An Eckie and Humans

Many breeds of parrot bond to only one person and look out anyone else who thinks they'll be allowed to touch them, or even the human they're bonded too. Quaker parrots, for example, act like old fuddy-duddies who mutter unintelligible words to themselves and look really cute, but they'll scold and bite anyone they're not bonded to.  People think that because they're small and cute, they'd make the perfect pet for a child, but only if the child is going to spend a lot of time doing everything for them.

People shy away from Eclectus parrots for the same reason they shy away from large dogs- because they're big and often come with a higher price tag, and a bigger beak. It's not always a case of the bigger the bird, the smaller the hassle, since budgies are generally more easy going, and some big birds can be nasty. However, I would, and have, left Cosmo alone in a room with my children.

Eckies are one of the few breeds (if not the only one) who bond to every member of the family. Although Cosmo does tend to get a bit mean with my husband during spring-time, he'll go to any of us, sit on our shoulders and let us scratch him under the wings. He'll let us all feed him and he seems more than happy to poo on us all. In fact, he's happy to poo on pretty much anyone.

A woman came to our house once, wanting to buy a hand-raised cockatiel. She was very taken with Cosmo, so I let him out of his cage. He flew straight to her shoulder, let her scratch him and then pooed all down the back of her shirt and shorts. She bought two cockatiels, perhaps he was just a good judge of character. 

Cosmo can be loud and he can be pushy. He loves to stand on my chest so I can't see the tv past his big, green head, and blow me raspberries when I complain. He's constantly asking, "Did you poo?" Or "What's that?" He's also the most gentle creature you could meet. 

Maybe not all Eckies are as gentle or tolerant as Cosmo. Perhaps it was because he was brought up with kindness that he gives that back to us. He's certainly made our lives a lot more interesting and a lot more fun! 

George

     We might have come through the whole 'buying a pet as a Christmas present' thing more or less unscathed, but we've made some pet buying mistakes. They were more pet-owner mistakes though really. We can't blame the parrot for the things we did.
     Our very first parrot was a cockatiel named George. George was fabulous. He adored my husband and I. He talked, he whistled, he stood on the back of the couch and put his beak to my nose in the most loving and intimate gesture I've had from an animal before or since. George was my baby.
     And then I had babies.
     As anyone who has ever had children and newborns would know, there's a time when you simply don't have time to walk/ play/ spoil your animal babies. Some animals don't mind this. Lila, our overweight house cat is happy to be ignored, as long as she' s fed. She certainly spends a good deal of her day trying to ignore us.
     George was different. He was used to being the centre of attention. When he wasn't out of his cage, he was pacing back and forth like a caged lion and tweeting, not like a lion. If he could have said 'look at me, look at me!' I'm sure he would have. Well maybe not, but he certainly appeared to be agitated.
     When our second child was born, I had no time for a pet bird. George was relegated to his cage and, although he spent his nights inside, he spent his days out in a shady spot, far from the house, where I couldn't hear him tweeting loudly.
      I wish I'd made an effort to be a better pet owner to George, but I knew I didn't have the time. Rather than try to make time, I did the one thing I thought would be the best for George. I found him a new home, with older kids who would have plenty of time to love him.
I assumed he'd be happy and gave him little thought after that, instead focusing on my human children.
     About a year later, I went to visit George. It didn't seem that he'd been out of his cage in that time and it didn't seem that his cage had been cleaned either. It had always been immaculate before. I felt terrible. His new human told me that he was giving George to his father, who had cancer.
Luckily, it seemed that George and  his newest owner did bond. He was the only one George would allow to put a hand inside his cage. George ended up living to the age of fifteen. He died not very long after his owner did. I hope he brought some pleasure to his life, because I will always feel I did wrong by George.
      Before we even considered buying a new bird, we waited until the kids were old enough and we had time to spend with them, and the pets. I still miss George and feel terrible about the way he was shafted. He deserved better and had I put more timing into buying a bird, he would have gotten better.
Not that there weren't other mistakes after him.

Step Up

     So Cosmo the Eckie came to live with us on Australia Day, 2010. He was three months old at the time. While he had a lot of maturing to do, he was already the size of a fully-grown adult Eclectus parrot. 

We had a cage, so in Cosmo went. He was now our responsibility, him and all his noise and poo, and of course his toys. Any parrot that is going to spend any length anywhere, ever, is going to want something to do. In the wild, he’d have been busy ripping tree branches apart and foraging for nuts and pretty mates. In a cage, Cosmo was going to need a lot to keep him occupied. We bought him hanging toys, dangling toys and toys to chew on. His favourite toy then and now has always been food. The way to an Eckie’s heart is definitely through his or her stomach. Stomachs with wings, as Mark calls them. 

