We got two birds at the same time in the first week of January 2004. One is a common green parakeet, with the normal black and blue face spots, black striping, green body and so forth. He's definitely a boy since his ceres (the top of his beak) is bright blue. I've named him Piglet because if he were all on his own he'd be very bold, as long as you lure him with millet seed he'll do just about anything. However, he is not as bold as he might be, because his cagemate, a bright yellow (lutino) parakeet who is not old enough to show a ceres color yet (it's still that pearly blue-pink), is a stone-cold coward. Therefore I have named her Chicken. She's shy enough and dainty enough I'm calling her a girl for now. Her skittishness is catching, it seems, because Piglet will set boldly out and Chicken will do that 'I'm a tall skinny two-dimensional parakeet' thing and Piglet will look at her, look back at me, look at her again, and go hide in the back of the cage with her hunching over and looking suspicious. At least he doesn't do the tall skinny two-dimensional bird thing, which is rather exasperating when done repeatedly, I want to tell the bird "You are not fooling anyone by looking like a lemon-colored leaf so chill out already." It is my own fault I have a bird like this, because when choosing Piglet I ran my finger over the front of the bird pen at the pet shop to see which bird was the least startled by it and might even come to check out what it was doing, but when choosing Chicken I just went "Oh, she's so cute!" *doh* The classic pet choice mistake.
Chicken must have been *really* young when we got her, because we have had her for two months now and her beak color still hasn't developed. Chicken likes to bite to try to get away if you pick her up, hence her full name which is "Chicken Meat." Piglet just willingly stood on a moving finger for the first time this week and was lavishly praised for it. Chicken on the other hand will only stand on a stick held far away from a person, and then has a tendency to hop on it and right off the other side again. I got their wings clipped two weeks ago and so could take them out for the first time, and they have now learned how to get back into their cage when I take them out. They are still happiest hiding in the cage, but will wander around the floor picking up millet seeds for a while if I take them out. The vet sent them back out from the back room with a comment from the vet assistant they were really docile when their wings were being clipped, like they were used to people, and I said thank you, I spend several hours a day with them, doing my reading, any hand crafts, etc. in the room with them and talk to them throughout. I *thought* yeah right, maybe Piglet, but the reason the vet himself isn't coming back is because Chicken removed several of his fingers and he is embarrassed to be a parakeet-assisted amputee. She obviously has a lot of experience, as she can really get you because she goes directly for the soft skin in between the fingers, or the webbing of them.
Piglet is the better flyer of the two. He can get more lift with his feathers clipped, and aims much better at whatever he's trying to get to. Chicken is the better climber of the two, she is fast and well-coordinated pulling herself around the outside of the cage (or up a phone cord) with her beak and feet. They fight over who gets the brown mirror perch at the top of the cage at night, even though I put a purple one right next to it at the same level so they would both have room. Instead, whomever loses the fight for the brown mirror perch will perch precariously on the half-inch fruit holder clip I have on the other side of the brown perch, and the identical though purple perch is disdained.
Chicken always wants to be beside Piglet. Or behind Piglet, if someone is looking into the cage. In fact, she wants to become a part of Piglet it seems, since she often crowds so close that I've seen her knock him off a perch at times. She wouldn't eat by herself at first but insisted that Piglet feed her, which is another indicator she's really young, I think, but now she is eating on her own most of the time. We may end up with baby birds if she turns out to be a girl for real, because Piglet is already doing the head-bobbing dance with her, to which she seems largely oblivious right now. Sometimes Piglet seems to get annoyed with her following him so closely - the other day I saw her join him on the seed perch every time he went down there and he would hop off and back on to the regular perch and she'd follow him again. Finally he went to the very top of the cage, led her up there, and as soon as she was pretty well settled on the brown perch, went back down to the seed cup. By the end of the night she had won, however, and they were next to each other on the seed perch.
I have tried putting various toys in their cage, and moving the toys around, and they are slowly getting to be interested in them, I found they had pulled a yellow chain off its hanger and dropped it the other day. They do not seem to care much for the swing, when they land on it they seem very startled that it moves, and jump right back off again. They didn't care about the logs-on-a-rope perches I got them so they would have something of varied width to perch on, until I moved it to the bottom of the cage and tied the rope top around another of their perches. Now they happily sit on the other perch and pull at the top fringe of the rope for half an hour at a time. Whomever has a piece of fringe, that is the piece of fringe that the other one wants, leading to some tug of war and Chicken occasionally pecking Piglet in the head. Whether it was originally 'her' fringe or not. Because they like the fringey stuff I started getting them the little cups of insectide-free pet grass from the pet store and putting them in one of the four seed and water cups that came with the cage. They adore it, and started by climbing around the top of it or sitting on the perch to pull at the strands of grass but now park themselves right in the middle of it. They are adorable like this, especially yellow Chicken, who looks like a Peep in an Easter basket. It takes them about a week to decimate a new grass patch into a frazzled, stomped-down echo of its former glory. And they love every minute of it.
