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P.D. came to live with us in June 1999. She was 5 weeks old at that time, which turned out to be an advantage as she bonded with us strongly. The first couple of days she just sat in her cage, settling down and getting used to her new environment. After a few days she allowed us to extend our hand into her cage and it didn’t take her long to discover that a hand is good place to sit on. Soon after that she circled the living room and went on to explore the entire house, leaving behind little “goodies” for us to find and, at one time, a completely ruined houseplant.

If at any moment, she was not able to locate us she would sound her air-raid siren and circle the room, frantically looking for us. P.D. got into the habit of accompanying Angélique in everyhing she did. When Angélique went to bed, so did P.D. Whenever Angélique took a shower, P.D. had to get all wet too. Then she would get into the stream of hot air from the hairblower in order to dry her feathers and get on with her flying through the house. P.D. has one major problem: she is afraid of the dark. As soon as the light is turned off, she freaks out.

A nightlight solved this problem. Until one night, when the lamp broke down and P.D. went berserk. A visit to the vet was necessary, as she was covered in blood. It turned out she had sprained her left wing and had suffered a light concussion. So P.D. went wherever we went, even into our bedroom. As time went by, P.D. started to miss us very much when we had gone to work. As we started to learn more and more about cockatiels, we discovered that cockatiels enjoy each other’s company.

That is why we went to look for a buddy for P.D. We soon found K.B., but this cockatiel wanted to boss P.D. around, in which he succeeded rather well. After only a few hours, K.B. was lording it in P.D.’d domain, frightening P.D. out of her wits. As we never intended this to happen, we exchanged K.B. for another cockatiel: K.C. So K.C. entered P.D.’s domain and although P.D. was not too happy about it at first, after a few hours they got along quite well. P.D. and K.C. are still living together, but in a larger dwelling.

We bought them a very large parrot cage in a nice colour scheme: green and brass. In our experience, only few vets really know anything about cockatiels. Too bad we found this out at a time when we really needed one. Below are the numbers where we got the information we needed. Should anyone know of a vet who is an expert on cockatiels, please give us as much information as you can by e-mail and we will include this in our list. Just so that other cockatiel owners will know where to turn in case there is something wrong with their cockatiel.