What was your first bird?

[kitt]

My first bird was a sickly little peach faced love bird.....
My brother in law use to raise love birds and ava (my lovebird) was born with what I think they called "splay leg"...please correct me on that if I said it wrong...
She almost died but some how pulled through....but they couldn't sell her.
They asked if I wanted her....with me being terrified of birds I said no way in hell. Well, my husband put on his sweet face and talked me into it....she has taught me a lot and I couldn't imagine my life without her....that was five years ago and she is just fine....we have added a caique and a hahns since then and I think that is enough for me. Birds are amazing and I am so glad my hunny talked me into that sickly little bird five years ago....LOL

 

[Conurekidd]

A green budgie names sea Biscuit. He was paired with a blue budgie named blue bell. They bred on me with me not really knowing. Thankgod my other family breeds and raises birds. They taught me to hand feed and I hand fed and raised my first 3 baby budgies. 2 Ressive pieds and a dark blue. There all in great care except sea biscuit. He passed due to age. The store sold me an older budgie occording to the vet.
I had him for 3 years and store mighta bought him as of age and then re sold him. Or sold a breeder as baby. Then I got mr cockatiel. My first cockatiel. A male pearl.
Then a female wf then male wf then female C P PD then female PD as well many babies they had. Then there was my beautiful Bella my sun conure then next was Rex. After and most recently is Sammy my yellow crowned amazon. Next will probably be another zon
I'd definitely recommend a cockatiel or small conure for a first time bird.

 

[Xenthius]

Cockatiel, great starter bird. Heard gc conures are great first time birds aswell. Please remember that Cockatiel create feather dust, if you have asthma and/or allergies its something to consider because it may aggravate.

 

[Parrot Parent]

When I was a little kid:
Kemo-a dove(Died of old age)
Leon-her mate (Killed my a moutain lion)
Romeo and Juliet:Cockatiels(They died during a fire, we were not allowed to evacuate our pets cause the fire was up the street )
Baby:Cockatiel
Buster:Cockatiel we found and were going to keep until we saw a lost cockatiel poster. We ended up rehomming baby with his owners too cause they really knew how to care for them and we didnt know much at that time about birds.

Since I've Turned 16:
Linius-Sun conure (died from a dog attack)
Xander-Sun Conure (sibling to Linius-still alive)
Tapa & Tio-American Budgies
Mr.Tum Tum-English Budgies

I would highly recommend doves! They were so friendly and loved to be held! They also had a laugh that was so amusing! They were very gentle and never bit.

All of our cockatiels were mean and bit a lot, so I have had bad experiences with them. But From what I hear from other people they make great birds, but they arent high up on my list of recommended birds for first time owners.

Sun conures are great birds and I would recomend them behind Budgies, and budgies behind doves! The reason why is because they are very noisy and can bite very hard. This could be very scary for a first time owner.

And I would recommend parakeets because they are such cute little clowns! They are small and do not bite too hard. They chirp beautifully and can be tamed easily.

 

[IcyWolf]

My first bird was a male pink ringneck dove named tookie that I fell in love with while working at petsmart and ended up selling him to myself lol. Shortly after, I was at walmart buying some bird toys for him, while at the register, the woman ringing me out noticed the toys and asked me if I wanted her cockatiel, she said that she was going through some problems(something about being beat up and left for dead... I dunno, I tried not to get too involved with her), but I had the room, and my own place so I said sure, she brought Pretty Boy(his name quickly got changed to Petri ) to petsmart where I worked. He was in this old prevue hendrix finch cage, I don't know when the cage was made but it was tiny(too small even for a finch IMO) and had glass seed guards. The only perch in the cage was a swing and the poor bird couldn't even stand up straight because it was so tiny. I bought a cage then and there and took him home, trashed his old cage, which normally I would have sold or given away a cage I don't need but I didn't want to see another poor bird end up in that torture cell. Petri absolutely hated people and would not only bite but he would grind his beak while he was biting you, removing the biggest chunk of skin possible. I worked with him for a good solid year before I gave up and just took him for what he ways, a human hating cockatiel that was more than happy to spend his life not being held(he still got daily out of cage time though). In the process of all of this, my grandmother had a goffin cockatoo that absolutely hated me, she passed away and my uncle had to find a new home for Darcy(the goffin). I wanted to take her but I was still living with my mom and she had a very strict no birds rule, despite the fact that I had upwards of 30 reptiles, a hedgehog and I bred rats lol. My boyfriend's(at the time, now ex) grandfather took her in and it was great because I still got to go and visit. The funny thing is, once is grandfather took her she fell in love with me. This bird HATED me my entire life and then suddenly, I was one of the only people that could hold her, and I could do practically anything with her lol. About a year and a half later, his grandfather also passed away and since I had my own place then, I took her in. She was my third bird and first large parrot. Sorry for the long rambling story... Personally I think doves are great birds to start with, they aren't messy(well, not compared to a even the smallest parrots), they can't really bite, they are quiet(unless you get a male like me, he coo'ed all the time, much to the dismay of my room mates ), and they are really smart. There is a pigeon that lives at our local feed store, he has a cage but is allowed loose in the store during the day and he will fly right to your hand if you hold your finger up and whistle! I was actually just talking to my other half last night about possibly building a pigeon coop sometime in the future and he was all on board with the idea I'd like to get some kind of homers so I could let them out during the day to fly and forage. As far as a first parrot, I think tiels are great if you get one that was handfed or atleast handled when it was young. Budgies are awesome too, they are a bit under rated(I guess because they are so common and cheap) but they are just as intelligent and capable of learning things that a larger bird can. I find it even more impressive when I see a trick trained budgie than a macaw or other large bird. It just shows that the person took a lot of time and patience to bond with it, even though it probably only cost them $10 for the bird, which is quite humbling IMO. But I will stop rambling now