Lady is the brightest of my parakeets & the one with the most personality. While she won't sit on my finger, she will perch in her cage, with my face 2" away on the other side of the cage bars. I talk to her & she cocks her head & stares me in the eye. Sometimes when she wants water in a particular cup (yes, she is particular), she will catch my eye, then fly to the desired cup & peck at it. But she is getting to be a geriatric. She is at least 13 years old. She came to me as an adult, so I don't really know. She seems to be tired perching on the bars at night, so will huddle in the bottom corner of the cage. At first I thought she was sick, but no, just has her own way of sleeping. Lately she has taken to sleeping in one of the food cups. She will throw the seed out of it, making a perfect mess, then settle down & sleep there. These photos are hard to make out, but I am hoping you can see her. Lady, huddled in her cup ( photo / image / picture from Cayuga Morning's Garden ) Her tail gets bent upwards! It takes a while to straighten out. ( photo / image / picture from Cayuga Morning's Garden ) If people tell you birds are 'bird brains', don't believe them!!
I wonder why she has taken to sleeping in the food cup? Maybe she afraid of falling off the perch in her old age? I had no idea parakeets could live to such an age. What is the average life span CM?
Lately we have been talking about the animals we know and how they have developed quirky personalities sounds like Lady fits right into that idea. We had a turquoise one named Pete when I was in grade school, it was my Mom's and would sit on her shoulder while she ironed, read the news paper or watched TV at night. Every time she turned on the kitchen faucet he was under the running water in a flash to have a shower....especially when he mis-judged what he was landing on and splatted into the middle of the Lemon meringue pie Mom had cooling on the table. They got him as a very young bird from the breeder and I think he was about 8-10 yrs old when he passed.
awww I had one that would do that too, but he/she/it (didn't live long enough for that to come to light) was already sickly just from being a pet store keet. Frank, Parakeets can live up to and sometimes longer than 15 years.
When I was growing up our family has a baby keet who lived 18 years. Tweetie actually had no feathers on her bottom or chest and no tail feathers. She sat on the floor and her feet couldn't grip anymore. She gave up pleasure for so many years. There was no bird vet or putting birds to sleep so she just lived the end of her life as best as she could. Now I have 5 keets and 1 lady gouldian finch who live in the house. Cayuga Morning, I would think your little keep sitting in her food cut would be very comfortable for her. My Tweetie probably would have loved something like a nest rather than a flat cage bottom.
When I lived with my parents we had a budgerigar too. He was called Peter and used to love nothing more than playing football with our cross breed Labrador. Rex would tap the ball with his paw towards Peter and he would nudge it with his beak back at the dog. When he was tired he'd sit between Rex's paws then tuck his head under his wing for a nap.
Interesting account of your 'keet. I don't know anything about house birds...but it seems a most odd habit.
Lady has 'odd' down to a science. When I let her out of her cage, I have to keep a careful eye on her. She has a liking for paper towel rolls. She crawls inside, then can't get out. She's done it more than once....Maybe she's a bird brain after all...
