Pet Love

By Joy Hinkson

This month’s featured pet will be a bird, it is Joyce Coble’s wonderful Conure Parrot Rico. To quote the Conure handbook that Joyce gave me to read Conure parrot birds are beautiful, charming, curious, intelligent, interactive, messy and stubborn. After meeting Rico I think I would add loving, and talkative. Rico is about 3 times larger than a parakeet bird but not as big as the larger parrots, hence does not need the huge parrot setups. Joyce maintains a large cage indoors and one out doors that is on a wheeled cart for Rico.

When Joyce’s beloved Parakeet BJ died. Joyce decided she didn’t want another pet but found after some time had gone by that she sorely missed the little bird noises and companionship.  Joyce’s granddaughter Lindsey who shares her grandmother’s love of birds convinced Joyce that she could find a new bird to replace BJ at Sebastopol’s Fin and Feathers Shop.  Lindsey attends Santa Rosa Jr. College and is taking Animal Science courses. Lindsey raises finches and has written an interesting paper for her class on breeding them for a variety of colors while maintaining a healthy bird with strong wings and good temperament. At the Fin and Feathers shop Joyce and Lindsey found Rico. He was hand raised by a woman who gets the birds as fledglings then raises them to be comfortable with human handling. He has easily bonded with Joyce and her son.  Joyce’s son suggested she call him Enrico Caruso but this was quickly shortened to Rico.

 Although Rico will be only one year in January he has already developed a considerable vocabulary. He likes to watch television and imitates many sounds that he hears. He also says ” kiss, kiss, kiss”, “pretty boy” and “pretty bird”. When Joyce leaves the room he makes an “eeeeeek” sound until she returns.

Rico is a very beautiful bird with an iridescent green back, a soft gray head and beautiful blue wing tips all of this is accented with contrasting maroon tail feathers. Under his beak on his chest he is a lovely cream color edged in gray, he has splashes of red spotting the green feathers on his chest.. He has a wonderful loving disposition and nestles on his back in Joyce’s son’s hand while enjoying a gentle tickling. He also loves to cuddle up under Joyce’s chin and will sit on her shoulder and preen her hair.

He is playful and loves to play peek-a-boo, hiding himself under a piece of paper. Joyce has many videos of his antics. Like most birds he enjoys a good bath, splashing and playing in the water in Joyce’s Pyrex baking dish.

“There are many varieties of conures, whose origins are distributed throughout Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In the wild, conures breed only within their own species. In captivity some hobbyists allow different conure species to inter breed. The resulting birds are called hybrids which also can breed and will produce young that are yet another step removed from the pure gene pool of the original species. With the decline of wild conures in some of their native habitats, preserving pure bloodlines is important to ensure the future of these conures.” (The Conure Handbook by Anne C Watkins)