Birds Like Friends Too

After writing a post about the friendship that my dog and rabbit share, I thought about the friendship between my family's two birds: a budgie name Nasa and a cockatiel named Sundo. Nasa is around 8 years old and Sundo is around 14 years old but we only got Sundo recently. Nasa used to be all alone and she was kind of crazy. She was scared of hands and she also freaked out if she got out of the cage so you can imagine how hard it would be to take her out. If she was out of her cage, she would fly all over the place and crash into walls. We were afraid that she would kill herself but it was so sad that she was stuck in her cage all the time. She didn't play a whole lot with toys and just sat there every day. There wasn't any excitement in her life, except for when we would go up to the cage or put our hand in the cage to change her food and she would shy away from us.

When one of my Aunts was visiting, she brought along all of her dogs and Sundo since she didn't really have someone back home that could look after them during that time. During my Aunt's stay, my Mom suggested leaving Sundo here so that there'd not only be less for my Aunt to take back home, but both Nasa and Sundo would have a friend in each other. It would be nice since both of them are older and are both alone. Plus, Sundo always had other birds, specifically budgies, with her in the past but she was the only bird that my Aunt currently had left. We experimented having them together without putting them in the same cage. We simply sat both cages beside each other to see how the birds would react. They really seemed to like each other, going as close as possible to each other as two separate cages would allow, so we put both of them in a nice big bird cage that we had stored away in a shed. We transferred all of their toys, perches, mineral blocks, food and water dishes, and individual foods into the new cage and waited to see how it would go.

It turned out that this was the best thing that we could have ever done for Nasa! She became a completely new bird. It was amazing how much she changed. Nasa and Sundo became good friends. They would groom themselves at the same time, sleep at the same time, and they were willing to go close to each other. Nasa tried new things that she never would have done before. She played more with toys, chewed on mineral blocks, and tried new foods. I guess she observed Sundo doing all of these things and decided to copy her. Sundo was already tame and used to doing all sorts of things so it really encouraged Nasa to be the same way.

Nasa even started taming down. She wasn't as afraid of hands anymore. Eventually, we could take her out of the cage. Sundo was already really good for taking out of the cage so it was nice to be able to take Nasa out as well. She still flies around a bit but she isn't as spooked as she would have been before and she's better at staying in one place now. She likes to fly over to our rabbit's cage and sit on top. I guess she just likes the feeling of the bars of the cage because it reminds her of her own cage. She is improving so much at taming down that I even saw her jump and sit on top of Sundo's back once while they were both out. It was so funny!

When it comes to birds that we have in the future, I definitely think that my family should have two birds and not just one all by itself. It really makes a difference in the life of a bird. Nasa went from being crazy to being much more tame in almost half a year! So, not only does having two birds give each one a friend, but they learn from each other as well. Nasa is pretty old and we don't know how much longer she will live so I am glad that she has a friend for the last part of her life and I'm glad that Sundo has a friend like she used to always have.

Cheers,
Kaylie