But of course, a pet can’t spend all its time inside a cage. Mark bought some training DVDs and made a t-stand out of dowelling. I bought a clicker to help train this huge bird of ours and Mark set about training him. 

We learnt that the first thing a bird should know is how to 'step up'. When we put our arms out to Cosmo and say the words, 'step up', he should climb onto us, no questions asked. If he couldn't step up, then we'd never get him out of places he shouldn't be and off people he shouldn't be on. Think of it as bird-101. ‘Step up’ is a precursor to ‘come here’ or ‘heel’ if you’re into dog training. Very useful for getting Polly off the yard-arm.

Eckies have approximately the intelligence of a three-year old child, with some of the attitude and all of the curiosity. Or maybe that’s the other way around. An Eckie who doesn't want to do whatever it is you’re asking them to do, won’t. You might even be treated to a screaming tantrum if you really bug them hard enough.

They also have an appetite to match a starving monkey, so hold out a small treat to them, like a sunflower seed and they'll be all over the business of stepping up. Mark held out his arm, the seed in his other hand and Cosmo was stepping onto his arm to get it before you could say 'birds of a feather'. 

This stepping up stuff was easy! Of course stepping back down onto the training bar could be a challenge, but Cosmo nailed that pretty quickly, If stepping down again meant another sunflower seed, then he could play this game with his human slaves, er, friends. Gradually the seed was swapped for the clicker. Instead of getting a sunflower seed for stepping up, Mark would press the clicker and Cosmo would get a satisfying noise instead. Ok, it felt like a bit of a shabby treat, but Cosmo loved it and soon mastered stepping up 101. 

     Maybe this buying a parrot thing wouldn't be so scary after all. 

 

The Christmas Parrot

Every year the news and well-meaning current affairs shows warn you, a pet is for life, never buy a pet for someone as a Christmas present. They show the sad faces of puppies and kittens, given as presents and discarded to next day. So what did I do? I bought my husband, Mark, a pet Eclectus parrot for a Christmas present. 

Mark had been keen on birds (the feathered variety) for a long time. He’d had budgies as a kid and we had a cockatiel or two as a part of our family on and off. Cockatiels are very cute, but when it comes to being an honest to goodness pirate-parrot, they just don’t quite cut it. They might whistle at you and say a few words, but when it comes to helping you sing that sea-shanty over a bottle of rum, they’d probably just flee across the room and perch on top of the curtain rail, or give you a cute tweet while looking at you like you’ve lost your senses. That’s perfect for some people, but Mark was after something more.

  He went to one of the bird sales, which take place all across the country, several times a year. Bird breeders take dozens of their birds to sell, while picking up produce and supplies and betting on what type of bird would escape and end up flying around the pavilion (it’s usually a finch). He fell in love with how the male Eclectus (or Eckies) looked and decided he wanted one. Eclectus are so named because they look eclectic. The females have bright blue heads, dark red bodies, black beaks and an attitude. The males, however, are bright green, with bright blue and red under their wings, orange beaks and tend to be big sooks. I wouldn’t recommend you put your finger in the cage of one, they can still bite, but hand-raised ones make the better pets than the females. 

In short, the Eckie looks like the epitome of the classic parrot, with or without the pirate. They’re also considered the third-best talkers of the parrot world, after the African Grey and the Amazon. Who better to teach to say “arrr” and “yo ho ho?) 

For Mark, it was love at first sight; he had his heart set on getting an Eckie, even with no knowledge of the bird and everything based on how colourful they were. It was exactly how not to choose a pet bird. Or dog. Or cat. In fact, our cat...well that’s another story.

Being a loving wife, I arranged for a hand-raised male for my husband from a guy we met at another bird sale. We did do something right, we'd gone to see the man's aviaries and knew just the circumstances the birds were hatched and raised in. We decided he was someone we could trust. We contacted him and asked if he had any hand-raised Eckies. He did, but they were too young to be sold yet. A reputable breeder will made sure the bird is fully weaned before you buy them. If they don’t, steer clear of them.

So we waited a couple of months. The breeder sent us baby photos via email and requested a name so they could get him used to us before he came to live with us. Mark took one look at the email and named the bird Cosmo. About a month after Christmas, Cosmo was finally ready. Mark drove to Sydney and came home with a young, very cute but scared bird, with a beak which looked, to me, enormous.

Cosmo is a large bird, about the size of a cockatoo, with a large beak. He's perfectly capable of taking off a finger if he wants to, and we had two young children who had less experience with animals than we did. What were we thinking?