I always had German Shepherds until I found myself living in downtown apartments ten years ago. When I met a couple who desperately needed to care for their two cockatiels for six weeks, I couldn’t resist the opportunity.
These birds, a female and a younger male, were difficult cases. He didn’t always sit on my shoulder when I left the room, but she did, and when she and I left, he would make a ruckus, then dart out of the cage and plummet, clipped wings, to the floor to to March. him behind me, yelling at his girlfriend the whole way. They both had paper fetishes and would bite cute little beaks out of any paper I could get enough of to get within reach.
I now have two male cockatoos, Cilantro and Bergamot (B&C). Cockatoos, as members of the parrot family, fall under the category of pet birds. They want to be in your company and interact with you. They are affectionate, sensitive, surprisingly intelligent, and downright humorous.
They are very messy, however, and constantly clean up after them. The mess consists mainly of flaked seeds that parrots seem to enjoy throwing at least a meter around their cage.
All parrots are flocking birds and in the wild, when separated from the flock, they call to each other. In captivity they do the same… only in captivity I am the one who represents the herd.
They want to know I’m inside cooee and they whistle at me periodically to make sure I’m still around. As long as I answer, they are happy. If I take a little while to answer, they’ll come looking for me. I’ll be sitting at the computer writing like crazy when two little birds appear at the door, singing. They cluster directly above my feet and begin to climb up to my shoulder where they crouch, gurgling (like a cat purrs), content. If I sit next to their cage, they’ll come out and awkwardly kick it to sit on top of me.
B&C are free to be out of their cage when I’m home, but I lock them up to go outside because they’ll get busy, beak first, with the nearest interesting thing. Telephone wires and electrical wires are the main attractive items. They will destroy my plants for the sheer pleasure of ripping off their leaves. If it’s metal, they’ll find the weak link in seconds. Jupiter, a male cockatoo I once had, would sit on my shoulder and play with my earring. He would then turn his head in front of my face to show me the piece he had just released from the hook that would still be in my ear.
I have taught this pair to say, you are a tweet. Entertain visitors. I recently left them with the breeders for a couple of weeks. When I came back, they were saying Hello Darling. Both sing in tune with Strauss’s waltzes, under the direction of Karajan. He leaves a CD on repeat while I’m away to keep it company and add to his repertoire. Bergamot has annoyingly picked up the screeching of a Mynah bird and Coriander repeats the sound of my mobile phone beeping. Have you heard the expression, ‘learning fashion from parrots?’ It means repetitive. This is how you teach birds to learn new words and sounds.
B&C loves arrowroot cookies with milk as a treat. They used to go crazy for broccoli, but now they prefer silver beets. They also like green beans, manuka, bottlebrush, eucalyptus, pittasporum, and willow. They happily slice them into pieces that shoot gloriously around the place. It keeps them busy and nourishes them. I pass a folded piece of paper through the bars of their cage and they pull on it for days. A small pine cone also keeps them busy.
In the wild, cockatoos spend approximately 80% of their time foraging, interspersed with periods of rest. B&C will be busy as summer bees, singing non-stop, climbing up their cage, tearing off branches and leaves, and then all of a sudden there they are with their heads thrown back, their beaks buried in the feathers on their backs, and their eyes closed. .
They love to be sprayed with water from time to time and rub their heads along the perch, wings stretched and up, leaning at crazy angles to get the most out of the spray. I used to take Jupiter into the shower with me. When he’d had his fill, he’d climb up my arm and I’d lean him over the railing to groom himself while he washed me.
B&C are still young at six months. I can look forward to keeping the company of these lovely feathered clowns for twenty years or more.