We are going on about 15 years of having some type of bird in our family. From the sweet singing pair of Finches named Herbert and Lulu named by our 5 year old daughter at that time. (She was way into Pinwheel) to our English Budgie named Omar.

Omar was really more of a looker, not a player and we spent most of our time watching him move around in his cage and cleaning up his #*%#t.  We had no idea that you could tame and handle a Parrot and have some sort of relationship with them other than custodian.  Once in a while when we were feeling particularly lenient, we would let him fly around and land on a picture frame or entertainment center until he made his royal mess, clean up after him and somehow get him back to his cage.  He never learned to poop on command or “step up”.  One day, the back window must have been particularly clean and streak free and he headed right for it.  A sudden “bam” and we realized what had happened.  He didn’t look any worse for the wear and went back into his cage.  A week later he died.  It was then I realized that having a pet Parrot groomed was a great idea.  Their flight feathers are cut back and it hurts as much as getting your own hair cut.  It calms them down and doesn’t allow free flight.  They can still glide but can’t get lift.

Then came the most precious, affectionate, meek and mild mannered little girl ever. Dixie, our hand fed Lutino Cockatiel.  Bred locally and spoon fed at the breeder’s from birth (now these folks deserve a medal, because they set alarms and wake up every few hours during the night to feed a baby bird like it were an infant) She was most happy sitting on anyone’s shoulder.  Of course, she had her favorites and you could tell by her beautiful chirp when that person entered the room. She especially liked the boys, a good indication that she was a girl.  Up beat and happy.  She let you know you were loved.  Often she would sit in the palm of our hand and melt while we rubbed her eyes.  Oh how she loved her eyes and her crest gently rubbed.  And a fluttering trill that is hard to duplicate came forth and you could tell she was in heaven.  I say “she” because she was just a little smaller than most Cockatiels and never learned to utter a word, and I’ve read that female Cockatiels usually say less words than males.  We never had a DNA test done to confirm she was a female, but I think everyone in our family would agree she was a she.  She lived about 12 years until she contracted gout.

It was clearly painful and her feet became deformed until she could no longer perch and stopped eating.  We did everything we could for our baby including a weekend stay in the best veterinary hospital in St. Louis, where she received fluids, lowered her protein intake and increased juicy fruits and vegetables and was given Allopurinol.

When the vet said there was nothing more he could do for her, I brought her home and we lavished her with love in her last days until my husband found her lying on the bottom of her cage barely breathing.  I held her in my hands, we all said good bye and drove her to a different local vet to be put to sleep.  I haven’t cried that hard in years.

Once we realized that purchasing a hand fed parrot made all the difference in having a close relationship with a pet bird, I was on the look out for another and soon after we bought Dixie came Peaches.  We went from one of the smallest in the Parrot family to one of the largest as Peaches is a Moluccan Cockatoo.  I just knew that the birds within the Cockatiel/Cockatoo families are the most affectionate and love all members of the house equally.  My daughter and I brought her home from a local breeder when she was 6 months old and she quickly stole our hearts as we watched her attempt to walk on the living room carpet and stop every few steps to examine her feet.  She LOVED any attention she received and within days she introduced us to the fact that when she was held, she wanted to lay her head on our shoulder while we scratched underneath her wing.  It felt like we owned a dog or something.  I couldn’t believe how interactive she was.  As with all of our birds, we talk to them like they are human and by about 9 months she said her first words…”Peek a Boo”.  She’s been saying it ever since.  She says it when she wants to come out of her cage, when she’s trying to get our attention and every time she gets embarrassed.  Yes, she feels embarrassment.  If she stumbles in her cage or on one of her perches, she immediately looks at you and yells “Peek a Boo!!!” like, “Just kidding! I’m OK!”  Her vocabulary now, at 13 years old is probably around 20 words or phrases, but Cockatoos don’t enunciate well, so there are times when she keeps repeating the same thing but I can’t figure out what it is.  The words she says very distinctly are “Peek a Boo” , “Hi Peaches”, “Spaghetti”, “I wanna bite”, “outside”, “I love you”, “Go Bye Bye”, “Are you ready?”  ”I’m ready”  and “cuddle”.  Bring out food from the refrigerator and she’s got all kinds of things to say.  She gets groomed (wings and nails) every few months or so and is able to sit outside with us.  We have extra cages, manzanilla perches and portable bird trays strategically placed around the house in front of windows, in a screened in porch and out on a deck so that they can get some sunshine (necessary for a healthy bird) and breathe in the fresh air and be a part of nature.  In the wild, especially on the Mollucan Islands, they would be regularly rained on so it’s important that all parrots receive a regular bath either by providing a large bowl of water for them to splash on themselves, a spray mist bottle for you to soak them with or our birds regularly take a shower in our bathroom.  We turn on the mister on very warm and leave them there for 2-10 minutes,  but be sure that they have room to move from side to side so they can get out of the water when they want.  Some of them like it more than others.  Peaches isn’t crazy about getting wet unless she’s outside in very warm weather on a perch and I spray her with the water bottle.  Once in a blue moon, she will actually point to the kitchen sink and I turn on the nozzle on a light warm spray and she will play around in it for a while.

