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Once
upon a time, in the late
20th century, my daughter saw an unusual bird in our yard. While
she held the outdoor cat. I took out a dish of seed left by a
recently deceased parakeet. The lovebird had apparently not done
well at finding food in the wild. As he sat on the edge of the
dish feasting, I carried it and him inside. The rainbow lorikeet,
who was grieving for the
parakeet (his foster mom, but that's another very long story) let out a
happy screech. The lovebird reciprocated.
This peach-faced lovebird had had all
he wanted of the "great outdoors". He saw the cage vacated by the
parakeet cleaned and empty, and he took possession. No one
was going to get him out of that cage without a bloody fight. For
weeks, when we opened cage doors to let our birds out to play, the
lovebird
would go no farther than the outside of HIS cage. The lovebird
and
the lori were lifelong buddies.
Here
the lovebird visits the lame
albino zebra finch, a refugee of a different sort (that's also
a long story). He also enjoyed playing tag with the indoor cat
(some people nearly had heart attacks). The cat really was very
protective of the birds.
[Taxonomy:
Classification]
[Birds] [ Back Yard Biology]
[ Science
Can Be Fun]