Despite this joy in teaching grass a lesson it won't forget, I have not gotten them to eat fruit or vegetables yet - they believe a half-grape is a murder implement I am approaching them with, and when I put raspberry pips in the millet seed I was amazed to discover that a face with a beak is perfectly capable of looking disgusted as it touches something soft and squishy and flings it away with a *BLEAH!* look. Orange pips met with the same fate - although Piglet spent some time tasting the perch tip where I had previously had the orange pips sitting, he wasn't thrilled with the wet squishy pips themselves. However, the grass and rope have given me an idea and I think I'll try grating carrot and seeing what they do with the dangling strings of it, especially as it dries (it's so arid here that you can dry it without worry of fungus or anything). (Sure, mom, now trying grating the grapes.) I've also added Australian Raspberry Cordial to their water, since the Budgerigar Council of Sydney recommends adding it to avoid "Bali Belly" or gastroenteritis from bacteria. They took a little bit to adjust to this and still like the plain water much better and choose it if they have a choice, but as they get used to the sweet taste hopefully it will make the fruit seem less toxic to them. At least carrots aren't too sweet. You can only get the cordial from Australian shops, and my fiance keeps drinking it since he's a raspberry addict. I've ordered some eucalyptus leaves from Australia since that is their natural diet, and we'll see how they respond to that. Online shopping rocks. The leaves came from budgieworld.net and it's worth checking out if only for the highly note from the Aboriginal specialist debunking the specious claims that Budgerigar means 'good eating' - and his Aboriginal friend's commentary on the matter.
I've added vitamins to their seed, but the vet told us that it's best to go with a pellet food. They adjusted quickly to the pellets so I think either they taste ok or the bird's breeders fed them on this. I am now mixing about 2/3 pellet to 1/3 seed with vitamins. I use spring water for their water so I don't have to add de-chemicalizers, and have added some bird iodine to the water instead to help with their feather health (I wouldn't want to try mixing the two, who knows what reactions might occur in the iodine, I'm not a chemist). Currently their feed I mix up is - 25-30% mixed seed, 60% pellet, 5% shredded coconut (another sneaky way of getting them to appreciate different or sweeter tastes in preparation for fruits and vegetables later on) and 5% nutritional grass mix, and then stir in the vitamin liquid. I will probably add some dried vegetables and fruits later too, replacing some more of the seed with broken up banana chunks or apple bits. If I get a dehydrator I can try many different fruits this way and find out if their main objection is that it's wet and squishy. I have some grit to mix into their feed too, but have found some pages saying they don't need it and it can kill them, so have gone down to almost nothing for safety's sake.
Chicken loves melodic singing and whistling, while Piglet prefers chuckling parakeet-ish noises, so I think perhaps Chicken was raised by a breeder with other breeds of birds nearby and Piglet raised mostly with parakeets. Since he's so much older, he may have been in the pet shop case for a while in the company of only parakeets. Last night however, when I was whistling to them for a while Piglet was keeping up a constant stream of quiet chuckling commentary. They apparently recognize certain phrases already, since they stop and pay more attention to something they have heard frequently before. The books say they probably won't learn to talk or talk well since they have each other to talk to, but I'd rather that than have a bird dead of loneliness while I'm at work.
They are very sensitive to environmental toxins, so I have them on a floor of the house completely away from the kitchen so they don't get any non-stick pan fumes or anything, and I do not use bug spray, perfume, or any other aerosol around them.
I thought at first that I would only have any luck relating to Piglet, as he responds much better to general contact, and that Chicken would be 'Piglet's pet bird,' but I found when she got herself stuck in a corner behind a desk and climbed out on the phone cord that she reacted very positively to my cheering her on, and so I'm looking for places to do this too. It seems to make a very real difference in her learning curve. Left on her own to figure out how to get back into the cage she just stayed stuck on the back until caught and returned. But when given cheering assistance when she moved in the right direction it only took her two sessions to find the fastest path. Piglet, of course, found it on his own, but looks glum when he doesn't get as much cheering as Chicken. I suppose this is good practice for when I have kids and have to try not to play favorites even if one turns out much smarter than the other.
Sometimes I look at them and think ok, I'm over their cuteness, I'm getting used to them. Then they turn and pose another way so it looks like they're wearing little feather leg-warmers, or a little feather bodysuit, or they start tug of warring, or bob up and down in their seed cup like a little Kilroy head, or perch in the grass, and their cuteness is again overwhelming. Piglet ducks his head and chews with his beak so that his face-feathers on either side stick straight out like a handlebar mustache. Their cuteness is a devastating weapon. Show Budgies have a huge pompadour of feathers around their head so that you can not even see their eyes. This is not cute - it looks like their brain exploded. I like the smooth head look of the household pet parakeets much better.