![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I adopted a new lovebird!! For those of you who don't know about my bird(s), I adopted two lovebirds (Tobi and Figaro) about 3 years ago. Last November, Tobi died suddenly after becoming egg bound (this is the bird equivalent of dying in childbirth). I have been thinking about getting a new lovebird, since Figaro had bonded strongly to Tobi and so I thought would bond strongly to another bird, but most of the appropriate lovebirds for him were at Petco/Petsmart and I don't feel like they should be selling birds, so I'm certainly not going to encourage the practice by buying one there. Plus, their lovebirds are not hand fed as babies, so they're a lot more skittish about being handled by humans than a hand fed baby would be, because a hand fed baby will imprint onto humans. This isn't as big a deal if you get the bird fairly young, but with Petco/Petsmart they don't list the hatch date, and it's fairly hard to tell if a lovebird is young for the species I was looking for.
Brief sidenote, their are two basic classes of lovebirds, the eyering lovebirds and then the rest (which probably have an actual name, but I'm forgetting it). Eyering lovebirds have bright red beaks (except for a few deliberate mutations), and a white ring around their eyes. The species include black cheecked lovebirds (that's what Tobi was, she's the one in my icon), black masked lovebirds (like Figaro, shown in the picture behind the cut ( here ), and Fischer's lovebirds (behind the cut ( here ). The other type of lovebirds all have off-white beaks, that have black markings when they are still young.
Anyhow, Rogers found a listing for 3 black masked lovebirds at the Minneapolis humane society. They were all 3 months old, and the reason for surrender was "unwanted litter". When we went to the Humane Society, two had already been adopted in the morning and there was just one left. So I adopted it. It's very, very cute and was really happy to snuggle into my hand when I had it out. :) It doesn't have a name yet, and since it's too young to start exhibiting nesting behavior I don't really have any idea of whether it's a boy or a girl bird. I won't put it in the same room as Figaro until I've taken it to the vet to have it checked for parasites and other health problems, and then I won't put them in the same cage until they've become accustomed to each other's presence. I really hope they get along. As for the sex of the bird, it shouldn't really make a difference. I'm pretty sure Figaro is male, but even if the other is a male they'll still usually happily bond (and according to some books may even act like a mating pair, with one taking on nesting behavior), so I'm not worried about having two male birds together because it's unlikely they'll be aggressive towards each other in the absence of any female birds. And if they've already bonded, I'm not sure the introduction of a female would even make a difference.
I'll try to post up some pictures of both of my birds soon, because they're both so cute!
Brief sidenote, their are two basic classes of lovebirds, the eyering lovebirds and then the rest (which probably have an actual name, but I'm forgetting it). Eyering lovebirds have bright red beaks (except for a few deliberate mutations), and a white ring around their eyes. The species include black cheecked lovebirds (that's what Tobi was, she's the one in my icon), black masked lovebirds (like Figaro, shown in the picture behind the cut ( here ), and Fischer's lovebirds (behind the cut ( here ). The other type of lovebirds all have off-white beaks, that have black markings when they are still young.
Anyhow, Rogers found a listing for 3 black masked lovebirds at the Minneapolis humane society. They were all 3 months old, and the reason for surrender was "unwanted litter". When we went to the Humane Society, two had already been adopted in the morning and there was just one left. So I adopted it. It's very, very cute and was really happy to snuggle into my hand when I had it out. :) It doesn't have a name yet, and since it's too young to start exhibiting nesting behavior I don't really have any idea of whether it's a boy or a girl bird. I won't put it in the same room as Figaro until I've taken it to the vet to have it checked for parasites and other health problems, and then I won't put them in the same cage until they've become accustomed to each other's presence. I really hope they get along. As for the sex of the bird, it shouldn't really make a difference. I'm pretty sure Figaro is male, but even if the other is a male they'll still usually happily bond (and according to some books may even act like a mating pair, with one taking on nesting behavior), so I'm not worried about having two male birds together because it's unlikely they'll be aggressive towards each other in the absence of any female birds. And if they've already bonded, I'm not sure the introduction of a female would even make a difference.
I'll try to post up some pictures of both of my birds soon, because they're both so cute!
