Your Nikita sounds like fun.
I love these bird stories.
“Sunshine takes a bath” was just too cute.
Thanks. 
She’s gotten better at it since then. She stays in longer, and gets wetter. But some day she still does a “lick and a promise” kind of bath, as my Gran used to call it.
Scout is a blue and white (supposedly “rare”) parakeet.
He’s 2.5 years old and unbelievably entertaining. He can do tons of whistles (including the “wolf”.) He rings his bell each morning to signify that he’s ready for his cover to come off. He has a huge collection of plastic easter eggs (some whole, some in halves) and a bent Tablespoon that used to hold his water until he appropriated it.
His favorite thing is to toss egg halves into the spoon…what a great noise! He also likes to play with Legos, nail polish bottles, ribbon and our silverware. He loves to throw his toys, especially silverware, off the kitchen counter (it’s driving our neighbor below crazy; she thinks it’s a critter between the floors and won’t believe that a little parakeet could make that kind of noise.)
He has a glass pie pan pool in which a rubber duck (with a smaller one on its back) floats and he loves to perch on that duck’s head and float around. He has thrown some of his toys into the garbage disposal (of which I was not aware until they were destroyed in said disposal.)
He loves to land on heads and shoulders and pick at glasses and eyebrows. He loves to eat lettuce, but will try almost anything off of your plate or bowl.
He’s super nosy and must fly into the kitchen when anything at all is going on!
Finally, he can say:
Scout
C’mere Scout
Hellooooo
Dirty/Pretty bird
We’re working on “Obama!”
My husband and I never imagined that such a tiny creature could be such good company and such a blast! People think we’re crazy, hearing us talk about him, but, once they meet him, they understand!
OMG, that’s Sunshine. She totally cannot stand not to be in the middle of whatever’s happening.
She’s pretty entertaining, too.
I’m SO going to steal that idea! “Obama 08!”
I’ve got a three year old violet spangle budgerigar called Caesar - he’s quite a talented vocalist and mimics a wide range of words and phrases, learning more all the time.
There’s a rather poor quality video of him here saying “Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock”
He’s currently perfecting “Hello Mr Polly Parrot! Wake up Polly! I’ve got a nice bit of cuttlefish for you!”
Tigger, as in “A wonderful thing is a…” is indeed a wonderful thing, specifically a white-backed mousebird. Mousebirds aren’t like other birds. In fact, they’re not like anything else you’re ever likely to encounter, and I speak from long experience with a variety of odd lifeforms. She hangs upside down like a bat at night. She bathes in dust by vibrating like a wind-up toy. Her stare would give any raptor the shivers. She runs like a roadrunner, and about as fast. She prefers to climb than fly, but she’s lightning quick when she does choose to take to the air.
Her vision is highly attuned to even slight variations in texture, much to the chagrin of handlers with moles and other surface irregularities on their skin. Even the wrinkles in a floral curtain valance have to be inspected with great care. If her dish is out of fruit, or at least out of fruit that she likes, she will sit next to it, look forlornly inside, then look straight up at me. If I don’t get the hint, singing is involved until the dish is full; then that dainty looking beak rips apart the flesh with a savagery that reminds me to be grateful she’s roughly the size of an ordinary budgie. She enjoys grapes on the stem, and when she has finished - which is not the same thing as all the grapes being gone - she will carry the stem and carefully place it in the center of her food dish. She does not drink water, because she gets enough liquid from her fruit to sustain her, and her feathers are not water resistant so she’s at a high risk of drowning in a dish. Her oversized feet - larger than my conure’s - end in long curving claws that ensure her little body will stay wherever she wants it to, usually serving as a barrette.
Mousebirds are often described as fearless. Hand-fed mousebirds like Tigger are so completely without a concept of fear that they are their own greatest danger. She thinks rats, cats, and sighthounds are fascinating, especially their mouths and necks - all that texture! Her only saving grace is that she can ascend for the floor to the ceiling in less than an eyeblink, and she’ll happily hang from the ceiling - not the wall, the ceiling - waiting for the slow primate recovering from a heart attack to begin the “catch the mousebird” game. Tigger likes that game. A lot.
