Eulogy to a cockatiel

A bright little flame flickered out in my life this week.

‘Boy’, my ancient and very charming cockatiel, after a few bittersweet weeks of growing infirmity, went to sleep for one last time, and I miss him.

Cockatiels are usually said to live 15-20 years, although as their care (especially nutrition) has improved, they have been increasingly living into their 20s. Boy was one of the longer-lived. It was more than a quarter of a century ago, that a lady was standing in a garden in the British county of Kent, when this perky grey bird with a yellow head and orange cheeks landed on a tree nearby.  She offered him an arm and he clambered down to her. They looked at each other for a moment, and then the cockatiel raised its crest and with excellent diction said ‘Hello pretty boy!’, and so it was that Boy came into the family and gained the name we knew him by.

He joined a small menagerie which already included another male cockatiel (‘Clementine’ named for his cheeks) and, over the years, this also included a somewhat motley collection of budgerigars, many of which were rehomed from a local rescue centre.

Clementine and Boy were very different in personality. The first was rather a bully, whereas Boy was always a gentle soul. At first they lived in the house with us and then in a large aviary in the garden. In theory, the mixed flock provided company for one another but I suspect that Boy’s highlight of the day was always when there were humans around, including when we came to let the birds into the outer flight in the mornings and close them in at night.  He always gave a good night chirp.

His repertoire – all of which arrived with him (and in addition to his ‘pretty boy’ phrase) – included a wolf whistle, a phrase from the Archer’s theme tune (a popular radio soap-opera) and a very good impression of a ‘trim-phone’ (a device no longer heard today). Most endearingly he also laughed. In fact whenever anyone laughed, including people on a TV programme, Boy laughed heartily along too.

When the cockatiels grew elderly – and less inclined to use their outer flight - we brought them back in-doors into a large shared cage. Boy out-lived Clementine by a couple of years. He continued to delight in human company until the end, but he did increasingly show signs of age.  His plumage became less well preened, his proud crest a little less well shaped and, in his final weeks, his legs grew stiff. But he always perked up when there were people around. He loved company.

Some evenings, I would gently lure him from his cage onto a cushion, balance the cushion on my chest and face to face we would exchange whistles and mimicked phone buzzes (I can do quite a good trim-phone now) and, although he would never allow anyone to touch him, he would come so close that his crest sometimes tickled my nose. Even in his last weeks he would still whistle back and gently chuckle along with situation comedies on the TV.

I know that some people find the idea of birds as companion animals odd; certainly they require special care and careful consideration needs to be given to their long life-spans, accommodation needs and proper food. You can read more about companion birds here. 

The larger parrots so often seem to have a miserable time and cannot be recommended. I recently met one on a ferry journey travelling with its owner off on holiday. It was an African grey. Its owners had divorced some years before and the parrot broken-hearted and, like so many others of its kind when distressed, started to feather-pluck; a habit that it seems almost impossible to break. Its pink chest was visible through the bars of its carry-cage.  When the divorced man comes to visit his son, it is the parrot that screams out ‘Hello Daddy!’ in delight, and presumably suffers again when the man leaves.

Boy never said that to me; it was not in his repertoire, but we certainly had a strong bond. As a some-time home-worker, he was always positive company for me; always ready to respond with a supportive whistle. The house is strangely quieter without him; something magical has moved on.