to keep the downstairs at 70 in the winter, though she later hedged that to 68. After this, the friendly lovebird suddenly became very hand-shy, and though I spent some time with the Senegal, I wanted more than one bird who would play with me and started trying to persuade my parents to let me get a gold-capped conure.
Finally, at Christmas the following year my parents told me that for my present I could get another bird for $300 or under. By this point I'd realized that that pet shop was not a good place to get birds, but there was a woman who worked there who knew a lot about them, and had been trying to educate the owners and change their practices (even at its worst it was never as bad as a PetCo I one went into, they implemented a lot of her suggestions, and the store now no longer sells birds other than budgies; I think the owner was ignorant rather than greedy), and I asked her if she had advice on where to get a conure.
As it turned out, she'd had an injury and was downsizing her flock, and she was rehoming a sun conure and jenday. I had somehow gotten it into my head that the more colorful a bird is the less affectionate it is (I think reading about several groups of colorful but handshy Australian parakeets had something to do with that) and wanted the jenday, but she persuaded me to get the sun conure, and he was the sweetest bird I've ever had.
Later that year, the psychologist from my elementary school asked me to take her lovebird so she'd be with another lovebird. By that time I knew that lovebirds shouldn't be kept in pairs, and I wasn't going to take her because I didn't want to deprive her of her bird. However my mother told me that the psychologist probably didn't want the lovebird anymore. So I told the psychologist that if I took her I'd keep them in separate cages, and I didn't think she'd get along with my other lovebird (who had very quickly bonded with my sun conure), but I'd take her if she wanted me to. She did, and that was the last bird I acquired until this year.
My Dwindling Flock
I lost the psychologist's lovebird to egg block after three or four years. I'd been destroying her nests as quickly as she built them and giving her egg biscuits to prevent egg block, but she still laid eggs, and it was shortly after one vacation (when I couldn't destroy her nest for two weeks and I hadn't given her egg biscuits recently because she hadn't been laying) that we lost her.
I lost the sun conure in college. He was probably about nine years old at the time, and the vet said that it looked like an infection he'd lost one of his birds too, which convinced me it wasn't my fault but I was still devastated. After that, I spent a lot more time with the Senegal, who had limits on how much time he'd spend with me and wasn't quite as cuddly as my sun conure, but did put up with me cuddling him without biting me.
Half a year after college I moved abroad, since that seemed like the best opportunity for me in light of my circumstances. My mother watched my remaining lovebirds (the plucky lovebird from the pet store and the Senegal) for about six months, while I tried to decide whether moving abroad was going to work out and whether it was worth putting the birds through quarantine, which seemed very stressful. When I returned for a month, the Senegal took two weeks to forgive me for leaving him.
I decided that I would be moving abroad for good but I didn't want to put the birds through quarantine, so I began looking for a new home for them. The first people I liked fell through (a family with all older children who had a quaker who was a one-person bird and wanted a family-friendly bird, bit the one person insisted that if they spent more time with the quaker it would get over its one personness and vetoed the adoption). I then spent three months vetting people remotely before I found a retired guy who my mother interviewed and liked. He took them in and sent us updates for a few months afterwards and then stopped.
Now
A year and a half after I'd decided to give up my birds, it became abundantly clear that living abroad was not going to work for me (not so much the living as the finding employers who didn't screw me over in the country where I wanted to live), so I ended up back home, wishing I hadn't given up my birds both loathe to get new ones because I was worried I might give them up again. So I went without birds for four years after returning home (six years in total), and finally a month and a half ago got more.
There was a woman near San Antonio who was giving up some of her birds because of age and infirmity. Among the birds she was giving up were a green-cheek conure and a quaker she'd gotten from a young couple who had no idea how to care for them, and had had for five years. Though they seem to be hand-raised, they'd also been living together and aren't quite as tame as the Senegal or sun conure were.
The quaker tolerates cuddling but doesn't seem to enjoy it (she also sidles away when I rub my cheek against her wing, something both my Senegal and sun conure would lean into), though she does seem to enjoy having her head and neck scratched. She's very sweet, and aside from two tiny nips on my neck which seemed to be exploratory, she has yet to bite me.
The green cheek is much more inquisitive than the quaker; he attempts to fly over to me with some regularity (since his wings are clipped; I have to pick him up). However he almost never enjoys having his head scratched (excepting some times when he's flown over to me), and makes that plain with bites if he persists. He also bites if I try to make my fingers into a stairmaster, and will bite my lips and ears out of boredom, meaning I don't trust him on my shoulder unless the quaker is between him and my face.
But I'm happy to have birds again, even if there's a lot of things I'm still trying to figure out, like who I'm going to have watch them when I go away and and how I'm going to get the quaker onto a better diet (the green-cheek will eat pellets and some fresh foods, I haven't seen the quaker eat anything other than seeds).
