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| Sun Conures.
Their colors and personalities make them truly popular parrots.
The first time I ever saw one up close, I knew I wanted one.
But that SCREAM! Oh... so shrill and so LOUD! The volume
these little parrots are capable of is truly astounding.
I'm sure there are many Sun Conures who were
adopted as impulse buys and not long after "re-homed" because of
that scream.
Back in 2002, when I looking for a cockatiel
(Siva had just passed away and I couldn't stand the silence), I ran
across a Sun Conure in the local "PetsSmart" store. The bird
was about 12 months old, and hadn't been handled much (a common
problem for parrots in large pet stores), but the clerk said that
this one was still fairly tame. She took the bird out of it's
large lucite display cage and set it on my arm. |
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A crowd of about 10 people gathered
around the cage (this was a busy Saturday afternoon and the cage was
very close to the front of the store). I was a bit concerned
because there were so many people and they were standing very close
to me and the parrot; I was worried the little guy would be startled
and might try to fly off.
The little bird stood on my hands for a few
seconds and then casually strolled up my arm to my shoulder.
He turned and stood facing the crowd in front of me (us) and let out
a characteristic screeech!
I kid you not - every person in that crowd
took an immediate step back! And me? I'm not sure my
hearing on that side has completely recovered. |
| I didn't buy a Sun Conure that year.
Instead, Aussie and Bubba came to live with me, and the year after
that, Pakshi. But the bright colors and lively personality
still attracted me. I did my "homework" and carefully thought
about the noise factor, but finally decided to adopt one.
In April of 2004 I went to the local bird fair
and there located a breeder who had just-weaned baby Sun Conures. |
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I looked at the 2 little birds she had.
They were clearly conures, but the colors just didn't look like what
I was expecting. The breeder explained that these were "baby
feathers" and that when the bird molted after a year, the full
colors would come in. Both birds seemed healthy and lively, so
I happily took the one that seemed just a bit interested in me.
After a couple of years with me, Forte has proven
to me many times that she definitely has the voice of a Sun Conure,
but her feathers have never completely gone as yellow as I was
expecting. My husband (shown here getting a nose-job from
Forte) and I have speculated many times that she might actually be a
"Sun-day" (Sun and Jenday conure hybrid), but I guess there's no way
to truly know for sure.
It doesn't matter, I guess. We don't
plan to breed her, and we love her. |
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Here she is playing with her
ring-toss game. She was less than a year old in these photos. |
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| Forte has a pair of roller
skates. She never did learn to skate. At first she
was terrified of them, but about the time she got over her fear,
she realized they were made of soft wood....
She also has a harness which I'd intended to
use so she could go outside on walks. Unfortunately, I
didn't realize that once she accepted the harness (which she did
when she was about 6 months old), I'd need to continue using it
with her. I didn't continue with the harness once the cold
weather set in, and by the time spring rolled around again,
Forte developed an intense fear and hatred for the harness. |
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Like all our parrots, Forte gets
regular showers. She goes into our stand-up shower stall with
me or Stephen when we take our showers, and she sits on a special
stand we have in there. I'm not sure I can say she's wildly
enthusiastic about bathing, but she puts up with it.
After her bath she likes to sit in the window
of Stephen's office here at home and preen a bit as she watches the
street traffic. |
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Here's Forte help Stephen select
a few stocks to invest in. What ever would he do with out his
personal Avian Financial Advisor? |
| Like all parrots, Forte is
fascinated with computers. Here she's relaxing with Stephen in
the family room - checking out the cricket scores.
This photo doesn't show it, but the shirt he's
wearing is riddled with holes like a swiss cheese. Forte is an
expert in the fine art of snapping buttons in half and nipping
little holes into just about any fabric you can wear. Most of
Stephen's shirts now sport little holes in them near the collar and
shoulders. |
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Forte enjoyed the position of
"baby of the family" until June of 2005, when Jesse came to live
with us. Here is a photo take of the two
of them together. I had never expected that they would be
"buddies", but I did hope they'd at least tolerate each other's
presence. That was a big fantasy on my part. These days,
when we have them out at the same time, we have to be very careful
to keep them apart. Jesse isn't the problem (at least not so
far), it's Forte who attacks!
Well... actually, she only attacks if Jesse
has the nerve to get to close to Forte's preferred human (Stephen).
But it's a real worry. |
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