Trained Parrot BlogParrot Wizard Online Parrot Toy StoreThe Parrot Forum

Photos of My Budgies!!!

Place to share personal stories, pictures and videos of your parrot.

Re: Photos of My Budgies!!!

Postby Pajarita » Sat Apr 29, 2017 10:48 am

I don't mean to offend anybody, I am not trying to call anybody a liar or anything like that but I've been doing this for a loooooooong time and have come to realize that people often don't read their birds correctly and misinterpret their behaviors and reactions - I cannot even begin to tell you how many times the owners who 'knew their birds' were wrong about them! Now, I am not telling anybody to get another bird - that is entirely the owner's choice (animals are property and, as such, have no rights). And it is true that most people still keep a single one although there is a noticeable trend that this (as well as many other aspects of bird husbandry) is changing (in Sweden, for example, the law says that you cannot have a single one, you need to have two). And, in my personal experience (I have had, at the very least and off the top of my head, 60 - 70 budgies under my care), there is no such animal as a budgie that does not like another budgie UNLESS we are talking about an odd number (two males and one female, for example) or the bird is sick. Of the ones I had at the rescue, some came with other budgies, some came by themselves, and there wasn't a single one that did not like other budgies UNLESS the bird was sick- but even the sick ones liked the company of the other birds once they were better. I've even had severely handicapped ones (one wing, one eye, one leg, no feet, two sisters with the legs so splayed out that they actually had to rest on their bellies with their legs forming a V sticking out from each side of their bodies, etc) but even those that were in obvious inferior physical conditions loved the other budgies and even had mates!

The thing is that it's very hard for us to read a bird's reaction correctly and it's even harder to figure out what brought that reaction as well as whether it was something that we did that caused it. I inherited Paquita and Rajah Plet and, apparently, the male attacked the female so the previous owner had to separate them but this is something that ONLY happens in captivity (males in the wild are VERY loving and protective of their mates) so, obviously, it wasn't so much that this was a matter of "the nature of the beast" but that there was something not quite right with the conditions because they are fine with each other now. The very first lovebirds that came into my rescue were breeding show birds that had lived their entire lives (they were between 6 and 9 years old at the time) in separate cages and, because I did not keep birds in cages, I wanted to release them into the birdroom so they could form a flock. Because I had no experience whatsoever with lovies, I asked on several birdsites and all the 'experts' replied that it could not be done, that 'colony' setting did not work for lovebirds, that the females would fight between them and end up hurt. It did not make sense to me because these are birds that live in flock in the wild (I ALWAYS go by nature and not by what people think) so, obviously, if they did not kill each other in the wild, there was no real reason they would do it in captivity UNLESS, again, the conditions were not right so I started releasing one pair at a time (there were nine of them) and they LOVED it! I never had a single lovie fight with another lovie and I ended up with a flock of more than 30 of them. Another example, cockatoo breeders used to routinely split the beak of the males because it was very common that they would end up attacking and even killing the female but we then learned that the problem was with the kind of nest they were given. Once that was taken care of, males no longer attacked the females. Quakers were thought to be VERY prone to plucking but it was because people thought they were tropical birds and were keeping them at the wrong light schedule, once they realized these were parrots from a temperate climate zone and highly photperiodic and kept them at a solar schedule no quaker plucked again! See what I mean? In every single case of a bird's behavior going against an evolutionary pattern, it was not the bird that was 'different', it was us who did not know enough and were 'reading' the situation in the wrong way.

Just think about it...
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Re: Photos of My Budgies!!!

Postby Trick or 'Tiel » Sat Apr 29, 2017 6:18 pm

Please tell me why my tiel chose me instead of the other tiels. Please tell me why my birds don't like each other (after all, budgies and tiels live in the same area in the wild). Listen, these birds have never lived in the wild. They were handfed by humans and not birds. There are lots of things that are unnatural about keeping birds as pets in our homes. For example, our houses aren't open like the sky. Ever think our birds miss flying in the sky? No, because they never flew in the sky, only in our homes. Do you think my birds, who never liked other birds, miss being with other birds? I wish I didn't start this whole topic about keeping budgies alone as it made me feel bad about having a budgie in the first place.
Trick or 'Tiel
Conure
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 124
Number of Birds Owned: 2
Types of Birds Owned: Cockatiel, Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: Photos of My Budgies!!!

Postby stevesjk » Sun Apr 30, 2017 3:08 am

You dont miss what you never had. Hand raised or for that matter just tame birds dont mix well with other birds and will always choose humans.

In a rescue situation where the bird is housed with many other birds it has no choice but to adapt but most get very stressed and usually its the other birds causing the stress.

Im not doubting or rubbishing what pajarita is saying, if shes had success in intergrating these kinds of birds then great but in my time ive bought a mate for a single budgie and a mate for a single cockatiel and both times it was a disaster.
stevesjk
Conure
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 220
Number of Birds Owned: 2
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal parrot budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: Photos of My Budgies!!!

Postby Pajarita » Sun Apr 30, 2017 10:04 am

This is going to be my last posting on this subject because I don't want to create a never-ending argument but the 'you don't miss what you never had' argument has been debunked a million times. You do miss what you never had IF this is something that you evolved to need. A human example: years ago, a lot of people were adopting Russian babies. Because there were so many of them, resources were almost non-existent in the orphanages they were kept and people did not know any better, these babies were kept healthy, fed and clean but they were not rocked to sleep, carried around in somebody's arms, played with and all the things a mother would do with her baby. Result: they grew up to have severe psychological problems. They couldn't love, feel empathy or even related to other people. An animal example: Undomesticated species that are born in captivity (as in a zoo) still need to be kept in habitats that resemble as close as possible their natural habitat - so much so that there are people who study animal behavior so as to design the zoo enclosures so that the animal feels comfortable in it. Even baby animals whose parents reject them or die and need to be raised by people are slowly introduced to their own species and habitats. Zoos also keep animals the way they would live in the wild in terms of 'company' so social animals live in groups and territorial animals live by themselves (there is a law that says that you cannot keep a single dolphin, for example, you need to have two).

There are species that are territorial and there are species that are social and a territorial species would be all stressed out by living in a group while a social species would be all stressed out living by itself. An example: canaries (which are a domesticated species but still territorial),were thought to do fine kept all together in a large flight cage. These birds ate, drank, sang and bred BUT they all died young and this is the reason why people still think that canaries live to be 7 to 9 years old when, in reality, they can live well into their teens (I had a hen that lived to be 18). And now an example of the opposite: there is a study that showed that African Grays (pet birds that were bred in captivity) that live alone have shorter telomeres (the shorter the telomere, the sooner the animal will die) than the ones that live with other birds (this is the study: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl ... ne.0093839). These were birds which had never lived with other birds (the 'what you never had') and whose owners thought were happy and stress free but, in reality, they all suffered from chronic stress from not living with other parrots. You can go against nature but you pay the price for it.
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes

Previous

Return to Parrot Tales

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests

Parrot ForumArticles IndexTraining Step UpParrot Training BlogPoicephalus Parrot InformationParrot Wizard Store