What’s all the chirping noise?

I have an announcement to make.

We have a new member of our family. He’s about two years old, grey and white and has feathers. It’s a new cockatiel, and his name is Churt. Weird name, I know, but it’s starting to grow on us. Are you surprised? No, of course you aren’t. Thanks to the magic of freecycle, and a family out there who didn’t think they could give this little guy the attention he deserved, we now have him.

Here’s a picture of Popcorn and Churt. Popcorn is in the front, and Churt is in the back. They are not totally identical. Churt has a little bit of white on his head, so we can tell them apart, but not from far away.

When I brought in the cage with our new little friend in it, Popcorn immediately flew down to investigate. “Wow!” he said, “It’s someone who looks just like me! I think I’m in love!” only it sounded like chirp, chirp, squawk to us. But since he’s been here, Popcorn has been close by. If we take Churt out to play with him, Popcorn flies down to be with him, too. It’s cute.

Sundance, our wise old bird who we’ve had for over 15 years, is less than interested. But I kind of figured he wouldn’t care. He’s old and doesn’t really want to play anymore, but we hope that Popcorn and Churt will get along and play and be friends. Right now Churt is in his own cage, but Popcorn is often in the cage with him, or on top of the cage, or by the cage. I’m hoping to someday get everyone in the same cage so we can do away with the whole two cage thing, but for now I’m ok with two cages.

So, in case you were counting, that brings the bird total at our house to 8. We’ve got the three cockatiels, then there are 5 parakeets up in the girls’ rooms. Yes, that’s a lot of bird seed.