Hazel the Parrotlet

Hi, I'm Hazel!

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

Some sad news.

Hazel died very suddenly yesterday afternoon.

I’m currently not staying at the house due to quarantine fun, but my spouse knows how to take care of the birds (change food/water/paper daily, watch them on and off to make sure they’re eating and acting normally, keep the door shut so cats and dogs can’t get in there and harass the birds through cage bars, etc...)

Hazel was her usual self, climbing around, kicking food out of her dish, chewing on toys, singing, as active as she ever was,and then she stopped.

That wasn’t too abnormal as the birds make noise on and off throughout the day but when Gus started shrieking, my spouse went in to see what he was upset about and found Hazel dead on her cage floor.

No obvious signs of anything like fatty liver, weight loss, she was at a good, plump weight, she wasn’t egg bound, and the best guess we have is it was combination of age (the breeder who surrendered her said he’d been using her as a breeding hen for ‘at least’ 8-9 years, and the rescue had her for a year before I adopted her, so she would have been around 12-14 if I leave some wiggle room for an age estimate, and her body not being in the best conditions (she improved a lot health wise once we got her but with a lifetime of stress, physical abuse from her mate, and poor diet does tend to shave years off of some birds’ lives) and she literally just...stopped.

Gus is being watched closely until we can get him for a vet exam so she can do a blood draw and fecal testing to make sure he’s not sick.

Here’s to hoping Hazel got a full set of feathers back when she left for her next adventure.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

I have a lot of new followers!

My keeper would like to remind everyone to please read my about page if you have questions about the way I look.

He’s usually good about pointing out that I do not pluck and was plucked by my mate.

I am not a tame bird as I was not a pet in my previous home, I was a breeder bird and once I stopped laying due to the stress of being plucked by my mate, I wasn’t making money anymore, and was dropped off at a rescue.

That’s not the worst place to end up but if my first owner had been a better person I still might not be tame, but I would also likely have full feather as I would have been separated from the other bird who was plucking me as soon as it was noticed I was being plucked. Mate plucking usually only occurs when we’re being kept poorly and in situations where there isn’t much room in the cage and aren’t often toys or anything for mental stimulation but sometimes it just happens even if we’re being kept well and a pair, even if we’re bonded, should be separated immediately if one starts plucking the other.

I am not DNA’d female but I lay eggs occasionally (and, also, was a breeder bird), so DNA sexing really isn’t necessary as only females lay eggs anyway! I’m a single bird, so the eggs are not fertile and get taken away; if my keeper doesn’t take them I just keep laying more and will nest on them until they start to rot.

If he takes them, I might still nest in my food bowl but I don’t lay more eggs after the first one or two.

Fingers and hands scare me and I don’t care to be handled much, but will step onto arms (if your hands are covered). I used to run away from hands but now I just bite them. My keeper says it’s a good sign that I no longer run to the far back corner of my cage when approached and instead hold my ground, open my beak, puff up, and hiss. He’d rather I be a little cage aggressive than terrified. I like to be talked to and interacted with from a good distance, but I don’t like to be approached most of the time; parrotlets are very small birds (smaller than budgies! Some finches are even bigger.) and people are very big.

I don’t often come out of my cage due to that and due to the fact that I do not have enough feathers to safely be anywhere but on the floor; I fall like a rock because each wing only has about four or five feathers left, and that’s dangerous as it could break my keel. There is no carpet in the house so an accidental fall isn’t a soft one. Since I don’t like to be grabbed or picked up, my keeper just has a big variety of hanging toys and foot toys that get rotated through my cage.

My cage is 24x24x24 and has a mesh wire design so it’s easy for me to climb and not likely that I’ll slide off of bars or fall.

I calm down in a towel and am generally good for the vet (other than trying to bite her fingers).

Sometimes I yell at the quaker whose cage is right next to mine. When I yell at him he starts making cockatiel noises instead of quaker noises for some reason.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

I laid an egg yesterday but, my bowl/nest didn’t have any food left so it got taken away!

Keeper says they won’t hatch anyway as I’m a single lady now.

Please be nice about my appearance. I’m a rescue and ex-breeder hen whose mate plucked me nearly bald.

I do not pluck, I am not being mistreated or kept poorly, and my keeper does not need any advice on how to stop plucking.

I am permanently bald where I am missing feathers because the follicles are damaged. I am a perfectly healthy, happy bird, I just look different.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

Hmmm...

NO.

Please be nice about my appearance. I’m a rescue and ex-breeder hen whose mate plucked me nearly bald.

I do not pluck, I am not being mistreated or kept poorly, and my keeper does not need any advice on how to stop plucking.

I am permanently bald where I am missing feathers because the follicles are damaged. I am a perfectly healthy, happy bird, I just look different.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

I am not kicking food out of my bowl so I can sit in it, how dare you?!

Please be nice about my appearance. I’m a rescue and ex-breeder hen whose mate plucked me nearly bald.

I do not pluck, I am not being mistreated or kept poorly, and my keeper does not need any advice on how to stop plucking.

I am permanently bald where I am missing feathers because the follicles are damaged.

This is also just one part of my overall diet; I also get other brands of pellets, sprouted seed, regular seed, vegetables, fruit, and sometimes pasta and nuts.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

unabashedmaievfan replied to your photo “It’s not a food bowl if I kick all the food out of it and use it as a...”

This bird has a serious problem with it's feathers

If you could have been bothered to read the original post’s tags, any other post on the blog, or the blog’s about page you’d have seen that she’s an ex-breeder rescue whose mate plucked her nearly bald and would have saved yourself looking super rude by making a comment like that.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

It’s not a food bowl if I kick all the food out of it and use it as a nest!

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

I still don’t like it when hands come into my cage, but I don’t run away anymore.

