Anyone have a Lovebird? Scratch that. Anyone have a Conure?

[GotGait]

I can’t stop laughing at this video. I feel sorry for the turtle, but the bird is such a jerk! :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vG8-fO9_mg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I’ve had finches but never a parrot. What are Lovebirds like?

ETA, ok so I’ve established that Lovebirds are little devils. How about Conures? There’s a place here in MD that breeds and hand raises the Red Bellied Conure. They are supposed to be less noisy which is good because my college roommate had a Sun Conure at home and it screamed bloody murder when I’d drop him off coming home for winter break.

He also had an African Grey that talked like a sexy woman. He brought it to school for a weekend, but I didn’t know it was there. I came home and it was calling his name in this sultry voice. Scared the crap out of me! I wandered upstairs trying to find out who was in my house and why they wouldn’t answer me.
Damn parrot. :lol:

[IdahoRider]

I just got a little hand-fed baby. He is super sweet right now, but I believe that they can be little terrorists when mature. Very much a big bird personality in a little bird body.
Sheilah

[GotGait]

[QUOTE=IdahoRider;6227937]
I just got a little hand-fed baby. He is super sweet right now, but I believe that they can be little terrorists when mature. Very much a big bird personality in a little bird body.
Sheilah[/QUOTE]

That’s what I was wondering. My husband says they are nasty, but he doesn’t have first hand experience. He just says they have a bad rep. I have always liked parrots, but they live so long (in general) that I didn’t want it to outlive me and have to put it in my will. lol
These little guys wouldn’t outlive me - I hope.

[fourmares]

Super sweet as hand raised babies… and then they grow up. I’ve never met an adult lovebird that wasn’t a jerk. Cockatiels or conures are a better bet for a small parrot, although conures are LOUD.

[ElisLove]

![](y lovie, Turkey

Playing with my button
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xXVwZcrNxw&list=UUlnYgNY2bhPeLKHovw6A6CQ&index=28&feature=plcp

Eating some random piece of straw.
[IMG]http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL481/2332034/23537213/401426887.jpg)

Tip one: Get a male!! They tend to be much friendlier than females.
Tip two: Do some research. Birds are more high maintenance than people think. You can’t use air fresheners, non stick pots and pans, the self clean option on your stove, ect. These will kill your bird. Lone lovies need lots of out of cage time with you. Lovies as a pair need less interaction but will be less friendly often to you than a lone bird.

My bird is quite friendly, though he will get the odd bite in (that’s birds for you) but most of the time he is quite gentle.

[GotGait]

[QUOTE=El![](sLove;6228503]
My lovie, Turkey

Playing with my button
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xXVwZcrNxw&list=UUlnYgNY2bhPeLKHovw6A6CQ&index=28&feature=plcp

Eating some random piece of straw.
[IMG]http://pic50.picturetrail.com/VOL481/2332034/23537213/401426887.jpg)

Tip one: Get a male!! They tend to be much friendlier than females.
Tip two: Do some research. Birds are more high maintenance than people think. You can’t use air fresheners, non stick pots and pans, the self clean option on your stove, ect. These will kill your bird. Lone lovies need lots of out of cage time with you. Lovies as a pair need less interaction but will be less friendly often to you than a lone bird.

My bird is quite friendly, though he will get the odd bite in (that’s birds for you) but most of the time he is quite gentle.[/QUOTE]

Very cute!
Hmmm… maybe I should look at Conures. My college roommate had one. Birdie always picked the best time to screech - usually when I was on an important phone call. He was a lot of fun though!
I happen to despise air fresheners and don’t have any non-stick pots. I knew about the non-stick but not about the air freshers or oven. What’s with the self-cleaning oven? I thought that was just high heat?

I doubt my husband will go for a parrot though. He doesn’t think we can give one a great life since they would normally be flying all over the place in the wild. He says, “Oh, so we’d clip it’s wings so it doesn’t fly away. That’s like cutting the feet off our chinchilla so it doesn’t run away.” I kind of agree with him somewhat, but I’ve been around some pretty happy parrots - and one unhappy one owned by a previous boss.

[ElisLove]

You can use a self cleaning oven to bake but you CAN"T use the self cleaning. My Turkey is clipped but he can still get up onto my furniture from the ground and get to and from his cage. He much quieter and tamer clipped and can get into less trouble.

[GotGait]

[QUOTE=ElisLove;6228958]
You can use a self cleaning oven to bake but you CAN"T use the self cleaning. My Turkey is clipped but he can still get up onto my furniture from the ground and get to and from his cage. He much quieter and tamer clipped and can get into less trouble.[/QUOTE]

But, did he ever get that button???

I Googled:
The problem with self-cleaning ovens and birds isn’t the coating; it’s the fats and what-not that are being burned out of your oven during self-cleaning. Since the gunk on the sides of your oven is the same no matter the make, all self-cleaning ovens are the same in terms of the danger they present to birds. Birds are sensitive to chemical fumes of all sorts, whether those are from a self-cleaning oven, a hot Teflon-coated pan or oven cleaner. One approach would be to move the bird to a well-ventilated room elsewhere in the house or, to play it extra safe, somewhere else altogether.

