Bird porn.

We’re a family that loves pets. Dogs, cats, birds, fish, rats, mice,(GOATS -we didn’t love those.) you name it, we’ve had it.
In the rescue department there have been turtles, a fox, wild birds, dumped dogs, cats, legless lizards and guinea pigs. I even gave mouth to beak resuscitation to a half drowned budgerigar once. That was a bit of a shock, to both me and the bird actually. As I blew into it’s beak, it’s lifeless eyes bugged, and to my horror it pooped out a huge worm. (Went on to have babies under the care of another bird loving friend, so it was a happy ending.)

Noah’s ark is a bit on the light side at the moment with only one cat, two dogs, (one of whom has suddenly gone blind at 6 yrs) and two cockatiels.

The cockatiels belong to our sixteen year old, who is bird crazy.
These are not the first cockatiels we’ve owned. Two of them got eaten by the same cat. (Bad bad cat!) who has now passed on, and one flew away. Very sad. We were devastated.
When my daughters bird got eaten by the cat, she was so upset that she mused over whether we should bury the cats poop – you know, kind of have a poop funeral, since that’s where she figured her beloved birds remains now were.

My daughter has been trying desperately to get her birds to breed.
The problem is, the female is hand reared and is in love with my daughter, and the male was aviary raised and just wants to mate the tame bird. (Mate anything I suspect. Horny bugger.)

He tries SO hard to get the females attention, singing a splendid repertoire of mating songs, displaying his wings, fluffing his feathers, turning circles on the perch.
All to no avail. Sadly, the sole object of his desire only has eyes for my daughter.
Shes’ also a drug addict. (Not my daughter…the bird.)
Here’s a short video of how much she LOVES taking her medicine (Unlike the male who will savage you to death if you try handling him.)

Bird crazy about taking her medicine. from Tracy Lundgren on Vimeo.

My daughter has tried everything to improve the females libido. A totally healthy diet of expensive pellets (the last lot of very expensive pellets got left out and eaten by the dogs!) and a wide array of fresh fruits and vegetables. Plenty of sunshine , a nesting box, rearranging the cage to keep them stimulated and entertained. Every bird toy known to man gets dutifully rotated to keep them from getting bored…etc
What more could a bird want? Champagne and caviar?

Every day my daughter pours over information on the Internet about breeding cockatiels. She knows everything there is to know about the process, and these birds, right down to all the genetic variations and what not (far too scientific for me to follow.) She will rattle on for hours if she thinks you’re listening, all whilst doing a heck of a lot of lamenting over her frustration at not being able to get them to breed.

Today I found my daughter standing at their cage with her laptop showing the birds something on the internet. (She does this. I know…it’s strange. She’s weird.)

This time though it wasn’t just other cockatiel’s singing or calling or anything….My daughter informed me she was showing them video’s of birds MATING, in order to “get them in the mood”.

“Are you kidding me?” I said.
“Now you’re resorting to bird porn?”

This seemed to fluster her a little.

“Google TOLD me to!” she said.

The strange thing was, the birds actually looked interested!  Well, the male did anyway, who instantly began copying, quite accurately, the sounds the porn birds were making. The female simply got hungry – for seed, unfortunately not for love.

So, the plight goes on.
One eternally randy male, and one hard to please female.
Always the way isn’t it?

Since the writing of this post we’ve now increased the bird count by one. No, no miracles happened overnight.

A simple visit to an old friends house (the one who adopted the drowned budgie) and suddenly now we have a third cockatiel.

I don’t know how this happened, we went bearing cheesecake, and came back with a baby bird.

It is hoped that the introduction of another much younger female will either foster their nurturing/parenting instincts, or else make the older female so jealous that she’ll kick up her heels, tizz up her crest and reclaim what is rightfully hers!