FEATURE
another in the human words they use. The one with the best diction is my Double Yellow Headed Amazon, Carlos, whom I obtained when he was 10 months old, he already spoke quite a few words but picked up the later skills he developed from my Blue & Gold Macaw, Max. Carlos speaks as though he has had elocution lessons. He is a little shy about speaking in front of people he does not know but will chatter happily when a visitor he knows arrives.
There are two items of advice that I feel are most important to mention to anyone buying a parrot for the first time. First of all the cause of distress to many an unsuspecting parrot owner is keeping a parrot that is an escape artist. Forget about owning a bird that bites, shouts or even chews the furniture all these habits are nothing compared to the anguish caused by losing a parrot because it has flown off through an open door or window. When you buy a parrot and you let it out indoors, ALWAYS MAKE SURE THERE IS NO ESCAPE ROUTE. I know parrots who can open padlocks on their cages within seconds and although I have only had one bird escape and we were lucky enough to be able to lure her home with her mate, losing a bird by it escaping can be absolutely heart breaking.
Another problem which is very distressing is when you buy a parrot and
for some reason or other it just DOES NOT LIKE YOU. This can be a very unpleasant experience and whilst you can sometimes win a bird over there are birds who just will never like you. The reasons for this are difficult to quantify but it can be quite simply because you have the wrong colour hair, or your voice is disliked or because they are missing a previous owner who may have sold them or may even have died. In my experience a bird will often start
to trust you after a time but if it takes a major dislike to you from day one it is often kinder to seek someone that the bird does like and re-home them. It is very upsetting when your pet bird
likes your best friend but not you. In families a parrot will often decide on its own who it wished to be their best human friend.
Quite frequently a bird may prefer their owner to be the opposite sex to their own. Sometimes a parrot can be very jealous of the human partner of their owner and I have dealt with numerous cases like this, one such case was on the TV programme Pet Power with Anthea Turner when we managed to retrain a Conure to accept its owner’s wife. You may ask how can I ensure I get the right parrot for me? Tricky this one but you can often tell when you first meet a parrot, especially if it climbs towards
Forget about owning a bird that bites, shouts or even chews the furniture all these habits are nothing compared to the anguish caused by losing a parrot because it has flown off through an open door or window. When you buy a parrot and you let it out indoors, ALWAYS MAKE SURE THERE IS NO ESCAPE ROUTE.
BIRD SCENE 35
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