Not exactly new but finally a picture

[Wolf]

I don't know about annoying anyone, but I think that you may have stumbled on a near perfect way to get people to start talking about their animal friends.

[Pajarita]

It doesn't annoy me but, to tell you the truth, I would be one of those owners that would immediately correct you: "No, no, she's a girl!" Mostly because they get used to been called a boy or a girl so, when you praise using the wrong gender word, you would confuse them. And the fact that they get used to it is why I use the unisex 'bird' (as in "Good bird" or "Bad bird"), because I have birds that were believed to be boys when, in reality, are girls.

[Lwalker]

I was told by the person I adopted my first cockateil, Tiamo from, that he was male. I had him for 6 years before "he" dropped to the bottom of the cage, squawked, and laid an egg. My mom was bird-sitting at the time and freaked out. She called the vet and said her daughter's male bird just layed an egg. The vet said no he didn't. She started yelling that she just witnessed it and the vet laughed and said HE did not lay an egg, SHE did! My mom kept saying she couldn't believe it, I left her with the bird for one day and look what happened. The vet laughed and assured my mother that it wasn't her fault! We had already shortened Tiamo to Tia and I have chosen non-gender specific names for my birds ever since.

[Wolf]

Choosing a name for a parrot is sort of like choosing a name for a child as it should be done carefully, especially if you don't know what gender it is. Why is it important? I could just say that they learn their names and that can lead to problems if it became necessary to change it such as a bird named Mimi needing a new name because it is a male and not a female. It is easier if you can come up with a name that sounds very similar to the old name. And all of that would be correct but it actually runs much deeper.

Did you know that parrot parents name their babies and use the same name for them for the rest of their life? A parrots name is every bit as important to the parrot as our name is to us. This is not just because of their intelligence although I can't help but to think that this is an important aspect of it. I think that the biggest reason to be careful when naming a parrot is that parrots are self aware, they know who and what they are in exactly the same manner that we know who and what we are. Names that are not gender specific are a very good way of approaching this issue.

[Pajarita]

Wolf is correct. One should be careful about what name one calls them. I especially dislike it when people adopt a bird from somebody else and immediately change the name because they don't like it. I wouldn't like people changing my name and, in their case, the rehoming alone is so confusing and depressing that I would imagine that losing their name makes things much worse (poor things must feel completely lost!).

But, because I am a stickler for gender appropriate names, I often do change the 'wrong' ones. But I ALWAYS make it a point to choose one that sounds almost identical so Nathan became Naida but I still refer to her as Nate and good boy because she lived 24 years with that and it's what she knows.

Tiamo is a wonderful name! It means I love you in Italian - but it does sound masculine

[Lwalker]

Just got the call from the vet and my instincts were correct - Cricket is a boy! Of course he looked thoroughly unimpressed when I told him

[Pajarita]

Yes, they tend to be quite dismissive of things we consider important.