On my very first post, I wrote about my intentions on getting a Yellow-Sided Green Cheek Conure as my next bird. This is still true, but I wanted to explain why. About a year ago, I made a visit to a Pets Unlimited store that is about 3 hours away from where I live. As usual, I headed straight for the birds section. They had a wide variety of birds there that included, but was not limited to; amazons, budgies, cockatiels, finches, senegals, an African grey, a kakariki, a blue-headed pionus, canaries, lovebirds, a caique and conures.
There were some normal green cheeks up near the front desk that I spotted and I decided to spend some time interacting with them. They were cute, and had funny yet intriguing personalities. I didn’t know that they were conures at the time, but I later figured out what they were.
After spending a bit more time with them, I went back over to the central bird section. I wanted to get a better look at each type of bird that was there, so I started with the budgies. They were really fun to watch, with their hyper attitudes and constant chirping. Most of the other types of birds I were familiar with, but there was one bird that constantly caught my eye as I walked by.
It was Tiki. She (or he) was a green cheek conure too, but was all alone and was the yellow-sided mutation. Tiki didn’t look really happy to be alone, and shied away from me if I came too close. I just couldn’t keep my eye off her though, and decided to try to get closer. Something about her made me stay with her for most of my visit to the store. I think we had a connection.
Once I figured that she was used to me enough, I was curious to see if she would let me give her scritches. Very slowly, I started to reach out with my finger. She was watching me very carefully with a suspicious eye, but when I got close enough she bowed her head asking for scritches! I wished I had my camera because I would of taken so many pictures, but we were in a hurry to get back home.
It was such a shock to me because I never got to be able to scritch a bird in my life! Tiki was going through a severe molt so she was not sure what to do. She kept turning her head down to get more scritches, but her pin feathers were sore looking and when I scritched her, they hurt. So she would get a bit confused and start to lunge at me, and I would back off and gave her some space.
I spent the rest of my visit crouched down near her cage for a while, talking to her and giving her scritches. The poor thing had a tiny cage that was near the floor. Some pet stores just make me so upset. After we had left, I couldn’t stop thinking about Tiki. She made a huge impression on me and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
Ever since that day, I realized that my first larger sized bird would be a yellow-sided green cheek conure. I’ve been reading and researching about them too, so that I’ll be prepared and ready for one when the time comes.
Avian Ambition 