Becky's Aviary

This page contains pictures and text about the birds I have now, memorials to birds who have lived with me in the past, and a few I've admired from afar.







Mrs. Jones has been with us for about 8 years now. You can see her on the left, on the outside of an aviary I built when she first joined us. I learned several years ago that she is actually a male cockatiel, but her/his name still feels right, so it has stuck. She is named after an archetypal Everywoman from Wales. :) Here is a picture taken in the 1930's of a Welsh woman named Mrs. Jones.






In the picture you can also see Tiggy, a parakeet, on the outside of their aviary, and LoLo, another parakeet, perched just inside the aviary's front corner.









I took this picture within several days of when Tiggy ("Antigone") joined us, about 7 years ago. The lillies outside the window were so fresh and lovely, and Tiggy was willing to pose in this glamour shot with the heart as a prop. I think she was captivated by being right at the window, where she could be surrounded by outdoor air. She was willing to sit still for quite a while!




Tiggy is named after the tragic heroine Antigone (Sophocles) who refused to let her brother be buried outside the city's gates, so one of the things her character is known for is digging his grave herself. When Tiggy first joined us, she did nothing but dig whever she was, so we christened her Antigone. Here is one image of Antigone which happily shares Tiggy's light and deep yellows, light blues, and greens.
Looking back, I think Tiggy might have been in shock from leaving a group of birds from her clutch at the pet store, and coming to our house. She has adjusted well, though, and seems to be very happy now.

When I was at the pet store, the combination of greens, blues, yellows, and the tortoise shell markings grabbed my attention, and I fell in love with Tiggy at first sight.


This is a typical picture. Tiggy will use anything she can get a foothold on to move upwards. While she was still little, I observed her flying directly upwards along a vertical surface. Maybe I should call her Jackie Chan!!!












Krishna is a female cockatiel who's been with us for about 5 years. She was raised by the best breeders I've ever met!! They cooked her three meals a day (I don't even do that well for my own food.), and when she joined us she was accustomed to a lot of contact with humans.


This isn't a very dazzling picture - she looks like she might be day dreaming. But she's the best!! Very expressive, self-reliant, and never too busy to perch on my hand or shoulder and keep me company. You'd think that now with one cockatiel of each gender, we might have some babies showing up, but for whatever reasons, Mrs. Jones and Tiggy (male cockatiel and female parakeet) are fast friends, and I've only seen one or two attempts at mating between the cockatiels. Oh well. So much for the lucrative bird-breeding business opportunity!!!




Krishna was a hard one to name. Her breeders hadn't given her a name, and I pondered an endless number of names. I had just seen a Bollywood film with a young girl character named Krishna,




and so I hope it is respectful to use the name for a female creature as well as male.




Our most recent addition is a yellow baby parakeet named Shah Rukh Khan (picture not available yet). She hatched at the end of January this year, so she's still a baby.



Possible nicknames for her so far include Papillon ("Papi"),

for her habit of jumping from perch to perch to stay in shape while in the cage,



Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan, I think I love you Chaka Khan,        and possibly Shar-Shar Binks.



And of course her namesake, THE Shah Rukh Khan.

Farewells and Memorials to Birds in My Past

This is LoLo. She was the second bird I ever bought, and she was easily the strongest and most resilient of the group over the years. When I was looking for a friend for my first bird, Marcello, I looked for her within the same clutch as Marchie's, to be a good friend for Marchie. Without knowing it, I chose an English Budgerigar! LoLo was truly amazing. Through several lousy vets, moving twice, and camping out at my parents' house, she remained a gracious hostess (well, most of the time), and a loyal pal to all of us.

LoLo was a vibrant yellow with light green on her head and shoulders, like a cape, and dark green on her back and underside.
Since I chose her for Marchie, I named her after one of Marcello Mastroianni's many film co-stars, Gina Lollobrigida. Gina even wears yellow in this picture!!!

This is Patches, who I bought, and then had to part with. She has occasionally visited with us. She was brought up to be very relaxed around people, and she's happiest perching on someone's shoulder, or marching around the floor while someone's having a bath or shower. We miss her!!

Here she is (in front), with Marchie behind her, and LoLo to the side. After observing parakeets singly, in pairs, and in larger groups, I believe they are much more comfortable in groups. Even if there are only three, they seem to be much more comfortable than when living solo or in a pair.

Willi was amazing. She flew to the furthest parts of my apartment, and then did as much as she could to tear them apart. One evening while I was typing at the computer, she worked her way methodically across the two shelves I had above the computer keyboard, and hurled everything off over her shoulder to the floor. Another time I found her in the kitchen, pulling at some newspaper underneath a metal wash-tub, trying to fling it to the floor.









