Lestie......no worries. I did not take offense at anything you said. Thank you for your kind words.

When I was first married, my husband had a little Love Bird -- it was either a Lillian's Love Bird, or a Fisher's Love Bird (I am not sure).

This was a very intelligent small parrot and very affectionate. My husband named him 'Bird'.

Because Bird was so cute and smart I always felt he deserved a much more unique and honorable name. Yet any name I came up with just did not fit and he responded to the name Bird -- so, he was never given a unique name. I felt bad about that.

Bird lived with us for five years, previously 5 or 6 years with my husband before we married.

When we moved from an apartment to our first home, Bird became a little depressed and quiet. I had him in the living room where we spent our evenings watching TV. I moved Bird into the kitchen breakfast nook by a morning sunny window. Being a new housewife and a new mother, I spent most of the day in the kitchen. In warm weather, I opened the window by Bird a little so he could get fresh air and hear outside birds. He loved it there and became quite active and very happy. He talked to me a lot, in his own language and would go up and down his tree squawking and playing. When I bathed the baby or fed baby at the table, Bird would watch intently.

In the evenings when the kitchen was quiet Bird was taken into the living room where he could be with family.

When Bird died it was a sad day for us. I never forgot him and would love to get one like him again. Maybe some day....

Thank you, Les, for bringing back some good memories here.

Les, when Burdine was a single bird with us, she was a jazz singer. She would riff with Ella Fitzgerald and get down with Bob Dylan. With the addition of Snickers, she sang less.

Today, she was up to her old tricks. She was really singing with U2. Plus, she was saying, "Beakman, Beakman," in time with the music. Her name is Skye Burdine Beakman Davidson. When she was younger I would call her Beakman a lot, since she liked to use that needle-sharp beak on me.

Thanks all for contributing your remarkable bird stories.

My next article based on my first hand, er, I mean visual and auditory observations of my own birds and some online research is going to be about avian masturbation.

Do you have any experience with your birds masturbating? If you do and relate your observations here, perhaps I could incorporate them into the article that I will be writing in the next couple of days or so.

I find the topic to be both natural (in the wild and in captivity) and fascinating as like many behaviors, it depends on the individual needs and personality of the bird(s).