This is as feathered as I’m going to get, too. I’ve been through two molts and you can see by my few chest feathers that I’m just finishing the second.

Unfortunately, my mate’s plucking did permanent damage to a lot of my feather follicles, so I’ll be a mostly naked lady for the rest of my life.

I don’t mind, it’s warm in here and nobody is around to pluck my remaining feathers, so this is just my look now.

The only downside for me is that a lot of my wing feathers were plucked by my mate and those follicles were damaged, so I’ll never be able to fly or even drop to the floor safely as I only have around four flight feathers per wing. :(

Please note: I do not pluck. While my keeper appreciates the concern, he does not need tips on how to stop me from plucking because I do not pluck.

I was a breeder bird before my mate plucked me to this point and I stopped producing clutches. At that point, the human decided I wasn’t worth keeping an dumped me at a rescue. I am, essentially, a wild bird in that I was never socialized, never handled, or even really interacted with by people until I went into a rescue. Even the rescuer was frustrated that I wasn’t “coming around” but, in fairness, she was used to birds who had been tame at one point then became less tame through neglect, not a bird that was never tame to begin with.

Maybe I’ll become tame someday, maybe I won’t, but my keeper has decided to go at my pace and with what I’m comfortable with and he doesn’t force me to be handled unless it’s for medical/vet reasons. When I do decide to come out of my cage if the door is open, if I want to interact with him, I hop across the floor (there is a little ladder leading from my cage to the floor so I don’t have to try and fly--and fall :( ) to get to him and sit on his feet or legs.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

I still bite hands, but I don’t mind sitting on sleeves (if hands are covered!).

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

These are big steps for me!

I no longer run to the back of my cage when someone’s hands enter my cage, and I wasn’t even scared of the camera!

I was suspicious of it and hissed at it a couple of times but then decided eating was a better use of my time.

I’m also consistently eating ZuPreem Fruitblend and my keeper is trying to add in or transition me to Goldn’obles. I’ll eat them but they’re a little bigger than I like my food, so he’s going to try getting me a small bag of the small beak version (these are medium beak as Gus is larger than me) and see if I like those better.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

I laid an egg!

It’s not too surprising, considering I used to be a breeder bird.

I’m getting extra calcium/D3 for a little while just to make sure I don’t end up eggbound if I lay another one again soon.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

oxytocinwanted replied to your photo: “If I look a little puffed up and angry, it’s because I am! This perch...”:

Just wanted to pop in to say that even adult breeders can become cuddlebugs, given enough time and respect for their boundaries! Not thst theres anything wrong if they dont, but i got an adult livebird from a breeder situation who had never been handled, and its been...three years? And she definitely prefers my company, hides in my shirts, etc <3

That's true, it can just take them a lot longer.

Hazel might never turn cuddly but that's fine with me; if her comfort level remains just being around people but not being handled much, it's cool.

I don't do the 'flooding' methods of taming birds anymore (the one where you basically just hold them in a towel until they calm down) as I don't really feel it's fair to the bird to basically just terrify them until they shut down and accept handling, so we'll see where Hazel ends up at her own pace. :)

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

If I look a little puffed up and angry, it’s because I am!

This perch is right next to my food bowl, and my keeper somehow thought it was okay for him to put his weird, unfeathered hands into my home and give me fresh food!

I hissed at him a few times, but am proud to say I didn’t panic or run away! I just sat and angrily watched.

He says this is a good thing, as it means I’m getting more used to people being close to me and not getting scared, but I’m not so sure about that.

Might bite him next time.

( As an aside though, this is a big step for Hazel. She’s gone from panicking when I get near her cage, even if I’m not going into it,  to running to the far corner, to being actively aggressive toward me, to still being annoyed but sitting still and just watching. 

I have no plans to just reach for her and pick her up at any point; she’s an untame breeder who has never been handled before, so she may  never be hand tame so much as hand tolerant, and wherever she ends up on that spectrum is going to be her choice, not mine.

Would it be nice if she were eventually a cuddly bird? Sure, but I went into her adoption knowing she was an unsocialized, untame, adult breeder and may never tame down as nicely as a bird that had been routinely handled by people.)

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

Who dares disturb nap time?!

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

I’ve gone from being terrified of hands to wanting to bite them!

I didn’t get scared at all when my keeper wanted to go into my cage and change the water, but man, did I ever try to bite!

I also yelled at him a lot once he opened the cage to actually take the water dish out.

My keeper says this more aggressive behavior is a step up from being terrified as it means I’m less scared if I’m willing to get voluntarily close enough to bite. I just want to make the hands go away, and I did bite him once but he just laughed!

Maybe I’ll bite harder next time just to show him.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

I’m now reliably eating pellets!

I’ve looked at fresh foods that are the same colors as the Fruitblend pellets, but haven’t yet wanted to try them.

I am, however, no longer on a seed heavy diet anymore!

I still get some seeds now and again as a treat, but the majority of my diet now is pellets.

We’re still working on fresh food; sometimes it scares me away from my bowl because it looks weird.

[hazel-the-parrotlet]

My keeper found pictures of the parrotlet he had about ten years ago.

His name was Charlie and the people who gave him to my keeper thought he was a budgie!

He says Charlie was a sweet bird despite coming from a home where he was routinely tormented, injured by being thrown into the wall by a kid (he couldn’t really fly, one wing had been broken at some point and healed crooked), he was missing parts of all of his toes because they let their cat “play” with him, and despite all of that he was the gentlest, sweetest bird.

He was kept in a cage that was barely 12 inches on all measurements.

They also “warned” my keeper that he was “ugly and missing some feathers”, and the first thing my keeper said when he got home to see the ‘budgie’ that was dropped off was, “What a pretty bird!”

Charlie eventually died from fatty liver disease, which was caused by him being on an all seed diet for years.