Z Blog

Birds

We recently decided that parakeets were too small and gave away the sole survivor to a friend. In their place we got 2 Conures. Conures are small parrots basically. They are about midway between a parakeet and the larger parrots in size. We got one Sun Conure whose name is Gromit (after one of Ian's favorite animated characters from Wallace & Gromit). The other is a Cinnamon Green Cheek Conure whose name is Basil (pronounced the English way with a hard 'a' not like the herb). Gromit is about 6 months old and is a bit bigger and Basil is only about 3 months old. Unlike the parakeets they actually enjoy being handled and taken out of their cage and Ian loves them. He has been very brave about letting them climb up his arm and onto his shoulder but still gets a little upset if they flap their wings or nibble on his ear. We've decided that ear must be a bird delicacy because they won't stop trying to eat ours. We are going to try to train them a little (at least enough to not poop on us). Training is supposed to be good for them because they are fairly smart and they can get bored if you don't give them something to work their minds on. Bored birds sometimes pluck out their on feathers so we want to avoid that.

Anway here are a couple of pictures.
Basil

Gromit

Gromit close up

-Brian

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