This ringneck just walked into our lives.

[PeterHoward]

We had no plans of owning a Ringneck . . . or any other Parrot/Parakeet for that matter.

Then last October . . .

My son had just got his Sebrights (bantam chickens) and we were sitting on the grass admiring them in their new house when . . . this green parrot waddled around the corner, and started to look for a way into the cage. And I do mean "waddled". Over the next 5 or so minutes the wings stayed firmly against her sides. We waited for said parrot to fly away, unsure if it would take our finger off or not if we reached out to it. When all that happened was that it kept looking for a way into the chook house, we decided we had to act. Given we have 4 cats, 2 dogs, and there's a solid fox population in the vicinity, its life expectancy was extremely low. An old parrot cage we had inherited, which had been used for many things (tawny frogmouths, chooks, etc) except parrots was pressed into service. Given just about every animal we have likes the cat food, we put some of that in a bowl and put it in the cage and, lo and behold, the parrot just hopped in and started eating.

We informed the local vet, the retirement village up the road, and the local pet shops we'd found a "green parrot". During the rounds I saw some ringnecks in a cage at one of the shops and we could at least go from "green parrot" to "green indian ringneck". A few weeks later and no replies, it began to look like we had yet another pet. Neither of our immediate neighbours had the bird. Noone from the retirement village came forward. And it's over 1km in any direction to the next possible location, and this bird had a clipped wing and a very short range of flight. The word "dumped" started to come into our minds (that's how we got our cats, more pets we never planned on). Though why you wouldn't take it back to a pet shop I don't know.

Anyway, we now have our extra member of the family. She appears to be a "she", based on her colouring and the fact she's bonded to me like superglue. We named her Sita (though given some of her behaviour, Kali or Shiva - wrong gender notwithstanding - may have been more appropriate). We have no idea of her age though we would guess fairly young. Some of her recent behaviour could come under the category of "bluffing". She can be extremely territorial of her cage, and periodically gets tagged "psycho parrot" when she will do things like transition from chatting happily to drawing blood with no transition. If you open her cage wearing a glove she goes hysterical in her attempts to hide from you - don't know if that is a reaction to "different" or an indication of previous mistreatment.

So there we are. We have a parrot we didn't plan on, who is very lovely, very chatty, mostly very friendly, but I doubt we are training in a good way. We have let the clipping grow out for now, relying on her lack of endurance to keep her down to 4-5 laps of the room during bad behaviour before she concedes and steps onto my hand. Hopefully we can work out a bit more here about how we should be treating her and how to persuade her that my Wife is not her enemy (the irony there is that Sita was stepping onto her hand before she stepped onto mine; now I'm the only one whose hand can come near her).

[pinkdevil]

Welcome.

Wow, what a way for Sita to enter your lives.
What a shame someone may have dumped 'her' with clipped wings. Wonder how they expected her to fend for herself???.....some people.

Sounds like Sita chose a good home.

[Ninja]

awww well it sounds like she chose a loving home to come to!

Enjoy the journey!!

[kyria]

wow .. lucky parrot and lucky you new fid owner .. you are in for a treat and a bit of a ride .. these darlins are big on personality and moods and they have many of them .. lol

Welcome to the family

[PeterHoward]

wow .. lucky parrot and lucky you new fid owner .. you are in for a treat and a bit of a ride .. these darlins are big on personality and moods and they have many of them .. lol

Moods, what moods?



As I type this I ;iu6y9se80rpghawiltnq230789 . . . let's try that again. Despite having just got her down and onto my shoulder, from on top of some shelves where she was screeching to the world, she decided that typing this was not what I should be doing. She indicated it by resuming screeching, at full volume, with her head about 1.5 cm from my right ear. Makes it hard to type coherently. That sequed into a scratching on the top of the neck (you know where the head goes vertical, the eyes pin, and lots of happy clucking noises eminate), interspersed with attacks on the seams of my shirt.

Wish me luck; I'm about to try to get her back into her cage . . .

[Miss Jojo]

Try using popcorn...it works EVERY time for me

[bec]

aha popcorn the "magic tool for getting good behaviour out of irns .......
damn im all out!!!!
sounds like she was a very lucky bird to find you guys