I bought a jardine's parrot from the Golden Cockatoo in February 2011 so I think I can help you. Before getting him, I briefly had a conure many years ago and my husband was almost bird-phobic so we were basically newbies.
We loved the personality of our Jardine's ("Buster")-- he turned my bird-phobic husband around 180 degrees. We appreciated his rambunctious playfulness and feisty swagger ("jattitude"). He did bite a bit, but it seemed typical of his species at that age. He was noisy at dusk and dawn, though after having had conures, it didn't seem too bad. We live in a small loft apartment, btw. He was easily social and stepped up onto almost anyone's hand. He adored my husband but wanted scritches from me. While affectionate, I wouldn't call him "cuddly" in the way a cockatoo is but he loved his scritches. He liked just being near or between us while he played on his stand. His independence was nice. He was pretty much the most hilarious animal I've ever seen.
However, he had weak feet, an offset mandible and constantly suffered from opportunistic infections/sinus issues. Our vet (Dr. Goldsmith) tried and tried to successfully treat the various infections but they would come back. I talked to the Golden Cockatoo and they paid to have their doctor, Dr. Backos, look at Buster but he failed to even find the infection my own vet diagnosed, much less the underlying problem. In fact, I found Dr. Backos uncommunicative to the point of catatonia.
Then in March of this year, our vet put a rambunctious Buster under general anesthesia (which he'd been under several times before) for microchipping and beak grooming. Halfway through the procedure, Buster stopped breathing. Our vet scrambled to bring him back for 10 minutes but we ended up losing him, to the stupefication and mortification of our vet. He did a thorough autopsy, and found small bits of galvanized wire like from an old screen door in Buster's gut. Dr. Goldsmith can only conclude that over time, the wires slowly broke down, releasing lead into Buster's system, causing multiple problems. When the general anesthesia hit his sufficiently lead-poisoned system and caused a toxic reaction/heart attack.
I now have the wires from Buster's system and know with certainty that nothing like that has ever been in our small, new apartment. I can't imagine Buster ingested it at the Golden Cockatoo (where he was also boarded once) so we can only conclude that it came from the breeder. When I asked the Golden Cockatoo who the breeder was, simply so I could avoid them in future transactions, they refused to tell me and were surprisingly evasive. They offered me a discount off my next purchase of a bird if I bought THROUGH THAT SAME BREEDER and said they considered the issue closed. I had had a good opinion of them (I didn't blame them for Buster's condition) and was shocked and quite upset by their response.
Only today, a helpful member on this site informed me that Buster's breeder (he had a leg band with KAZ on it) was Birds by Kaz (
http://birdsbykaz.com/Birds%20By%20Kaz/ ... LCOME.html)
The one good thing that came out of our heartbreaking experience is that we found that we love Jardine's. Unfortunately, we've been having a hard time finding a baby and I only now put a deposit on the only one Jean Pattison (the African Queen) will probably have this year. Jean may have a Greater Jardine's baby, though. When I asked her about the difference, she said Greater's seemed a little sweeter and milder to her than the Lesser's. I believe all Jardine's breeds have some of that yellow/orange on their heads, though the Greater's seem to have a little less.
Sorry this post is so long. But I know when I was researching birds, detailed posts in forums were extremely helpful. Feel free to send me a personal message if you'd like. I live in Miami, btw.
I agree with your comment. Is there any symbol on the post/forum, that I can click to indicate I agree with a comment - like they have on face book? I'm rubbish with computers but I am familiar with certain forum sites like fb.