Our Pets

Many of my students have enjoyed meeting and becoming friends with our pet birds.  Birds are a bit old-fashioned but I have always enjoyed having them around as companions.  Some of them are very social, and I have had pet cockatiels and parakeets that would follow me around like puppies.

As of August 27, 2009 we are sad to announce that we are down to one bird.  Our parakeet, Buddy, got sick with a tumor in early August and died on the 27th.  I was holding him in my hand when he went, gently stroking his feathers and reminding him of how much he was loved by everyone who ever met him, especially me.  It was poignant and sad, but he had a good life and the most comfortable death we could give him.

Our other bird, Jones, is a female Lutino cockatiel who is less social than Buddy was and sometimes bites.  Jonesie seems to be very sad (or maybe just bored) so we're thinking about getting another bird.  It would be great fun to have another grey male cockatiel, which make the best pets of that breed from my experience.  I have had two of those before, and if you get one from an experienced breeder who hand-feeds it from birth, it will be a like a puppy that will bond to you and become a wonderful friend.

Now and then we have discovered injured birds in our bird feeder area outside and taken them in for recuperation.  So don't be too surprised if we are temporarily nursing a sick wild bird back to health.  So far we've had 2 finches and a blackbird.  The blackbird was high maintenance!  Every 3 or 4 hours he'd start crying and we had to feed him cut up earth worms with a long tweezers. This went on for about 10 days before he was strong enough to fly away.