When did you first discover birds?

[lucy1]

I remember being enthralled as a young child by my mums stories of her one-eyed budgie called Nelson. I wanted a budgie. My best friend had a budgie, but my mum said no. Fudge escaped and flew away one day and I think I cried more than my friend did... When I was 7 I got a load of budgie toys and books for Christmas- I was chuffed to bits and proudly announced they would be useful "when I moved out and got my own budgie"... When we thought we had done opening our presents, my parents brought in a magnificent cage with a rather unusual (many years ago, maybe quite common now?) blue/grey baby budgie. For me!! I named him Nigel and we were best buddies until he sadly died a few years later (65PT89L- I still have his ring...)
My next budgie was a blue and white girl named Kylie (Australian, get it?) She was lovely but she wasn't Nigel...

As small birds do, Kylie passed and we were birdless for several months. With a few hours to kill one afternoon my mum and I saw an advert for an "Orange Amazon" for sale locally. Not knowing any better we thought we'd go an have an ogle at someone's parrot for a bit (we both had a mental image of a macaw, hey, how else are you going to kill an hour before an appointment?). When we got there we saw the saddest hunched up excuse of a green ball of feathers, tucked away in an alcove under the 'smoking chair'. We asked to see him out the cage and had to wait until the dad got home as no one else knew how to unhook the cage to let him out. My mum and I exchanged glances and I knew he was coming home with us. His owners wanted the money for a new sofa so my mum beat them down on price and agreed to return a week later. We spent the next week in the library reading the only parrot book they had (pre-Internet days!) and badgering the local RSPCA for info. We brought him home, renamed him Kevin, and over the next 16 years he bonded incredibly strongly with me, helped a local parrot charity no end, became my total soulmate and literally saved my life whilst I was at uni.*

He passed away November 2011 and I honestly don't think I'll ever get over it. *I now have 2 Amazons who hate me (even longer story, but basically Kev's legacy) and a young B&G who was my dream bird but is making me work for it!

Sorry for the super-long post. I usually try to keep it short, but this is the edited version...! I love my birds, and best wishes to anyone who tries to engage me in 'casual' conversation about them!*

 

[JerseyWendy]

FABULOUS topic idea! I, too, loved reading all the stories very much.

We (my parents and much older sisters) had a budgie while growing up in Germany. "Juppi" was THE smartest, funniest, sweetest and most talkative budgie I have ever seen - yes, to this day.

After I was married and moved to Oklahoma, I became a wee bit obsessed with bird watching. Then I was given a lutino cockatiel baby (Sparky), who traveled overseas and back with us. While still stationed in Oklahoma I fell in love with a Red Lored Amazon, who had bitten the living' daylights out of me when I decided to take her out of her cage (against the shop owner's advice). :54: After that I was determined to have an Amazon one day. I had to wait until the hubby was done with the service, and once we learned we were going to move to Jersey, I started contacting breeders in this state. ...the rest is history.

I, like Trish, LOVE all types of animals, including tarantulas.

 

[Freespin]

I was never interested in birds either. I had no idea why anyone would want one as a pet!! I very suddenly changed my mind about a year and a half and i think i could probably put that down to Lukes Cockatoo. I had known her a while before that but was never interested or brave enough to do anything with her previously. Once i was hooked i was really really hooked!!! I was always the horse girl... later came the dogs and now life is not just the dogs and horses but also birds!! I dream of having huge aviaries and bird rooms one day... One day..

 

[Kings_girl]

I had chickens when I was younger and then got ducks last year, I had always wanted a parrot and last year I got one and he's Ben my best friend ever sense.

 

[Mike17]

I didn't have a lot to do with birds until I was in my 30s. My late father, who lived a long way away from where I lived, raised lovebirds and on a visit, offered me one which I accepted. It wasn't hand-raised but my then partner (who was crazy, but had a way with animals) tamed. His name was Toto, from ntoto, Swahili for "baby". I was posted to a remote island for work and due to quarantine restrictions couldn't take him so gave him to my daughter who promptly lost him. I cursed my stupidity as my co-worker had asked to have him (having cared for him when I left town which was frequently with the antics of my now ex).

Fast forward to around 2008, I'm remarried, to a lady who doesn't like dogs and cats as pets, and we minded a one-legged tiny budgie for a friend and co-worker. I work in remote localities and pets can be a problem when we get leave. My wife was enthralled and we went from non-tame budgies, to a tame (but bitey) 'tiel, then to an eccy. We now have around 20 birds and have bred 'tiels. Hopefully success with Bourke's Parrots and eccies will come in 2014, but we really enjoy our flock of hand-raised birds, breeding is another thing, and arose in part because we've had trouble getting "quality" birds although we've been given quite a few suitable babies by a breeder acquaintance .

 

[jenphilly]

Thanks guys... I've enjoyed reading EVERY ONE of your stories Some made me laugh out loud, or say OMG

Victoria, that's funny about your previously non-bird mother. Now look at her posting passionately on this forum too haha.

Keep the stories coming people

What she did not include in that post was I still feel the same way about the cockatiels... noisey, messy, not cuddly or interactive (chasing Renji around to get his grumpy nasty butt back in the cage does not constitute interaction).... :52:

I grew up in a house with cockatiels and budgies, but my mother was the type that liked having the animals, but didn't care for all the work that went into them. So my opinion of birds was not the greatest...

