Cockatiel. Caturra, Portuguese for cockatiel.
This sweetie is my pet cockatiel, simultaneously a complete accident and the best thing to happen to me recently. An accident because I never planned to have a pet cockatiel. But when I realized that 1) her parents had stopped feeding her way to early and she was starving on the aviary’s floor and 2) no one but me seemed to care, I decided to do something about it and hand-fed her. She’s part of the family now.
Click for full size! What a beauty. She looks on the mischievous side.
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
What a lovely birdie
We had cockatiels when I was a kid/youth.
The first one was called “Alfons” and one day started to lay eggs. She was pretty quiet and loved my dad’s slippers. She mostly forgot how to fly, despite the fact that her cage was open all day. She would sit in the entrance and in the evening, when the kitchen where her cage was got dark, she would jump down, remember that she had wings shortly before breaking her neck and then waddle into the living room to snuggle against my dad’s slippers. Later you had to pick her up and carry her back.
The one we had after that was Chaplin, and she was
a) full of mischief
b) suicidal
One day she almost hung herself on a piece of string and one day she managed to slip while climbing and impaled herself on the little hook that kept her cage door open. Luckily she survived both. She liked camomile tea and pretzel sticks.
Oh, mischievous fits her well. I already count two pairs of earrings destroyed by that beak. She loves paper too, I have to be careful and not leave any important document on my desk or it will be shredded.
But she’s so adorable. Head scritches are her favourite thing ever.
She’s beautiful and looks like she’s a bit of a comedian. Those feathers on the top of her head are amazing. They look so soft. Do they change with her moods? Also, what is her name?
Voyager,
Yes, the crest changes with her mood. In her neutral/relaxed state the crest stands slightly oblique, when she’s curious or excited about something she will raise the crest to a vertical position (as in this photo), when she’s angry or defensive the crest goes flat. They are very expressive birds. She’s also rather talkative but being a female she doesn’t sing. Males can be taught to sing and to repeat words/phrases like parrots, but females’ vocal range usually doesn’t allow for that.
As for her name, well, I tried to call her Pipoca (means popcorn) but she didn’t care much for that. My mother started calling her Piu-Piu (an onomatopoeia, equivalent to the English tweet) and she never fails to respond to that… so Piu-Piu it is.
Nightjar
Does she have a fine hearing as well? I remember ours announcing my parents’ cars long before we heard a thing.
Oh and yes, Chaplin forever shredded paper and ate 2cm off the wooden living room door.
Giliell,
Yes, according to my mother she does announce me a while before I arrive, whether by car or on foot.
Did Chaplin also lay eggs, or only Alfons did? Piu hasn’t yet, but she’s less than 1 year old.
A beautiful bird. She sounds like quite a character.
Re Chaplin: That’s quite a lot of wood munchies. Was it on the top, all the way?
“Piu-Piu” is the sound my kids make when they’re shooting laser guns at each other. :D I find that oddly suitable to the picture. The hairstyle is top-notch, though. A communicative hair-style, better than facial expressions! (Well, just more flamboyant, I suppose…)
rq,
I can see her going crazy in that situation. You can’t make that sound around her without her responding and likely flying straight at you, landing in your head. As someone who has always had cats, I find that so weird, that a pet actually comes when I call. I’m used to being ignored. :D
Nightjar
Yes, Chaplin also laid eggs.
And because she could fly she laid them on top of the kitchen cabinets so we had a happy time climbing ladders to collect them.
Ice Swimmer
Yep, she loved that. She also tore off wallpaper and started on the plaster underneath, no matter how many pecking stones we got her, which resulted in her getting banned from the living room. We were always joking that she was trying to break a hole into the wall in the hallway so she could go in there again.