Sadly, mousebirds are very rare in captivity despite sometimes being killed as pests in their native lands. To the best of my knowledge, there are only two other white-backed mousebirds in my state and only a handful in an adjoining state, all of whom are related to her. I hadn’t planned to get involved in bird breeding, but I feel obligated to do so, both to widen the gene pool and share the enjoyment with other fanciers. Besides, multiple generations of a mousebird family will help care for the young of the dominant pair, and that’s something I’d really like to witness firsthand.
I have a Pacific Parrotlet. Yellow*. I wanted a green (natural) one, but the breeder who was willing to trade for knitting only had yellows. His name, I think, is Bebop. The breeder told me he was hand raised, but he wasn’t; he was hand fed, and then when weaned put back into a big flight cage with lots of other birds. So it’s taken me a couple years to tame him. I did it by not clipping his wings, and keeping his food on my person. Now, he lives pretty much on me: if he’s awake, he’s sitting on me. If I’m on the toilet, he’s on my head; in the shower, on the curtain rod. Brushing my teeth, on my shoulder. Watching TV, on my folded arm, preening, offering me the back of his neck. Still wary of hands, but he’s OK with arms and shoulders.
*(They’re dimorphic; that’s the male of the left.)
Oh my god, I’ve wanted a mousebird for years! I used to breed Chinese Nightingales. I have more experience with softbills than with psittacines. And I know, a mousebird isn’t a softbill, but for some reason I’m more fascinated by the non-psittacines; I’d do anything to raise a Raven from the egg.
OK, hopefully I’ll remember all the comments I wanted to make:
TroubleAgain, I got the biggest kick out of Sunshine’s adornment. I think she might be goofier than my lovebird hen Georgia, who (among other odd habits) tries to incubate eggs by resting her head and neck on them.
Those of you with whitefaced 'tiels, I am envious. There’s a local breeder who produces the most amazing nearly black and white whitefaced pieds, and I would just love to have one some day. Alas, no space, thanks to all the rescues who decided they had already found their forever home once they set foot in this house.
Broomstick - “Ten foot personality in a teeny body”? Perfect description of my mystery conure, Fiesta. I never would have guessed myself to be a conure person, but after I pulled her from a shelter (where she arrived as a stray) for someone who ndecided against her, we fell in love with each other and she’s never ever leaving this house. Ever.
Hazle Weatherfield and Mangetout, thanks for singing the praises of the “common” budgie. So many of them come through my rescue it’s not even funny, and they are amazing (and oft-underappreciated) little birds. It was my distinct pleasure to be able to send some of my rescued budgies, most of them legally seized from a neglect situation, to the Washington Park Zoo in Michigan City, Indiana for an upcoming free-flight exhibit where visitors can interact with the birds. I so hope it helps build local awareness for what wonderful birds they are. I’m taking in a particularly sad case from an overcrowded shelter this coming Wednesday whose backstory would make bird lovers’ blood boil.
lissener, you got a yellow parrotlet because you ocouldn’t get a green one? Thats’s… unexpected! I’m glad he has such a great life. Fiesta would live with me all the time, I think, if I let her. Alas, the house can not be properly parrot-proofed.
As for your Chinese Nightingales (or Pekins, as I’m accustomed to calling them)… sigh. I just love them, but the prices have risen far beyond what I’m ever likely to be able to afford, even the wild-caught Hawaiian birds. A friend of mine just lost her elderly female that she bought from a large Petco/PetSmart type store many years ago that didn’t know what she was and fed her only seed. That’s the same friend who gave me hope that yes, I really could manage to live with a softbill when I was deciding whether or not to take the mousebird plunge.
If you ever have the opportunity to purchase a mousebird, do it. Find a way. They are amazing creatures. I passed on the first one I was offered because I really didn’t realize how rare they were at the time, and was so so hesitant about taking on a frugivore. Now I’m eyeing honeycreepers and planning for the day I have to build a cage for my very own breeding mousebird colony. Of course, I first have to figure out how I’ll manage the expense of not only buying an unrelated male, but shipping him from whatever far-off state I find him in, especially now that Tigger’s nearly of age.
And when you get your raven egg, send one my way, OK? I have very fond memories of some African starlings from my yute, and seriously considered a European starling, because those are the closest critters I can legally keep to the raven I lust for. (Well, a raven, and some Nicobar pigeons, which I can legally own but really really can’t afford in the numbers they’re most comfortable living in).