I had no idea. I have a lot more research to do…

[Roxyllsk]

Mine is snuggling in my hand now getting his head scritchies. He is about a year and a half old now. He is a little terrorist - he dive bombs the dogs and jumps on their backs for a ride, although they don’t seem to mind too much LOL. Anything that is within his reach is HIS toy, and he gets mad when I try to reclaim it.

They are demanding and entertaining but smart, smart little birds - I think of them as having the big parrot personalities in their itty bitty bodies. Squeaky knows how to let himself out of his cage, so I have to clip the door shut if that’s where I want him to stay.

I work from home most of the week, and he’s usually out, chewing up my paperwork or hanging out on my shoulder. Cool little guy, he’s my 2nd one and my other one was a very bossy bird as well .

He doesn’t really nip or bite, and neither did my other one. But he gets out every day for quite a while and gets handled a lot. He loves his head scritches !

[Roxyllsk]

Mine is snuggling in my hand now getting his head scritchies. He is about a year and a half old now. He is a little terrorist - he dive bombs the dogs and jumps on their backs for a ride, although they don’t seem to mind too much LOL. Anything that is within his reach is HIS toy, and he gets mad when I try to reclaim it.

They are demanding and entertaining but smart, smart little birds - I think of them as having the big parrot personalities in their itty bitty bodies. Squeaky knows how to let himself out of his cage, so I have to clip the door shut if that’s where I want him to stay.

I work from home most of the week, and he’s usually out, chewing up my paperwork or hanging out on my shoulder. Cool little guy, he’s my 2nd one and my other one was a very bossy bird as well .

He doesn’t really nip or bite, and neither did my other one. But he gets out every day for quite a while and gets handled a lot. He loves his head scritches !

[GotGait]

[QUOTE=Roxyllsk;6229468]
Mine is snuggling in my hand now getting his head scritchies. He is about a year and a half old now. He is a little terrorist - he dive bombs the dogs and jumps on their backs for a ride, although they don’t seem to mind too much LOL. Anything that is within his reach is HIS toy, and he gets mad when I try to reclaim it.

They are demanding and entertaining but smart, smart little birds - I think of them as having the big parrot personalities in their itty bitty bodies. Squeaky knows how to let himself out of his cage, so I have to clip the door shut if that’s where I want him to stay.

I work from home most of the week, and he’s usually out, chewing up my paperwork or hanging out on my shoulder. Cool little guy, he’s my 2nd one and my other one was a very bossy bird as well .

He doesn’t really nip or bite, and neither did my other one. But he gets out every day for quite a while and gets handled a lot. He loves his head scritches ![/QUOTE]

Sounds a lot like my Shiba Inu actually. :lol:

[paulaedwina]

I had a green cheek conure for about 12 years - she recently passed. Conures are intelligent, entertaining, demanding, and potentially quite loud. LOL my macaw plays with my buttons too, but at her size she snips them off. I’m keeping Joann Etc. stores in business sewing on new buttons!

Parrots are fun, but they are high maintenance, messy, and fussy. For me the fun outweighs the work, but realize that they are not easy pets.

Paula

[pAin_t_Misbehavin]

I had a mitred conure while I was in college. He was called TC (for Thunder Chicken, if that gives you an idea of the decibels he could produce).

He did fine so long as I was in undergrad and had a bunch of roommates, because someone was always home and he was always out of his cage. Which I made out of an old Great Dane crate, so he had plenty of room to climb and chew and have his toys.

His wings were clipped so we could allow him the run of the house. While someone was home that is - he was a great chewer and would have hurt himself if allowed out unsupervised.

No dogs dared cross him, because he was so loud and because he had a wicked bite. He’d call them and then bite them on the nose and laugh. He could still sort of fly - he’d climb things and then glide to the ground. He just couldn’t get any lift for take-off with his wings clipped.

Very smart, very energetic and outgoing. But I had to return him once I graduated and no one was home while I was at work. His attitude went south in a hurry from loneliness and it got so you couldn’t live with him. It almost broke my heart to give him back - I could hear him screaming all the way to the parking lot after I returned him to the person who sold him to me. I had him for probably four years.

I’ll never have another bird again - at least, not until I’m a very old lady who doesn’t leave the house much. A bird would be great company for someone like that! They need a lot of human interaction time IME.

[fourmares]

Green Cheeked conures are very nice little birds. They are one of the quieter conures. Sun conures and Nandays are loud. Slender Bills are parrot sized and are big clowns, but noisey and “busy”… another nice pocket parrot is a Senegal. Lots of them will let you hold them upsize down on their back in the palm of your hand.

[GotGait]

Thanks for the replies. I’m home all day right now, but I will probably be going back to work someday. I don’t think a parrot would like a sudden change like that. My husband isn’t fond of the idea of having one either. I will just continue to admire them from afar.