I surprised my wife with an unusual birthday gift; a blue-fronted Amazon parrot. She loved it. But the Amazon seems to have other ideas. It decided that it will tolerate my wife, but be afraid of me. Fear that approximates hate in some cases! We decided that it must have had an ordeal with its previous owners. The poor thing was shaking when we first got him (we don’t actually know the sex yet, we haven’t DNA tested it yet, but for now, it’s a “he”)
As time went by he got to be a lot better. He comes to me and perches on my finger but we can see that he does it because he decided to give in, rather than willingly does so. He gets onto my wife’s hand, after he bites it! That’s a painful thing of course and we’re in the process of rehabilitating “Ozzie” (from el loro azul).
My brother is an avid ornithophile and has some Amazons and other exotics, so naturally I sought his advice. As part of that ongoing conversation, he introduced me to an online bird auction in Bahrain. I never thought this sort of thing existed here! But it did, and since we got Ozzie on 10 Sept 2020 we now have ten (yes 10) birds altogether. Nine of which were directly due to this online Instagram auction 😉
The first thing I purchased via the auction is a lovebird chick that I called “Pixie”. She was just 3 or 4 weeks old at the time and needed constant feeding through a syringe four times a day. Of course I didn’t know what I was getting into and I had no clue about raising and keeping birds.
An intensive deep dive was called for. My wife and I proceeded to spend any free time we had researching various topics about the subject and educated ourselves with everything avian – within the limits of the birds we acquired. What a fascinating journey.
We soon added even more birds to our flock; with our next purchase was Pickles, the Pineapple Green Cheek Conure Chick who was just three weeks old when I picked him up on 26 Sept 2020. That was followed by Spicy the 6 week old Pineapple Conure who proceeded to take the place of trouble-maker on 30 Sept 2020.
You’d think that would be enough for us to start our avian journey, but no. We have other ideas. These beautiful birds were quickly followed by a pair of Turquoise Green Cheek Conures, then a couple of Bourke’s Parakeets and finally a pair of Sun Conures too!
I was so looking forward to buying a couple of breeding Sun Conures as one of the pet shops had advertised their imminent arrival. Unfortunately (for me) the whole stock of more than 100 pairs (I’m told) were sold in only a couple of hours from them being made available. I got a juvenile pair (above), one of only five left in the shop by the time I got there. I’m trying to sell these now to replace them with a breeding pair, OR, a couple of Sun Conure chicks that we can have fun raising. I’ve put them up for sale and will also put them up at auction tonight to see how they fair. Hopefully they’ll find a forever home for them tonight.
This is a nice journey my wife and I are on with these birds. We don’t have any expectations and taking it day by day and thoroughly enjoying the ride.
Do you have any suggestions or advice for breeding parakeets/parrots? Please let me know in the comments below. I’m also looking for some experience sharing regarding building a large aviary, especially on the roof in Bahrain and how to make it habitable for a variety of birds through our touch seasons.
