Do you own a pet bird? How did you select your bird? Where did you buy it?
Do you have a pet bird? If so, how did you decide what bird to get and where did you get it?
There are a ton of issues involved when you decide to get a pet -- and pet birds have issues all their own. For example:
1. Does a bird fit into your personal or family routine? Larger birds such as parakeets, parrots, or cockatiels respond to companionship more than finches and smaller song birds, so the larger birds require owners who are around more. If you're single with a busy career, don't leave a parrot, cockatiel, or parakeet alone for hours and days at a time. If you have a family, especially with young children, you need to make sure the family is "introduced" to the bird and knows the boundaries of things like poking, petting, and holding.
2. Do you have room for a bird? We have owned two or three parakeets over the years and in each case we had to make careful arrangements simply to set the cage in a good location -- and put up with frequent showers of bird seed and seed shells onto the carpeting and furniture. Birds demand a lot more cleaning up after than you might think.
3. Are you ready for the sound(s) of a pet bird? If you live in a crowded apartment setting, you need to remember your neighbors might not care for all the noise a pet cockatiel or parrot can generate just in the course of daily living. When we were first married, we almost had a run-in with a landlord because we brought a parrot home and were unaware of the volume of their "squawking" -- and the bird was simply going through his "hello, sun, happy to see you today" normal parrot routines!
So, do you own a bird or birds? Where did you get it -- pet shop or private breeder? And how do you cope with the special care your bird friend(s) require? Tell us, please.
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