We had a new addition to our family this last week! No, we didn’t have a secret baby, haha. We bought a pet!
Maybe this doesn’t seem particularly exciting to you, but let me tell you, we’re psyched about it. Greg and I have been married for nearly ten years now, and we’ve never had a pet that whole time – mostly because of the constant moving. The horrible, horrible moving. But we’re here to stay now, and so we have a pet. He’s a parakeet!
We named him Cumulus (nicknamed “Cloudy,” for the children) because the feathers on his belly look like a blue sky with puffy white clouds on it. I should mention we’re calling him a him despite having no clue if that’s true or not. Force of habit, I guess. No girls allowed in this house.
Also, did you know? Cameras are scary.
He’s pretty cute, and he’s starting to warm up to us. Max and Charlie have both managed to get him to sit on their fingers inside his cage as long as they have a millet spray to offer him. (Millet is apparently crack for little birdies.)
Hooray for pets!
If the cere (area around the nostrils) is blue-ish or purple-ish, you likely have a male; white/tan/brown (sometimes slightly pinkish), you likely have a female. It’s harder to tell on juvenile birds (under 12 months of age), or in some of the rarer color variations like lutino, albino, etc. There are some good references on the internet (I found this one this morning, which has pictures: http://www.budgieplace.com/mf.html).
Enjoy – parakeets can be a lot of fun to watch!
Thanks for the link, it’s helpful! Unfortunately (for this purpose) he’s so young he’s still a bar-head, so I’ve been told he can’t be accurately sexed yet. Either way, I don’t think it matters much.
I’m hoping “he” is a “she.” Before I had Baby Sister it was me and the girl cat vs. all the boys! Ha ha!
Beautiful bird! He/she isn’t too noisy? The Upstairs Neighbors had a parakeet and that thing was loud…I don’t know if he truly was really that loud or I was being uber-irritated by anything they did!
He hasn’t been too loud so far, but he’s been pretty nervous until the last few days. He’s getting a little louder so we’ll have to see!