Laura Erickson's For the Birds

This week I unexpectedly found myself in a pet store buying mealworms for an injured kingbird. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time in petshops, buying mealworms when there isn’t time to get them mail order, buying handfeeding mixes to feed baby birds, and buying supplies for our family’s actual pets. The only thing I’d never bought in a pet shop was… a pet. To be honest, I’ve never even been tempted–there have always been plenty of creatures at our house.

But standing in line to pay for my mealworms, I glanced at a pen full of baby cockatiels. I like cockatiels–I’ve often told myself that some day when my life was calmer I’d get myself a bird just for fun, and cockatiels always seemed like the right choice. Every now and then in a pet shop I’ve seen one particular cockatiel that seemed somehow special, but not enough to get me to buy it. But this morning as I stood in the petshop, one particular cockatiel walked right up to me, gave me a very hard stare, and suddenly I seemed to be caught in a Vulcan mind meld, with the cockatiel telling me his name was Farley and that he wanted to come home with me and would be delightful company and even help me as an education bird if only I would give him the chance. And next thing I know, there’s I a cockatiel named Farley sitting on my shoulder as I type in my office.

Farley is the ordinary gray color of a wild cockatiel. This species is a common one in Australia, where it’s found in small flocks ranging from open eucalyptus savannas to arid grasslands. The flocks come into breeding readiness whenever food and water are plentiful, and during a drought can go a long time without mating. Australia banned exportation of their native birds in the international pet trade way back in 1894. Cockatiels breed readily in captivity, unlike most of their parrot relatives. When you buy most parrots you have to be careful, checking paperwork and questioning the seller, to be certain they weren’t kidnapped from the wild. You never need to worry about that with budgies and cockatiels.

In Australia, people often call the cockatiel the quarrion or the weero. It’s distantly related to the much larger cockatoos that are also native to Australia. In the wild, cockatiels eat seedling grasses and other plants, and sometimes become agricultural pests. The first Europeans learned of their existence was when naturalists visited Australia on Captain James Cook’s expedition in 1770, and the first specimen in an English museum was probably collected on this trip. The first live exports arrived in Europe in 1830s, and the first known color mutations in these pet birds appeared in the 1950s. After the first mutations appeared, breeders started selecting for certain patterns and colors, and now cockatiels come in a wide range of soft, muted colors. Their intelligence and adaptability make them successful both in the wild and in captivity.

All birds in the parrot family live long lives, but the smaller they are, the shorter their life. Even so, cockatiels outlive most dogs and cats, with a life expectancy of about 20 years, and many making it to 25. So I’m in this for the long haul. But looking at this cheerful bird on my shoulder, I’m thinking it wasn’t such a bad thing to do simply for a lark. Time will tell.