Hello from UK and New Zealand!

[longwing]

Hi, I'm new to parrots but I've been working with hawks for about 10 years.I joined this forum to learn a wee bit more about keeping parrots, as I love them loads and I'd like to have one some day.

I'm just visiting my boyfriend for the next few months, I live in Scotland and he lives in New Zealand. He works with parrots all the time and recently a beautiful male dark green budgie flew into the house, so he caught it up and put it in a cage. Nobody in the area has lost a budgie so I wonder where he came from...

We thought perhaps this young guy ("Headache") could earn his keep, as well as stop from being lonely because so far his only love interest is his bell. so we got him a lovely little green female (we hope she's a female but she's pretty young). We named her Tinkerbell because we hope that Headache shows as much interest in her as he does in his bell.

I love them soooooo much, they are so beautiful and hyper. I'm trying to tame them down a bit, they freak out if people go into their cage or anything. I am using a stick of millet, holding it in my hand inside the cage to try and get them used to my hand being there, and it's going great - today is the first day I've tried it and already Tinkerbell has hopped onto my arm and nibbled it, although I think that was a one-off - and they are both nibbling the spray while I am holding it which they wouldn't do before.

I'm a bit concerned about their relationship with each other, I know it's only early days but as a complete novice I don't know what they are saying to each other. The first day, we put them in different cages next to each other. Then we put Headache into Tinkerbell's cage, and they were lovely and sweet preening each other and warbling away. A few hours later we put them both into Headache's cage, which is huge. Headache immediately started bullying Tink, so we moved him into her cage so that they had swapped cages.

They stayed like that for a week, then we put them both together again in Headache's cage. They have been fine, they sit together and chatter to each other, and do the thing where they look like they're kissing each other.

However occasionally they seem to fight, with their heads bobbing up and down and making loud nasty-sounding calls. I have no idea what the head bobbing means but it seems that Tink picks on Headache as much as he picks on her! I am hoping that it is just them trying to sort out the heirarchy. They haven't really hurt each other yet so I'm pretty sure it'll be ok. But I joined the forum just in case!

Byeeee!
Longwing

[expressmailtome]

Welcome to Bird Board! As for taming them down, some people find that having their wings clipped can help with this. It will also help with preventing them from flying away on you (some can still fly some so you still have to be carefull). You are doing good with using the millet.

Matt

[Lisa B]

Welcome to our little place on the net

[micki]

hi and welcome to the forum.