Bill & Jean's Flock…Past and Present

My parents have met with several tragedies lately concerning their birds, so I'd like to put this together for them. They helped instill a love of birds in me from my earliest childhood, and we had many parakeets over the years. Our first was in the mid-70's, named Cindy. When we lost her, we got Butchy (who seems to haunt the cage my Dude lives in now and taught him to say Butchy's bird!) and a second bird named Cindy…along with various others, too many to enumerate. When I find the excellent pictures we had of these birds, they'll appear on this page. When we didn't have any more birds for several years, I made it clear that I missed avian companionship and wanted another parakeet. Finally for my 21^st birthday, they got me a "gift certificate" that enabled me to pick out Dude. Then my parents decided that they too wanted a bird of their own. This led them back to the store where I found Dude, but they came home with a cockatiel instead! I was out all night and came home in the wee hours, and ran over to the cage expecting to see a little parakeet. Instead there was this "big brown thing" in there as I called it. I had no clue whether it was a cockatiel or cockatoo, male or female, friendly or not. For some reason I put my hand in the cage anyway, and she hopped right on my finger, very tame. My parents had to go out of state the next morning due to a death in the family, so I left them a note asking what that was in that cage! When I awoke, I read that "he" was a cinnamon cockatiel and was extremely friendly. Somehow I started calling the bird Fred since I was with the little cutie for a few days without my parents being there to name the bird. When they returned, they had been considering Fred anyway, so it stuck. Too bad that we discovered that Fred was a female…so she became Freddie Mae. I got my own cockatiel (yep, Dusty, the terror on my page) who helped us confirm that Freddie was a female…heehee! Well, Freddie was the sweetest, most gentle and loving cockatiel I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. My parents' next flock member was actually a parakeet this time, heehee, a lovable yellow & green sweetie named Sunny. She was also originally believed to be a male, but turned out to be a female. Are we sensing a trend here? Well, she proved herself to be a female by laying a profuse number of eggs, which sure removed any doubt! She was best known for being a snuggler who was gentle except when she would bite your beak (nose) but that didn't seem to have any mean intent. She gained a companion named Cindy, who was plagued with health problems from the beginning but received the best of care from our wonderful avian vet, Dr. Terry McGrath. Cindy was blue and white, but her blue was not the teal-blue that my Dude is, but rather a violet type of blue. Cindy also had some cinnamon coloring in her wings.

Here come the tragic parts…first loss was Freddie, in November of 1996. Unfortunately she did not emotionally cope well with having her wings clipped…and she did fly away accidentally. That was very sad, but we have many fond memories of her. Dusty probably still misses her in his own way, but he has a new "girlfriend", my parents' new cockatiel Chrissy. They got her in December 1996, and she is not much like Freddie in personality, but certainly a fun and amusing companion in her own right. More recently, in October 1998, Cindy succumbed to the tumor that had probably been growing in her stomach for most of her life, causing all her digestive problems. My parents decided to get another parakeet to keep Sunny company, since Sunny seemed to miss Cindy and her companionship had helped Sunny pull through some medical problems. I accompanied my parents to the pet store where they had 2 hand-fed babies left, so they decided to get both of them (can't leave one lonely little baby in a pet store, now can we?) with the understanding that I would eventually take one of them as a companion for Dude. They would keep both birds for the 45-day isolation period, and then I would make a decision by then about taking Skye. Their baby was named Olive, after her coloring. Unfortunately, Olive had some unforeseen problems, and when she would try to fly and flutter to the ground, she frequently broke bloodfeathers and was actually injuring herself. She apparently had a problem in the middle of the night once, and very sadly bled to death. The vet reassured my parents that there was nothing they could have done to prevent this tragedy, and there seemed to be some birth defect that allowed her skin to split open very easily. This loss left my parents with Chrissy, Sunny who was being treated for lead poisoning (my parents had recently moved into an older home that had lead paint, unbeknownst to them), and Skye…I made the best decision I could by telling them to keep Skye as a companion for Sunny. It was working out well, but Sunny was having some major problems with constant egg laying and peritonitis from a ruptured egg inside of her. She did not survive the peritonitis, and she passed away in January 1999. My parents decided that I should take Skye after all so Dude could enjoy her company, and they did convince me that it would be for the best. As you can tell from my page about my own birds, she is happy to be a member of my flock.