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 This
photo is of my very first own budgerigar Nicke. He never got
that tame so that I could stroke his head or hold him in my
hands (except on the day when he passed away). However he
was tame enough to hop on my hand to eat some seed, salad,
cucumber or bread. He used to kiss my nose through the bars
whenever I talked to him in the cage, he taught that trick
to my other budgies as well. They won the Pet Class during
the Swedish Championships in 1993, which I was really surprised
and happy that they did. One of the reasons why they won was
that the judge just melted when my budgies instantly and without
hesitation went and kissed his nose through the cagebars.
:-)
Back then when I got Nicke, I didn't know how to sex a recessive
pied budgie. For a long time I thought that it was a hen since
the cere (above the beak) never turned blue, as I have read
in books that the cocks would have, it was still the pink
blue colour that baby budgies have. I even bought him a partner,
a light green cock... Then I started to wonder a bit since
their behaviour wasn't what I expected and after reading more
books I realised that Nicke was really a cock. Now I had two
cocks. The hunt for a hen started and I bought a yellow face
albino hen, Kicki.
I paired her up with the light green cock, Viggo. They got
a nest box and pretty soon they had budgie babies. I was stunned
that so small creatures developed so fast, in only five to
six weeks they were independent. There have been several clutches
during the years, with different pairs, I've saved some of
the youngsters myself, but most of them got new loving homes.
 One
of my sisters (Marja-Liisa on the photo) helped me to tame
some of my budgies. One of them got her wings trimmed when
I bought her (Vicky on the photo), to get her tame. After
that I let her wings grow back, the trimming had served its
purpose. Otherwise I've let all my budgies have their wingfeathers
intact because I managed to get most of them fairly tame anyway,
they have eaten seed and food from my hand.
I've been through a lot of joy but also sorrow. It has been,
and is, fun to study the budgie's behaviour towards other
budgies, the cocks trying to make the hens interested and
the hens pretending to be totally uninterested about what's
going on, and their loveable temperament.
The worst grief was when my first budgie Nicke died in my
hand. He was still going strong and playful even though he
was old. After he passed away I didn't buy more new birds,
I let my little flock of three old birds take it easy and
enjoy as they got older and older.
When eventually all the members of old flock were gone I
didn't feel like having new birds right away. But then I was
helping around during a budgerigar exhibition and there I
realised how much I did miss the sound of budgie chatter and
I was stuck again. I came home with a recessive pied dark
green cock, this time it was the exhibition type of budgie,
or English budgerigar as they're also called.
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