Okay, I know I am the crazy bird lady and all…… but it happened again today and I can only explain it as a form of celebration. 

     Any one that lives with birds, like children, knows the different sounds they make and what is important and what is not.  I have become almost immune to hearing the normal chatter of my flock. I know this from the comments that some family members make when the come to visit.  Like “Wow they are loud” or Doesn’t that noise bother you?   Or “Do they do that all the time?” However I am the first one to notice if something sounds odd or different from the norm.   

     For the third time now I was taken back by the amount of loud chatter coming from the aviary. It is not uncommon for my birds to make noise throughout the day,  but they were all making noise at once,  which is very rare and a sure sign that something is up.   I had assumed that someone had escaped out of a cage or something was amiss and went to check it out.  To my amazement for the third time in a row nothing was out of place, nobody had escaped and the only thing that was different was that one of the birds had hatched their first baby.  Not the first baby of the clutch but their first baby ever.  Every Cockatiel in the flock was yelling and it was LOUD.  It was like they were celebrating a right of passage or something….like welcome to adulthood.  

     I put my theory to the test and low and behold it rang true…LOUD and true.  I have discussed this topic with other breeders and some have noticed the same thing while others never noticed at all.  I am amazed at the many things I continue to learn with regards to my flock’s behavior and how they interact with each other even though they are not caged together in a community flight 

     There are other behaviors that I also find amusing.  For instance, Lola one of my handraised babies who is now almost a year old, resides in a flight with three other cockatiel hens.  At feeding time I am forced everyday to hold the cage door open for a minute or two so she can finish climbing to the top of it before I can open it all the way and reach in and grab the food dish. Another bird, Opal who is also one of my babies and also almost a year old,  does the same climb everyday but always lets Lola reach the top first.  I just don’t get the purpose of this behavior. My assumption is that Opal lets Lola win because of a dominance thing. The fact that I am forced to wait until this climb is finished everyday before I can enter the cage is a real baffler to me!  LOL! My best guess at this one is that in the beginning she was just happy to see me and wanted to get closer to my face, but as time has passed I believe now it has become habit. The strange part about this is that it only happens at feeding time.   

     I have changed the way I do things based on behaviors I have observed in my flock and continue to strive to provide the happiest environment for my breeders as well as my babies.  I cannot possibly mimic there natural environment, although I do try with the full spectrum timed lighting and proper humidity levels, etcetera.  I have decided that the most important thing for my flock is a happy healthy environment in which to live.  They are not just breeder birds they are part of my family and as such deserve to have as much fun as everyone else around here.  To me it makes sense that a happy bird is more likely to breed than an unhappy one!