S*Aliosha's Norwegian Forest Cats - Our Timneh African Grey parrots

December 26, 2008
The beginning
Aliosha has since he was a little boy always dreamt of owning a pet parrot, preferable a breed which is known for being able to talk a lot.

Hrund had a bird when she was a kid but since both she and her father were allergic to the bird she never even considered getting a bird again.

Our friend Vilma has a supremely nice cockatiel, Perla, she is so cuddly and loves to be scratched. We both liked her a lot and when we heard that Draco, a handfed male cockatiel, was available we decided to get him. We were so excited, went out and got a really big cage for him and lots of toys. Draco turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, he bit constantly and didn´t seem to like us much but he was a really good whistler. Although with time Aliosha made good progress with him and was able to get him to do a lot of things.

After a while we decided to get another bird, a friend for Draco. We went all over the place searching for a handfed cockatiel but to no avail. Finally we went to a pet store that Vilma told us about and there we found her, a very young female in the same colors as Perla, we named her Daisy.

Nökkvi
When we were shopping for Daisy we saw a lonely, scared Timneh African Grey (TAG) in the store. He screamed loudly every time someone came into the store. On the way home Aliosha talked about how much he always wanted an African Grey. A few days later Aliosha had to go back to the store, he discussed the TAG with the owner. The TAGs name was Nökkvi, he was 6 years old and had been imported to Iceland from Great Britain with a female and was a half tame breeding bird. Since him and the female never had any babies they were sold as pets, the female had already been sold and a few days later Nökkvi came to our home for a trial week. He was really scared and screamed if we came to close, we couldn´t let him go again and now he is one of the family. He is still scared but we give him the time and space he needs, he takes food and toys from our hands and contact whistles a lot.

Destiny
For the first 4 months we had Nökkvi we never even looked at the pet stores website where it was possible to see what birds were for sale. For some reason Hrund looked at the website December 8th and immediately saw a female TAG for sale, she had been put on the website that very same day. Her name was Mandla, she was 6 years old and imported from Great Britain….. coincidence or destiny…. we like to think it was destiny. We were pretty sure it was Nökkvi´s female friend. Hrund immediately wanted to go look at the female but Aliosha was a bit hesitant. We already had 3 birds and weren´t able to give the cockatiels the time they needed. We went to the pet store just to have a look and buy some bird food.

It turned out that we were right, this was the female Nökkvi was supposed to breed with. At the store Aliosha fell in love, Mandla was so feminine and beautiful with big round eyes, all she needed was those big long eyelashes you see in the comics. Aliosha whistled to her and she whistled back, it was love at first sight.

We went home, what were we to do, the bird was pretty expensive and we already had three. Hrund asked for advice on a bird forum and everyone said no way, don´t get her the birds’ won´t want to have anything to do with you when they are together. We were really torn, what should we do. Hrund read everything she could find on the internet, she found a specialist giving advice on a Parrot Trust Fund site, he said that it was better to allow parrots to have company of other parrots of the same species because parrots are such social creatures. It was enough, we decided to get Mandla and also that we wanted our cockatiels to get another chance with other people.

Nökkvi and Mandla
We were pretty excited when we went to get her, what would happen; we had been told that they might recognize each other after a week together. When we came home we put her cage in front of Nökkvi´s cage and had both cages open. Both birds made some sounds that seemed to be greetings. They looked at each other and started something that seemed to us to be a dance, bobbing their heads and flapping their wings at the exact same moment, completely in sync, then she went over to his cage and they kissed. It was so beautiful to watch, we both got tears in our eyes. These parrots mate for life and we had brought them together again. We didn´t have any doubts anymore, we clearly did the right thing for our birds.

We have had them together for two weeks now, we got them a new, nice big cage and they seem really happy. The kiss a lot, groom and feed each other, play and fight. Nökkvi has in no way changed towards us, he seems more secure. Mandla is not as afraid as he was at first and we think that with a little more time we can easily get her to do things, the second day she was here she accepted things from our hands and we can touch her. It may well be that since they are together it will take us longer time to get them tamer but if we think of them as living beings and not just pets for our enjoyment then it´s worth having them together.