Toby passed away right at the end of February and we were almost certain that we didn’t want to leave Kelly as a solitary budgie, unless she seemed to be 100% happy. To be honest, it’s pretty hard to tell whether she’s happy. I love her to bits, but her mood can most commonly be described in a range from irritated to downright irate! In the weeks following Toby’s death, Kelly was more annoyed than usual anytime she had to be in her cage, and certainly not less prone to biting me, although more interested in biting me while hanging out together.
In short order we prepared Toby’s old flight cage for quarantining a new parakeet and planned for his acquisition. We talked about the traits we thought a budgie would need to have to fit in with Kelly (and a few things we humans hoped for too). It boiled down to male, friendly but not aggressive, confident, likes to sing, and of course all the signs of good health.
We determined the best day to go pick out a new friend and I started thinking about how I’ve heard over the past year or so that there are budgie shortages in North America. I think it’s largely due to pandemic-related supply chain issues.
I wanted to get our new pal at Benson’s, where Kevin came from, because he was such a delightful fellow and I really like the way they take care of their birds. So, I gave them a call to find that they had no budgies available, but they were building a call list for when they came in. I declined to be put on the list and called a local Petco, they indicated they had “three greens” available (this is when I started to feel like I was trying to buy drugs, haha!).
I asked if they happened to know whether the parakeets were male or female, to which the employee responded that “you can’t tell without a blood test”. So, off we went to look for ourselves. Not surprisingly, they were all female budgies, but so darn cute.
In the parking lot of that Petco I called another Petco and they had zero budgies. Next on the list was a Petsmart, over the phone they indicated they were well-stocked, so off we went.
Arriving at the Petsmart we found they only had six budgies and FOUR of them were female! At least we had two males to choose from, but we were hampered in telling anything about their personalities by the fact that it was naptime, and no one was doing anything.
In the end although we had put quite a bit of thought into what we wanted in a budgie, it boiled down to two criteria: male and healthy. We watched the two boys sleep for a long time and the one we picked seemed extremely healthy. His eyes (when he would bother to open them!) were bright, his nares were clear, and he was sleeping on one foot with his head tucked without a single wobble.
Into a box he went, and we were headed home. When he started cheeping and singing a little in the box, I knew we had made the right decision!
Vance has done very well in quarantine. It’s a totally different experience from Kevin, who was scared to death the entire time. Vance seemed to understand almost immediately that we were not a threat to him. He didn’t like having hands in his cage at first, of course, but he would calm down quickly. Also in our favor is that he’s a total millet hound and very easy to bribe into human interaction.
Quarantine has been hard for all of us. Vance is in my home office, which is great because we spend lots of time together, but not so great because he and Kelly spend significant time periods yelling to each other every day! I will be so glad when this is over, and I can stop apologizing to people during Zoom meetings. I still do hate quarantine as much as the last time, even though Vance is way less tortured about it then Kevin was, it feels like I don’t have enough time for anyone. I’ll be glad when we get to the next step.
Ultimately, it seems like we really lucked out and got everything we wanted. Vance is confident and although he gets startled, he rarely goes into a full-on panic. He is even friendly with humans, but not aggressive, and he sings so much! He and Kelly will meet soon, and I’ll be keeping my fingers and toes crossed that it goes well. Based on how much they enjoy screaming to each other from different rooms I feel like they will get along famously.
Welcome to Vance! I have never heard anyone say that you cannot tell a budgies gender without a blood test, that’s insane!
Vance is very clearly a boy, by his purple cere!
Vance says thank you for the welcome!
I know right, my eyes rolled so hard on that one it was good the Petco employee couldn’t see me! It was particularly funny since the budgies they had were all 100% undeniably female.
I can understand people having trouble sexing “ino’s” and recessive pieds, but with a normal green or blue it’s pretty straight forward.
Yes blue cere is a boy
The blood test was a first but one time I was told when I was at a pet store that budgerigars and parakeets were 2 different birds(LOL). I said to the guy–I think you better look that up.
Very young budgies can be mysteries about gender but I know if there are “white rings” inside their nares that would be female for sure. Vance is so darling so congrats on your new flock member!
It’s too funny the stuff pet store employees come up with! I’m sure they are just passing on misinformation that’s been trained into staff for years.
Thank you for the congrats! We’re really enjoying having him around 🙂
I always thought a parakeet was just a long tailed small parrot. It’s not really a specific type of bird more of a general one.
Yes that’s true. In the US you hardly ever see the word budgie used at all, however, they call budgies “parakeets” and every other type of parakeet by its full name, like canary wing parakeet or monk parakeet. When I talk to my coworkers or friends about my birds I always have to remember not to say budgie or they will think I’m talking about some completely exotic bird type they’ve never heard of before!
We have wild parakeets locally here and they just squawk really loudly as they fly over. Nothing as tuneful as a budgie song 🙂
Welcome Vance. Had a vet tell us blood test was needed to be sure of sex but that was due to fact he had had birds where the cere didn’t tell the correct sex. Our hen never hormonal we had thought she might be male because of vocalation and singing behavior. We were wrong.
That’s a really good point, from what I understand there are a few mutations where it would not be straightforward to tell the sex based on cere color.
In the case of the Petco birds they were all non-fancy and definitely girls, but I can also understand why the Petco employee wouldn’t want to get into it, even if they knew, to be honest.
Your hen sounds like she was a real sweetie 🙂
What a handsome budgie! Welcome, Vance!
I love your blog and reading about your budgies. I have six budgies: Charlie, normal green male, age 7 yrs.
Connie, light green opaline female, age unknown, but at least 6 yrs.
Boo, recessive pied violet cobalt male, age 2 yrs.
Blueberry, normal sky blue female, age 2.5 yrs.
Cielo, sky blue opaline female, age 41 days
Peep, normal violet male, age 37 days
Hi Sue! Thanks for commenting, I’m so glad that you like the blog and reading about your little flock!
It sounds like you have a gorgeous group yourself – I bet the babies are so cute 🙂
Thanks again for reading!
Kristen
Sue, your gang sound familiar. I think you’re a member of my budgie forum 🙂
Hi featheredfiends, I bet it was my daughter who posted on your forum. 🙂
Ah right, possibly 🙂
Arriving late in the game here, but wanted to welcome Vance to his new home. How’s he doing these days?
Thank you! He is great, I really need to write a post updating about his progress and how he and Kelly are doing together.
He is so much fun, it’s been a blast having a playful baby in the house again. We’ve also discovered that he is pretty good about taking a bath on his own at least every couple of weeks and is not afraid to try new vegetables!
His favorite pastimes are flying around like a maniac, watching other birds and animals outside and interacting with every mirrored surface he comes in contact with. 🙂