Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!att!ihlpg!mep From: mep@ihlpg.ATT.COM (Pasternak) Newsgroups: rec.birds Subject: Re: More on Hookbills Message-ID: <5585@ihlpg.ATT.COM> Date: 17 Oct 88 15:25:11 GMT References: <6418@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <1271@inuxd.UUCP> Reply-To: mep@ihlpg.UUCP (55513-Pasternak,M.E.) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois Lines: 27 In article <1271@inuxd.UUCP> jla@inuxd.UUCP (Joyce Andrews) writes: >> Nice bird. The African Greys have an extraordinary ability to reproduce and >> sound. My brother works for an aviary and their Grey will yell at him when he >> > > >The consensus is that if you want a bird to love to be stroked >and handled, get a cockatoo or cockatiel. If you want one that >talks a blue streak, get an African Grey or one of the Amazons. > I don't know about the talking aspect of the birds -- but whether a bird wants to be stroked & cuddled depends on how they were raised (hand-fed or otherwise), not so much on the exact type of bird. I have a miligold (hybrid between blue & gold and military) macaw who's been hand fed and she's the friendliest bird you could imagine. One of her favorite activities is tucking her head head under my chin & being petted and cuddled -- she's in heaven!! She's also friendly to other people ... gladly sitting on their shoulders, letting them pet her, etc. It also seems like there are different ways of hand-feeding baby birds: 1) hand-feed, cuddle, pet and talk to them and 2) hand-feed them -- the first method is what's been done with the friendly birds I know of & works great! The second method doesn't produce as friendly a bird -- a couple months ago I saw some baby african greys for sale who had apparently been raised with the 2nd method: no where near as friendly as ones who'd been raised with method #1.