Ziggy

Since this blog features my birds, I'll share some bird stories :)

Ziggy is a 13 year old Quaker Parrot. Quakers are a small parrot, green and grey in color. They're about the size of a cockatiel in length, but much more solid and beefy. They can develop fairly extensive vocabularies. Ziggy came to us second-hand just after Christmas last year. He's the bird on the very far left of the bird graphic at the top of this page.

Ziggy says: Mommy (much like an angry 3 year old child, if you can imagine that), get the lead out, sue the bastards (hey, he used to belong to a lawyer), Jonah (one of his former owner's kids), pet the birdie, bye-bye, thank you. He laughs like a little girl, he "crunches" (like chips), he gurgles (like water), he says meow just like the cat, yaba-daba-do, ok, he squeals like the fridge door opening, he makes kissing sounds, coughs, hiccups, and makes several other sounds that we haven't been able to figure out. When he's pissed, you know it, because he chews you out, even if you can't understand the words.

Ziggy also likes to sing karaoke. No, really, he does. He sits on Scott's shoulder and "sings" while Scott does - if it's a song he's heard Scott do a lot, he'll even hit it on key occasionally. He sings the song by Suzanne Vega called Tom's Diner and sings it frequently. He whistles the theme song to the Odd Couple, if you remember that.

Most of the time, he's only loyal to one of us at a time. If it's Scott's day, I can't get anywhere near him, and vice versa. He spends more time with me, because while Scott plays with him, but I nuzzle him and stroke him, which he loves.

When we bought our newest bird, another Quaker named Katie, part of the thought process was we wanted a bird that we could teach our own phrases to, rather than having it repeated phrases someone else had taught them.

Imagine my dismay when I suddenly heard Ziggy's phrases coming from Katie! He's taught her several of the noises he makes, but as yet, she's not saying any actual words. If she pops off with "sue the bastards", I'm going to cry!

Ziggy is out of his cage 24/7, unless we're going to be gone overnight. Katie is a roamer and so she's pretty much grounded to her cage at the moment, until she learns that she needs to stay on her cage. The past few days, Ziggy has been trying to break her out of her cage, which is cute to watch, but he wants nothing to do with her once she is out. Not quite sure what that's about.

Ziggy is an absolute joy to have in our lives and I hope he lives out his full life span of 25-35 years :)