Meet Billy Joe!

[IcyWolf]

We just got our new baby, a little black capped conure named Billy Joe! First off, I cannot believe how tiny he is! Even in the pictures of him, he looks about the size of a normal GCC, he's not. He is smaller than a cockatiel, quite a bit smaller actually. He is 4.5 years old and the sweetest bird! We are having problems keeping him on his cage because he won't stop flying to us! I've always had an open door policy with ziggy but I'm trying to figure out how to do this with a fully flighted velcro bird like BJ. He has quite the vocab for such a tiny conure too, he says "Billy Joe", "Pretty birdie", "come here", "step up","I love you", and "yeeeah!". And he is talking up a storm too. His previous parront had him on a seed only diet but he was noshing on zupreem pellets about ten minutes after we brought him home! He is so great, I am officially a conure lover now!

He thinks its fun to land on my head

It looks like he must have used some kind of glass cleaner on the acrylic front of the cage so I'm going to have to replace it. Unless somehow knows of a way to fix it. The cleaner made it all foggy looking.

 

[Rio Mom]

He's absolutely gorgeous! Congrats!

 

[JamesC]

Congratulations on getting such a friendly little guy! Looks like a real cutie.

There are several things you can try on the door of the cage. Just need to make sure that you remove all traces of the polish you use on it. You can try a consumer lens restorer kit such as one of those that I've recently seen advertized on TV that make your car's headlight lenses "super clear and better than new!" There is a liquid scratch remover that I have used on small aircraft windows and really like called P210, but it will take a lot of elbow grease. There are other products commonly used in the aerospace industry such as Micro-mesh which is a series of super fine sand paper sheets and polish. It also takes a lot of work.

If you can easily take the glass out of the cage and get a new piece cut and shaped to fit it, I would probably go that way. I doubt that you will be able to get the current plexi nice and clear again. And it would probably have a lot of distortion in what you can see through it if you can polish it clear.

Have fun with the new birdie!

 

[brighteyes]

Hi.
Great pics l love your little guy,
Guessing he is very funny him trying to keep up all the time , sooooooo well adjusted the other family did do a good job even if they didn,t,quiet get his dietary needs right !
Thanks for shearing a happy story .
cheers..

 

[suebee]

congrats such a cute birdie an love the cage

 

[IcyWolf]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I am amazed that he was original purchased at Petco, his previous owner obviously loved him very much and it almost broke my heart watching them say their goodbyes! I did make the comment to him that they did an amazing job socializing him for being a "petco bird". I'm not trying to be mean about that, but I worked at a PetSmart, all of the birds come from those huge breeders and even the "hand fed" birds are usually tube fed and get minimal socialization.
I think I may have had one of the best days ever, it has been my dream to free flight a bird almost my entire life. There is just something really beautiful to me about a bird flying to a person. It shows the utmost of bond when a flighted bird, who could fly anywhere, chooses to fly and land on a persons hand. And I am amazed to say I had that happen tonight! Normally, I wouldn't even handle a bird on it's first night home but unless Billy was locked in his cage he would fly off and land on us. So, my bf and I were standing in our living room(which is empty of any furniture) and having him fly back and forth to us. We weren't throwing him into the air, we would just hold up a finger and he would fly back and forth, everytime he would take off, we would say "fly" and after only a few minutes when we would say fly, he would! It was awesome! I have never had a bird this socialized that he will randomly fly off and land on a different person just to kind of say "hi!".

As far as the acrylic goes, I think I am just going to go to my local hardware store and get a piece of quarter inch plexi cut and put it on the door. It is only attached by screws and holders, kind of like the back of a picture frame. It should only be about fifteen dollars for a piece of plexi that size and I am sure I would spend more than that buying products to clean the originally acrylic only to have it still look scratched. That and I don't like using such strange chemicals on the birds' cages.

 

[oled]

So cute, congrat

 

[Spiritbird]

I saw this bird on Craigs List. My friend wanted him too but you were too fast.

 

[IcyWolf]

Yea, he said they got a ton of emails about him. Not sure where your friend is from but if you look in the york pa cl, there is a pineapple GCC, a GCC breeder with baby green cheeks and sun conures(I think it said prices start at $140) and there is this Parot
I really hope someone adopts this poor zon, I am soooo tempted but I really shouldn't. The poor thing is in a rusted cage and it doesn't look like he has too many toys either.

 

[IcyWolf]

Just took another pic to show how teeny tiny he is. I also weighed him today and he is only 73.4 grams, which seems odd because on his sale certificate from when he was 4 months old it says that he was 76g but I guess that may have just been from an inaccurate scale or possibly that he was weighed right after a big meal. Either way, it seems that the average weight for them is about 70g so I guess we're good

That is only a little 20oz bottle