I have openly acknowledged in other threads that I was a late convert, was 40something before I would say I liked birds or would ever have thought of having one as a pet. And the credit for that conversion goes 100% to the green cheek conures. In all the years before they came along, I would talk to the cockatiels, especially the two oopsie babies. But even then, I would never have wanted to have one for myself and if Victoria had went away to college (she is a commuter student), she would have had to take those pains :10:

But when Monkey came home, she was just beyond awesome and so funny and beautiful, she is a pineapple green cheek, I love her colors. For the longest time it was a joke that when Victoria moved out, Monkey was staying with me. But that's changed, after puberty and Victoria being away for months last summer for Semester at Sea, Monkey is very much a momma's girl, she follows Tor from room to room.

Oh and Raven, what do you mean passionate posts??? When do I ever share my opinion... oh wait, yeah I do... almost had trouble getting my fingers to actually type that :21:

So I am a late convert... and even later to become a full fledged bird nut, that credit goes to Ivory. She came home as my husband's bird, but she has definitely become my baby girl. I cannot work full time due to medical, so I am home alot, even part time job I have, I do remote login for the computer and do alot of stuff from home. So, I spend alot of time with Ivory and admit she does make great company

I still can't believe I have a budgie... but oh crap, forgot to uncover him again this morning... just looked up to his cage when I mentioned him and see he is still covered... poor Cam... My first thing to do every morning when I get up is to uncover Ivory, open her cage and get my morning snuggles.

So yes, I am a later convert who still gets tormented on a regular basis with how I used to say birds were not cuddly or interactive.... but for this one, its been a great experience to be so wrong!!!!

end note - still don't like the cockatiels much... :09:

 

[Cyrinaluna]

I was never much into birds, always thinking of myself as a cat lady haha. But then I got an internship at a zoo where I met Lucy and Mango the cockatoos. Lucy had been an owner surrender to the zoo and was so friendly she was allowed to roam free in the indoor part of the zoo. My first day there she landed on my shoulder with a "Hello! How ya doin'?" We became fast friends

Now Mango was in a very large enclosure with two other cockatoos. One day I was cleaning the chinchilla cage which was right next to Mango's. I felt a tug at my back pocket, heard a flap of wings and a laugh. I turned around to find Mango had opened his food door, stolen my wallet and flow to the top of his enclosure with it! He gave it back after some treat bribery haha. But after that I always made sure to give him a treat and a scratch before starting my day. I never new birds could be such characters and I fell in love after that (I also got my love of reptiles there but that's a whole other story!)

My little conure Lizzy is my first bird but surely not my last

 

[RavensGryf]

Oh and Raven, what do you mean passionate posts??? When do I ever share my opinion... oh wait, yeah I do... almost had trouble getting my fingers to actually type that :21:

It's a GOOD thing

 

[BACON]

My first experience with birds came when I was pretty small, maybe 2/3 years old. A man up the road used to have a pet jackdaw and sometimes in the evening he'd fly to our place and walk about on the patio. I remember having these electric blue slippers with shiny bits on them, we used to go out and the jackdaw used to come and peck the shiny stuff. It absolutely fascinated me. From then on I've LOVED birds, more than any other animal.

I had my first cockatiel at about 6/7 years old, he died tho from a diease unfortunately. I brought another, then one day by tiny brother thought it a good Idea to set it free, sitting on the window sill pointing at the 'birdie'

My 3rd cockatiel was a a wonderful bird. She escaped twice, but she came back both times, she was the friendlist bird going. I bright her a mate, made an aviary and put them with superb parakeets, I was told they would be fine, they were for several years, breeding together an all, then one day I went to feed them and both the cockatiels were dead.

I got rid of my aviary after that. I brought blue in 2003, had her ever since. It's amazing even seeing how much she has changed (to me).

I'm so pleased the bird bug bite at an early age, I wouldn't want to swap it!!! I love them!!!

Funny how it effects some but not others. All my family aren't bothered by birds at all!!! Probably just as well

 

[Abigal7]

I grew up on a farm that had chickens. Some of the hens were tame enough for me to pick up. Now that I think about it I feel kind of sorry for the hens since I would hold them like a doll or bunny. One of my moms friends (who breed dogs) also breed birds. Mom said she remember me sitting down playing with these small parrots (I think they were cockatiels etc). My parents bought me an adult budgie (at the age of seven) and then a tame cockatiel. After the budgie passed away my mom bought me a green cheek conure (the first bird I had with a parrot attitude). I have to thank my mom for the ability to grow up with birds.

 

[Birdman666]

When we lived in Venezuela (circa 1969) we had five amazons, and two macaws... I was seven years old at the time, and I couldn't get anywhere near any of them...

They "came with" the house we moved into, and technically belonged to my parents. The macaws were semi tame, and lived in our Mango tree.

In my teens, I worked with raptors, owls, hawks and turkey vultures mainly, along with furry critters down at the local wildlife refuge...

I didn't re-discover parrots until I was in my mid 30's. It started with a conure, which was a little like pot leading to shooting heroin in my case... I ended up volunteering at a parrot rescue where I quickly wound up with 11 birds of my own, and about 350 more that I helped with down at the rescue...

 

[RavensGryf]

I didn't re-discover parrots until I was in my mid 30's. It started with a conure, which was a little like pot leading to shooting heroin in my case...

LOL!! sometimes you have these off the wall comments that crack me up
Interesting story too...