(I'm also feeling worse than ever about the Senegal, because the woman I got these birds from told me some rehoming horror stories. I'm pretty sure he took good care of the Senegal and didn't sell him, but I'm still not sure it was the right thing even if I had stayed abroad. For all I know he stopped sending us updates because he died, and of the birds I've acquired secondhand myself, at least three of their five previous owners were giving them up due to age or infirmity, meaning giving a fourteen-year-old Senegal I'd had for eleven years to a retired person might might not have been the best choice.)
Future
Now that I have some (the biggest step is between "no birds" and "birds") I may get more even while I'm living in an apartment, though that depends on figuring our birdsitting. (Ideally, I'd also like to get the quaker eating a better diet and to train the green cheek not to bite my ears and lips and to step up without biting even when he doesn't want to. Given that they're both at least six years old and likely older, I'm not sue if any of those things will be possible, but I'm going to try.)
If I do get more birds, every bird I've gotten since I was 12 has been a rehome. So that seems like the most likely option, and if I go that route it will be either a Poicephalus, an African gray, or a cockatiel. But there are breeders near me raising parrotlets, lineoleated parakeets, and iris lorikeets, all of which are somewhat tempting.
I'll definitely get more birds once I'm finally able to live in a house again. And ideally, I'd like to breed some rarer parrots and softbills eventually, but who knows when I'll have the land and money for that.
Beginnings
Before I had birds I'd had fish, which I'd bought with my own money. These were goldfish and beta fish which I kept in bowls on the pet store's instructions, and of course they died. I didn't know that the pet store had given me inaccurate information, which meant that I got my first birds at the same pet store.
I got birds because I'd been visiting Parrot Jungle for years, and when they opened a lory-feeding exhibit I fell in love with the lories and wanted to get one (or more). My parents resisted this initially because I couldn't keep my room clean, which made them think I couldn't take care of an animal (despite the fact that I'd followed the pet store's instructions on the fish as long as I had them), but eventually I wore them down. I started by getting books and magazines on parrots, and then persuaded them to let me start with a budgie, a few months before my 11th birthday.
When my parents saw that I could care for a budgie, I persuaded them to get me lovebirds for my 11th birthday. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware at the time that you shouldn't buy lovebirds in pairs and also that non-hand-raised lovebirds don't make good pets, and the local pet store only sold parent-raised birds in pairs. With the first pair I got (every lovebird I've had is peach-faced) one almost immediately killed the other after I took them home, meaning it was the store's one week health guarantee, so I brought them back and got another pair. (The bird who was killed was the sweetest lovebird I ever had, making it very sad.) The next pair one plucked the other, but they seemed to be contented, and the pluck-er lovebird was very friendly.
However shortly after I got the second pair of lovebirds I accidentally killed the budgie (or I'm 95% certain I did, though my brother got two budgies from that same store which didn't live a normal budgie lifespan either). I was devastated over having accidentally killed the budgie (I still hate myself for it), however eventually it more or less faded, and I managed to keep the lovebirds alive for a year.
My Growing Flock
Almost a year after I killed my budgie, my family went camping, and as I was tearing up newspapers for tinder I saw an ad in the classifieds rehoming a Senegal Parrot. I took it as a sign, since I'd wanted a Senegal after reading about them in Bird Talk, and I persuaded my parents to get a Senegal parrot. They agreed to get him but got him as a family bird, since he was friendly with all new people he met. (I thought this was an inherent trait with Senegals based on both the article and what the people giving him up told us about him, but I've seen people here saying they're one-person birds.) Until my parents divorced, my father cared for him, but my father and the Senegal had a falling out which meant that the Senegal came to hate my father. Though he liked everybody else, including strangers, my brother lost interest and my mother never had any, meaning that he gradually became my bird anyways.
The lovebirds made it through their first winter with me providing the a heat blanket, however the next winter the bald lovebird died. It might have been stress, but I read somewhere that parrots need a minimum temperature of 70 degrees (a figure I now know varies considerably with the species), and persuaded my mother to keep the downstairs at 70 in the winter, though she later hedged that to 68. After this, the friendly lovebird suddenly became very hand-shy, and though I spent some time with the Senegal, I wanted more than one bird who would play with me and started trying to persuade my parents to let me get a gold-capped conure.
Finally, at Christmas the following year my parents told me that for my present I could get another bird for $300 or under. By this point I'd realized that that pet shop was not a good place to get birds, but there was a woman who worked there who knew a lot about them, and had been trying to educate the owners and change their practices (even at its worst it was never as bad as a PetCo I one went into, they implemented a lot of her suggestions, and the store now no longer sells birds other than budgies; I think the owner was ignorant rather than greedy), and I asked her if she had advice on where to get a conure.
As it turned out, she'd had an injury and was downsizing her flock, and she was rehoming a sun conure and jenday. I had somehow gotten it into my head that the more colorful a bird is the less affectionate it is (I think reading about several groups of colorful but handshy Australian parakeets had something to do with that) and wanted the jenday, but she persuaded me to get the sun conure, and he was the sweetest bird I've ever had.