Our oldest daughter left for college about four hours away and decided she wanted a pet, so naturally, since we are a bird family, she read a book “the Guide To Companion Parrot Behavior” , (found at Amazon.com and many book stores) and researched on line and ultimately chose Pudge, a Quaker Parrot.  He is also affectionately known as Pudge Bucket, Pudges and the Doc.  The latter because my daughter says he instantly makes her feel better when she’s having a bad day.  Easily the most interactive and responsive to being spoken to of all of our parrots.  He thrives on attention and is ridiculously intelligent.  Ask him what a dog says and he replies “roof, roof, roof” as only a Quaker can sound.  He sings “Who is the baby? Pudge is the baby!”  For some reason, every larger parrot we own says “Peek a Boo” and that is Pudge’s go-to phrase.  He must say it at least two thousand times a day, but to add a little flair to it, he cocks his head sideways away from you like he’s hiding and then pops around and yells “PEEK” or “Peek a Boo!”  He has an unlikeable squawk when you are in the pantry or refrigerator and my daughter says to him, “That’s not nice.  What do you say?” and he politely replies “Come here!” and then gets a bite of food.  We look outside through the window and he whispers, (not sure why it’s a whisper) “birdies”.  He can count to ten and his head bobs with every number but every number is pretty much “six”.  When he is the mood to cuddle, he snuggles up in the crook of her neck and sleeps and every once in a while comes around the front gives her kisses between her nose and lips.  This guy is an attention junkie and is miserable if he’s not getting it.  But buyer beware, Quakers are very fickle and tend to play family favorites.  The favorite on one day can be the enemy on the next, and they will let you know it.  He has on more than one occasion taken a nip from an unsuspecting neck or hand.  His mother is clearly his favorite and has the best rapport and command of him.

As if three parrots weren’t enough, about 9 months after we got Peaches, I found Callie, a gorgeous female Eclectus.  The females in the Eclectus family are a vibrant red and neon blue around the neck and a black beak and the males are gorgeous green with a yellow beak.  They are a good speaker and enunciate very well often sounding like someone in the family.  My husband tells the story of one evening when he was home alone and he heard me come into the house and say something, so he said, “What?  You’re home?”  Thought it was kind of rude that I didn’t answer his question and went into the kitchen to talk to me.  There sat Callie looking at him and he soon realized that her voice was mine.  The most common personality of the Eclectus, though, is that they are extremely shy, do not like strangers and become very quiet around them.  Forget about trying to get them to perform for the guests because they’d rather go sit in a corner and stare at you.  However; put Callie on the shower door in the bathroom, turn on the fan and when she thinks no one can hear her, she can go on for an hour with riffs that I had no idea she even knew how to say.  Again, you will hear a lot of “Where’s Callie?  EH! Peek a Boo!”  For some reason she doesn’t just say Mama, she says “MAMAMAMAMAMMA.”  She is currently wearing a collar around her neck because she decided to pick at her foot until it bled and we had to intervene and let the vet design a foam collar just her size so she cannot reach her foot.  Since she’s had the collar on, she resorts to just various types of grunts.  There are two words that she says loud and clearly, though, “out!” and “hiiiiiiiiii!”  When she is ready to come out of her cage, she says “out” and we take her to one of the few other places around the house that she enjoys.  A shower, the manzanilla perch in the basement, the screened in porch or the cage on the deck.  When she’s ready to change, she says “out” again and it seems like we are transporting her from one place to another all day long every day.  Whenever we walk into the kitchen, where her cage is, she says an emphatic ‘Hiiiiiiiiii!”  And continues to say it until you say Hi back.

There are certain times during the year when she gets very hormonal and all she wants to do is sit in front of the wooden cabinets in our living room as though it’s her private bungalow and she will occasionally bite anyone who tries to pick her up.  There are two reasons why we would not want her to sit there, one is the mess she would make on the carpet and the other is that she starts chewing on the wood.  Painted wood at that, so not a healthy habit.  Starting this month, Callie is going to receive hormone shots from the vet to see if we can get the September through March bad habits and moodiness under control.  I will be posting more about that later on keeping you abreast of any changes.

Eclectus are very active within their cages and move around a lot, so for them, it’s best to go with as large of a cage as you can afford because you might often see them start at the top and slide their way down the rungs to the bottom.  Climb back to the top and start over, as Callie likes to do, especially when my husband and son stand there and clap for her.

So for now and probably many years to come, this is the extent of our bird family, as parrots live long lives.  The larger the Parrot, the longer the life span, provided they don’t get injured or contract a disease.  According to author Kimberly Santor of “The Caged Bird Courier” these are the life expectancies of birds:

Macaws:  50-100+

Cockatoos:  40-60 +

African Grays:  50-60 +

Eclectus: 65-85+

Conure:  12-30

Lories and Lorikeets:  13-25

Caique:  30

Senegal:  50

Cockatiel:  12-20

Parakeets:  7-18

Lovebirds:  15-25

Canaries:  10-15

Finches:  5-10

If you are thinking of purchasing a Parrot, all things must be considered.  They may outlive you, they are perpetually 2-5 years old so if you don’t like attending to a toddler, you will not like owning a Parrot, they require lots of cage room, constant cleaning of the cage floor and changing the water, (I try to twice a day) and love and attention to be happy.  With that said, they can be the best companions one could have.  What other pet actually talks to you and tells you what they want!?!