Hello! My name is Jessi. I found this forum when I recently bought a cockatiel from a breeder at a bird show called the "Mini Bird Mart" at my current city, Tucson, and her contact information included the link to this website.
My cockatiel is a cinnamon colored female whom I've named Lucy (renamed from her temporary name "Heaster"). I got Lucy on the 25th and she's adjusting quite well. She's shy, but forgiving. My mom clipped her wings, and my older sister scared her by trying to get her to step up (but was too fast about it
), and that didn't set her nearly as far back in the trusting process as I thought. In fact, my sister scaring her happened yesterday, and today I got her to eat out of the palm of my hand.
Her picture is in my signature if you're curious about her.
Other than Lucy, I also have a white capped Pionus named Dudley. He's almost 29 years old, and my parents have had them since he was a baby. He's a bit grumpy, but can be sweet when he wants to, and he likes to joke around by mimicing sounds and using them accordingly (ex: making a kissing sound whenever two people hug).
I might post pictures of him some other time, here.
My history with birds starts with my mother. Before I was even born, my mom bred, raised, and sold finches, budgies, and cockatiels, and so during my childhood, we've owned quite a few birds (I use that term lightly as she had 3 aviaries). Word got around about her ability to raise birds, and so people would come to her when they found baby wild birds that fell out of their nest, so as a bird breeder, she also became a bird orphanage raising and then releasing wild species. My mom eventually lost interest in breeding and raising, and sold all her birds, leaving Dudley, and a sweet yellow Cockatiel with an underbite named Charlie. That is where my love for the cockatiel species came to be.
Charlie died at an old age and eventually, we adopted 4 white-faced cockatiels at a rescue. Two were a bonded pair and had their first hatchling, who sadly died (they were not experienced parents). None of them were very trusting of humans, and eventually we gave them away to people we knew. One of them we kept longer than the others. A white faced named Pecky, who had a slightly bigger head than the others, though he was full grown. He was very vocal, and had a strange habit of holding onto the horizontal bars on the cage, and moving his head back and forth rapidly, causing this sound that reminded me of a woodpecker pecking on a gutter (hence the name pecky). I wish I had a video to show you, because it was nothing I've ever seen in cockatiel behavior before and he always did it when he wanted attention.
Here are some things about me that's not bird related:
I am a musician. I play Cello, piano, and guitar (planning on learning more), and I like to write my own music. Other creative hobbies of mine include drawing, and writing stories. I'm an all around animal lover, currently having one dog a couple of tortoises, and a pond full of fish (I've had many other kinds of pets in the past, but I currently only have time for the pets I have now).
I have to say, out of all of the forum websites I've been to, the emotes for this one are very... dynamic.
I look forward to meeting you all, and excited to talk some bird talk! (I don't get to do that very often)
Out of all the cockatiels that were at the bird show, She was the only one that sold them well under my budget (Then again, the other breeders had some fancy color mutation). Since I had an empty cage and food readily available, I was just more focused on getting a nice companion bird under 100 dollars (since that's all that was on me and everyone was taking cash) and found her stand, selling grays and cinnamons for $30 and lutinos for $40
