Just joined

Just joined the forum so I thought I'd introduce myself and my birds briefly. I've kept parrots for 50 years (sigh), from budgies and finches to amazons, cockatoos, lorikeets, as well as numerous soft-billed birds. Right now I have an eight-year-old female bronze-winged pionus, an 18-month male golden conure, and a baby male SI eclectus as pets, along with two French bulldogs. I breed blue-crowned hanging parrots, but never hand feed them so they remain aviary birds.

I've lived all over, including in Japan, and now am in South Florida, which my birds all love.

I guess I'll mostly be watching the conure and eclectus forums, and I would love to hear from members with golden conures. Mine is probably the most enjoyable pet parrot I have every had.

Welcome to the forum! Beautiful pics! I loooove the golden conures! They are so hard to get here in Canada I wish I could have one one day

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Welcome!

Welcome.

I love the Bronze wing.

texsize

Yes, Peggy, the BWP is a real sweetie--as is the golden conure, Samba. Very different personalities. The GC is like a cockatoo/macaw combination, and the BWP is more like an eclectus in her thoughtfulness and slightly reserved, but loving personality.

She goes through a month-long breeding season once a year when she moans and solicits me nonstop as long as she can see me, but once that's over, she's fine again. My birds have an outdoor enclosure so they can enjoy natural light and rain all day, and all are flighted. But they all get two hours each of intense attention from me every day, too.

I can't recommend a GC too highly as a pet. Not loud, very smart, very loving. I know someone who free flies a pair. We can't do it in Florida because of all the raptors, water, and trees, but you can throw a GC into the air and it just boomerangs back. I would only do that indoors, though.

The blue-crowned hanging parrots are also very beautiful and quiet, but messy, like lorikeets, and have a complex diet, like an eclectus. I don't think anyone else is breeding them now, except one or two zoos.

Welcome to you, from the frozen central Florida! 40s and 50s!!

Flboy said:

Welcome to you, from the frozen central Florida! 40s and 50s!!

Click to expand...

David, we in the Great White North will be seeing several days of very cold weather not seen in this area since 2015! Haven't look how far South it will travel! Keep a close eye on your eight day weather reports, as you 'could' see daytime temperatures under 32 degrees F.

Sorry for stealing your (OP) Thread for a moment!

Welcome! What beautiful birds. Just out of curiosity, why don’t you hand-feed and tame the birds you breed?


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Thank you.

I don't hand feed them for two main reasons.

First, because the San Diego Zoo, which has occasionally hand fed babies that lost their parents, has concluded that "Handfed chicks, once self-sufficient, revert to their wild state and are not tractable as pets."

Second, there are so few of them in the US--probably just over a hundred outside of zoos--that there are not enough to take out of the breeding stock as pets.

I have seen YouTube videos of individuals of a different, larger species of hanging parrot in the Philippines that have been tamed, but for now my focus is on increasing the breeding stock in the US, since there will never be any more importations.

They are beautiful, happy birds in an aviary setting and can be kept in a flock, which they seem to enjoy.

But I guess any further discussion of them should be moved to the "Other" section of the species specific forums . . . .

Welcome to the forums, thanks for sharing your beautiful birds!

Interesting observation for hand-fed chicks reverting. Is that generally true with most/all avians or specific species? I'd place a heavy emphasis on findings from the respected San Diego Zoo!