So many wonderful birds, so little space and time… 
I’ve never heard of a mousebird. I need to go read up.
Everyone’s birdies are so beautiful!
Haha. Mousebird.
I laughed out loud when I visited a bird centre and saw that there is actually such a thing as a Mousebird - reason being that both of the talking budgies we’ve kept have spontaneously taken a liking to saying “Mousebird” (They got ‘mouse’ from the hickory dickory dock rhyme, and ‘bird’ because they had been addressed as ‘silly bird’ and so on)
I guess ‘mousebird’ must just be a pleasing combination of sounds to a talking budgie - because they both came out with it unaided by is.
I have two cockateils. Freddy and Piglet. I’ve had Freddy 18 years, got her from a friend that had a mated pair and didn’t know what to do with the offspring. We called her Fred for 11 years, until she laid an egg seven years ago. “Aha! you’re a Girl!” We changed her name to Freddy, and got her a husband; Piglet. Piglet got his name from the voracious way he attacks cuttlebones. I put a fresh cuttlebone in the flight cage, and he devours it within 2 hours.
Poor Piglet is such a hen-pecked husband. He will groom Freddy for hours; and then lower his head hoping for a reach-around. Freddy then savages him with her razor sharp beak; and makes him beg for mercy. And yet, he comes around for more. Piglet is a hopeless romantic. Yet, he does get his way. Several times a day I hear his “I’m getting some, Oh Yeah!!!” song.
I’ve often wondered if he really is a Pretty Bird, or if he’s just an egomaniac.
As it happens, I came home for my lunch hour today. I have two cockatiels on the right shoulder, a conure on the left, and the three of them graciously allowed me to have some of my sandwich for myself
Awwww, how kind of them. Sunshine’s being velcro-bird lately. She went through months of wanting to spend all her time flying, or climbing, but lately she just wants to sit on one of us.
We have a pied pearl cockatiel that we have always thought was male, named “Sammy Sosa” (blame my son), who was hand-raised and is a spoiled, people-loving bird. Maybe too much. We got him a female gray cockatiel, who hangs upside down and displays like mad, but he never pays her any attention. I really feel sorry for her. She has never laid any eggs, though.
I have a peach-faced lovebird named Shiva who is hell on two feet, too. The breeder got rid of her because she would attack anything in the house. Now she terrifies the pug and has not been eaten by the Rottweiler/pit mix because she’s “Mom’s bird” --NO! They all adore my husband, and when they see him coming home, they start screaming like mad. None of them say or whistle anything recognizable, though.
I got my first cockatiel in 1985 and was surprised when I didn’t actually have to tame him. After he got used to his surroundings and realized that I wasn’t going to kill him he decided he liked me enough that he never wanted to get off my shoulder and he would screech if I put him back in the cage so that I could go to sleep. Since then I’ve had several other birds such as:
Lady Elaine, the lovebird who was the size of a golf ball and had the personality of a leopard (when she hatched an egg and I wanted to check on the baby I had to shut her in the bathroom to keep her from attacking me and she tried to tear down the bathroom door)
Wimpy, Lady’s mate, who got tired of being beaten and left her to move in with a conure
Music Man, a cockatiel who loves to wolf whistle. He also likes to land on my pillow in the morning and watch over me till I wake up.
Hans, the pink Bourke’s parakeet, who seems to think she’s a puppy dog and tries to follow me around the house.
Isidore, the ringneck, who is currently begging for food by pulling my hair. He smashed my insect collection with a metal candlestick, let all the water out of some souvenir snow globes, broke a printer, smashed an antique wine bottle, knocked over a lamp, wrecked the shutters, and ate a hole in the sofa. That’s just the stuff I can remember offhand.
Azazel, Isidore’s mate, one of the few pets I’ve had that lived up to her name. I have to keep her away from the other birds lest she attempt to kill them. She screams whenever she’s displeased with something, which is often. Once she screamed for two hours because she looked out the window and discovered that it had snowed the night before. I didn’t help matters any by telling her it was actually fallout.
Small birds…:rolleyes:
Anyone sense a common thread here?
Here’s Sunshine demonstrating her complete lack of fear. She’s also completely unafraid of loud noises, choosing to be as close to the vacuum, the washing machine, and any other noise-source as I’ll allow her to be, and chirping the whole time.
Yes.
Thank Og they’re not LARGE birds!