Oooops!! There goes the lamp shade!! In this one I think they look relaxed and natural. (One or two of these pictures are over-exposed, but I like them enough to include them here.)

Here's a nice picture of Marchie, on the left, and Willy-Nilly. As long as there's enough millet for two, everybody's happy!!









The day I found Frankie, I wasn't sure what I was looking for at the pet shop. There were two tiny canaries, one with neon bright orange coloration, and one with shades of brown, deep red, and black. I didn't recognize them as canaries at first, because I was only used to yellow canaries.

I thought it would be nice to have a different kind of song in the family, so I brought Frankie home with us. He huddled in his cage for the first 36 hours or so, without a peep. I kept the TV and radio going, so he'd hear lots of different sounds around him. Without warning, at about 7:00 p.m. he started singing, and the rest of us were astounded. What a song!! What lovely tones! On the spot I named him Francis Albert Sinatra the third.

Frankie was the tiniest bird I've ever had. When he first joined our family, he didn't know how to fly! His attempts to stay aloft alarmed the others because, I guess, he didn't look very bird-like. But he became the most fearless of the group, and claimed places in the apartment that were his. He was very territorial, and even if there was plenty of food and space, once he had staked a claim (even in another bird's cage!) he tolerated no invasion. I thought that was particularly ironic, because he felt very free to take a bath in any of the other birds' water dishes, regardless of how they felt about it.

He used to imitate the electronic beeping of my prayer watch, either responding to it exactly, or singing along with it, a half-step above in pitch. Either way, I always knew when it was time to pray, and as the other birds got used to him answering my prayer watch, they started answering his response.







I don't have long-distance camera equipment, and Frankie was usually too quick for me to get a nice picture. I thought I'd try one holding him.










And then right after taking one of him in my hand, I got one of him in his cage!!








When Frankie was new to our household, and wasn't accustomed to his cage, sometimes he slept whever he was at the end of the day. The place he seemed most contented was a play area with a curved bottom and curved dome-like top over him. After seeing how contentedly he slept there, I wanted to find a similarly comfortable spot for him to sleep in inside his cage. I bought him a globe like this, woven of bamboo reeds. I attached the globe to an inside wall of his cage, and shredded Kleenex tissue as nesting material.




He liked it right away. When he was ready to go to sleep, he used to hop into the bamboo globe and burrow into the Kleenex to let me know when it was time to cover his cage for the night. (Yes, this is a picture of a hamster, not Frankie. You can see Frankie's globe in the picture of him inside his cage, above.) For the address of the company that makes these basket-globes, click here.

LoLo, Marchie, Willi, Frankie, and Georgie Mubarek have passed away. Marchie's loss hit me hardest, because he was such a loyal, dear companion, and was the first pet bird I ever had.

I miss Willi too, in a different way. She was very stressed when I got her, and was always more high-strung and prone to being startled than the others. She was a very creative, expressive, acrobatic, winsome little cinnamon wing, and I will always miss her too!

Because Frankie was so tiny, I felt like he was more vulnerable than the others, and because he became increasingly territorial over time, I came to the conclusion that canaries also prefer to be around a group of their own kind. That may not always be the case, but I'll keep it in mind if I get a canary in the future. I miss his lovely songs and cheeping, and the way he could smell fresh lettuce from anywhere in the apartment way before any of the others.

Georgie Mubarek passed away a while ago. I was stunned, because he had been with us less than two years. He used to go back and forth between Shah Rukh's cage and the other cages comfortably, and everyone got along with him very well. Some vets have mentioned that the treatment a bird gets in his first months determines how he will live, and for how long. I wish he could have stayed with us for a longer time!! We all miss him very much. Towards the end Shah Rukh changed from being self-absorbed and kind of standoffish towards him, and became a very compassionate, caring, pal who hovered over Georgie when he was having a rough time, and spending most nights sleeping right next to him. I'm sure that was comforting to Georgie. We miss you!!

The following are images I've seen over time at various sites. I went looking for the first one, of a hoopoe, because in the Qur'an a hoopoe comes to King Soloman and tells him Queen Sheba is on her way up the Nile to meet him. Both Christian and Islamic tradition hold that King Solomon could understand the speech of creatures, and I wanted to see what a hoopoe looks and sounds like!!

With some browsers, if you'd like to hear what a hoopoe sounds like, you can click on the picture and hear its call. If that doesn't work in your browser, you can hear it by clicking here.

I love these Bee Eater birds, also. Their coloring is striking, isn't it?

Contact information

shahadah.1@juno.com