Complete Psittacine by Eb Cravens
During the time I was working at the exotic bird shoppe in the eighties and nineties, I noticed that many prospective parrot buyers were continually drawn to the large and striking psittacine species – macaws, Pink Cockatoos, talking Amazons, African Grey Parrots, and the like.
This is to be expected, I suppose, since dramatic size and colouration of parrots can be quite magnetic to a new bird owner. Yet, at the same time, many of the most devoted long-term psittacine owners who came in monthly for grooming appointments, or left their pets in the shoppe for boarding each fall holiday season, were keepers of smaller hookbills – cockatiels, conures, parrotlets, lorikeets, etc. These two realities are intricately related: Small parrots can be just as endearing, not to mention at times, are less time-and-labour-intensive as the larger birds.
Witness those many full-sized macaws and cockatoos that are given up and re-homed several times in their lifetimes while the pair of cute lovebirds in the parlour cage live out their full lifetimes in a single household.