Canaries/finches/birds

[Romy]

Originally Posted by klaus1991

Love birds are very pretty and can be very sweet.If you purchase a hand raised bird from a breeder he will be use to being handled and will enjoy perching on your shoulder.You can also teach them tricks and to say a word or two.They are very intelligent and can be very good escape artist!keep him in a cage designed for cockatiels because cages designed for parakeets/finches maybe escaped from and are unsuitable for their exercise.Its a myth that lovebirds must always be in pairs they can live fine alone as long as he is kept occupied with toys,kept indoors, and given plenty of attention by you.If well taken care of they can last you 15yrs or more!Love birds all have different temperaments and some breeds can be more aggressive than others.Peach face love birds tend to be more hot tempered than masked blue love birds.For a beginner i recommend masked blue lovebirds.

This X100000000 ^^

When I was in middle school someone gave me a pair of peach faced lovebirds. They were really awesome. Charlie the male was really laid back and social. He'd go off with any female. lol. His mate Ollie was really, um... feisty. She was parent raised. She hated being handled, but we'd let her out for flying exercise daily. She was also extraordinarily jealous which is how we ended up with them. Charlie wouldn't stop flirting with the other females and Ollie would attack him when he did. They were fine at our house though.

If you don't have a mate for one and it's a single bird, be prepared for it to bond with a person in the house. The females tend to be super jealous. Ollie would not freaking stop laying eggs and sitting on them. Then when the babies were about 2 weeks old she'd kill them. That was horrifying so after the first time we confiscated them after they started to grow fuzz and hand raised them. She'd hatch clutches of 6-8 at a time so at one point we had 27 babies. It was really really hard. The local pet store ended up being the lovebird outlet. lol.

Anyway, we had some singles that stayed for a while. Smiley didn't have a mate and she bonded with my brother. She totally would regurgitate food for him and try to get him to eat it. She's preen his hair. And when any girl in the house hold like me or my sister got near him she'd fly in our faces and attack and bite us. That part was pretty horrible.

Rocky was her brother from a different clutch and he decided I was his mom since I raised him. He'd preen me but didn't try to regurgitate food or anything. He also wasn't nearly as protective as Smiley. Eventually the pet store owner bought him from me for himself because he had a lone female that was really unhappy. Rocky was content with us, but honestly he was really a lot better adjusted and happier with a mate.

But they are really loud. They're really funny and can learn songs. Smiley was super musical and liked to dance. We gave her a little cocktail american flag and taught her to whistle stars and stripes forever while waving it. She also learned the Mario Bros theme music for NES from us playing it so much, and would sing that all the time. If she hadn't been so aggressive to women she would have been a much cooler pet.

[milos_mommy]

I think a lovebird would be way too much for me. I'd consider getting a parrot WAYYYY into the future, but it would for a totally different experience than a canary.

I don't think I'm going to be adding one any time soon, but I think maybe after Aidan passes on (which unfortunately isn't all that far away ) a canary might be this next addition.

[Psyfalcon]

How are the various birds with dogs and cats?

Not out, Ruby would would go into kill mode with a loose animal, but during cage time if the dog or cat gets a little too interested?

I had a mouse that would completely ignore the cat bouncing into the mouse cage, but birds seem more likely to build up negative associations with the cat... or dog.

[Doberluv]

You have to watch it with dogs and cats. The dogs I had watched a little bit....and I watched them carefully. They just never did anything. My dog, Bruno would sometimes stand near the cage and point. LOL. He was a Lab mix. That was mostly when I first got the bird...once he got use to them, he was less interested. And he seemed to know they were pets and wasn't particularly drivey so when the budgies would be out of their cage, he pretty much ignored them. But not all dogs are like that, so that would be something to watch. And cats! Most cats are pretty enticed by the prospect of a bird. But the op is more interested in the kind of bird that stays in a cage, like a canary...is what I'm gathering.

[Fran27]

I haven't read the replies... I had a canary once. We found it on the balcony (no idea how it got there). It didn't seem to know how to fly and seemed totally lost. We didn't find its owner so we got it a nice cage and kept it in my room... It woke me up every morning, but it was kinda cool because I was practicing for choir at the time and it was singing with me. It was fun but oh so messy, seriously I had to clean the cage all the time. Not super tame but wasn't really scared either. Never tried to escape.

Then 3 weeks later we had to do one of those anti-flea bombs, put the cage in another room for a week, but I guess we moved it back too soon or something. I found it dead the next morning. It could have been something else, who knows. But after this honestly I didn't want more birds, if they die so easily it's just heartbreaking...

Now of course we have a cat and a dog, so forget it (especially my cat).