rodnie
she's just a plain old $2,000.00 bird from australia, where they won't export them and people have licenses to hunt them and get $1.00 per head. they are like pigeons there and they destroy the crops. why australia won't export them is a mystery even to australians.
some were brought in a long time ago and the breeders have always kept the breeding low and kept the price high. here, in calif, you can buy a decent blue and gold for about $900.00. i bought gamine when she was 8 weeks old and already hand fed and eating on their own. very rare to have one talk, but they cuddle like crazy and attach easily. i know some people that breed them and they say the birds will let you into the nest box and touch the babies. they accept human contact.
when my son bought his female solomon island eclectus,the purple one, 20 odd years ago, he had to put $1,000.00 deposit on the egg in order to hold the bird if it hatched and was a female. i don't know what the balance was. unfortunatly, she picks her feathers and so she is a lovely shade of grey down, with a red head.
do you breed the birds or are they pets? if they are pets are they tame?
in the late 70's oby and i went through our bird period. we had at the same time a mulucan cockatoo
http://www.mytoos.com/
a blue and gold, a nape, the grey we still have and a catalina, cross betwee blue and gold and green wing.
plus ome keets a conjure, a parrotlet, and a grey cheek. of course the usual assortmen of 8 canaries and a cage i built in one of the rooms that easily held a dozen exotic finches. all in the house.
outside i had some fantail pigeons, a few doves, and a couple of rillbacks.
the mulocon was the first to decide he wanted to mate and started screaming night or day, dark or light. the link i gave you will demonstrate what he sounded like, unless he was on your shoulder being stroked.
one by one the big birds needed to be placed in a breeding colony, the little ones died of old age and one day we decided there was bore to do on saturday and sunday then clean cages. i would not have given one moment of the pleasure we had and i was sorry when the time for birds passed because they were all gone except zana the grey, and gamine my rose breasted cockatoo, called gala in astralia.
i'm sure you have heard of a grey named alex that has been in training for over 30 years and who can communicate with his trainers, but there is a bird named n'kisi that you will find remarkable. here is alink to an audio of the bird that some women is raising like a child and the birds is past communicating. it talks to her and makes jokes.
this is the google link
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=N%27kisi&btnG=Google+Search
and here is the audio link with a printout of what the bird is saying in case you miss a word.
http://www.sheldrake.org/nkisi/nkisi1_text.html
i think you just got this response like an email story, but i just love birds.