Later that year, the psychologist from my elementary school asked me to take her lovebird so she'd be with another lovebird. By that time I knew that lovebirds shouldn't be kept in pairs, and I wasn't going to take her because I didn't want to deprive her of her bird. However my mother told me that the psychologist probably didn't want the lovebird anymore. So I told the psychologist that if I took her I'd keep them in separate cages, and I didn't think she'd get along with my other lovebird (who had very quickly bonded with my sun conure), but I'd take her if she wanted me to. She did, and that was the last bird I acquired until this year.
My Dwindling Flock
I lost the psychologist's lovebird to egg block after three or four years. I'd been destroying her nests as quickly as she built them and giving her egg biscuits to prevent egg block, but she still laid eggs, and it was shortly after one vacation (when I couldn't destroy her nest for two weeks and I hadn't given her egg biscuits recently because she hadn't been laying) that we lost her.
I lost the sun conure in college. He was probably about nine years old at the time, and the vet said that it looked like an infection he'd lost one of his birds too, which convinced me it wasn't my fault but I was still devastated. After that, I spent a lot more time with the Senegal, who had limits on how much time he'd spend with me and wasn't quite as cuddly as my sun conure, but did put up with me cuddling him without biting me.
Half a year after college I moved abroad, since that seemed like the best opportunity for me in light of my circumstances. My mother watched my remaining lovebirds (the plucky lovebird from the pet store and the Senegal) for about six months, while I tried to decide whether moving abroad was going to work out and whether it was worth putting the birds through quarantine, which seemed very stressful. When I returned for a month, the Senegal took two weeks to forgive me for leaving him.
I decided that I would be moving abroad for good but I didn't want to put the birds through quarantine, so I began looking for a new home for them. The first people I liked fell through (a family with all older children who had a quaker who was a one-person bird and wanted a family-friendly bird, bit the one person insisted that if they spent more time with the quaker it would get over its one personness and vetoed the adoption). I then spent three months vetting people remotely before I found a retired guy who my mother interviewed and liked. He took them in and sent us updates for a few months afterwards and then stopped.
Now
A year and a half after I'd decided to give up my birds, it became abundantly clear that living abroad was not going to work for me (not so much the living as the finding employers who didn't screw me over in the country where I wanted to live), so I ended up back home, wishing I hadn't given up my birds both loathe to get new ones because I was worried I might give them up again. So I went without birds for four years after returning home (six years in total), and finally a month and a half ago got more.
There was a woman near San Antonio who was giving up some of her birds because of age and infirmity. Among the birds she was giving up were a green-cheek conure and a quaker she'd gotten from a young couple who had no idea how to care for them, and had had for five years. Though they seem to be hand-raised, they'd also been living together and aren't quite as tame as the Senegal or sun conure were.
The quaker tolerates cuddling but doesn't seem to enjoy it (she also sidles away when I rub my cheek against her wing, something both my Senegal and sun conure would lean into), though she does seem to enjoy having her head and neck scratched. She's very sweet, and aside from two tiny nips on my neck which seemed to be exploratory, she has yet to bite me.
The green cheek is much more inquisitive than the quaker; he attempts to fly over to me with some regularity (since his wings are clipped; I have to pick him up). However he almost never enjoys having his head scratched (excepting some times when he's flown over to me), and makes that plain with bites if he persists. He also bites if I try to make my fingers into a stairmaster, and will bite my lips and ears out of boredom, meaning I don't trust him on my shoulder unless the quaker is between him and my face.
But I'm happy to have birds again, even if there's a lot of things I'm still trying to figure out, like who I'm going to have watch them when I go away and and how I'm going to get the quaker onto a better diet (the green-cheek will eat pellets and some fresh foods, I haven't seen the quaker eat anything other than seeds).
(I'm also feeling worse than ever about the Senegal, because the woman I got these birds from told me some rehoming horror stories. I'm pretty sure he took good care of the Senegal and didn't sell him, but I'm still not sure it was the right thing even if I had stayed abroad. For all I know he stopped sending us updates because he died, and of the birds I've acquired secondhand myself, at least three of their five previous owners were giving them up due to age or infirmity, meaning giving a fourteen-year-old Senegal I'd had for eleven years to a retired person might might not have been the best choice.)
Future
Now that I have some (the biggest step is between "no birds" and "birds") I may get more even while I'm living in an apartment, though that depends on figuring our birdsitting. (Ideally, I'd also like to get the quaker eating a better diet and to train the green cheek not to bite my ears and lips and to step up without biting even when he doesn't want to. Given that they're both at least six years old and likely older, I'm not sue if any of those things will be possible, but I'm going to try.)
If I do get more birds, every bird I've gotten since I was 12 has been a rehome. So that seems like the most likely option, and if I go that route it will be either a Poicephalus, an African gray, or a cockatiel. But there are breeders near me raising parrotlets, lineoleated parakeets, and iris lorikeets, all of which are somewhat tempting.
I'll definitely get more birds once I'm finally able to live in a house again. And ideally, I'd like to breed some rarer parrots and softbills eventually, but who knows when I'll have the land and money for that.
