Every Nice Sunday Afternoon

When I was small, and to be honest – ever since, winged creatures have been a fascination of mine. Since faeries and wild birds, Pegasus, Unicorns and Winged Dragons are a bit out of the question as family pets, I have had to “Make Do” with good old down-to-earth Pet Birds. Starting out at age 5 with a parakeet, I kept parakeets for 20 years. Then I discovered finches and tried them for awhile. Well, since I only at the time knew about the Zebra Finches, having been concentrating my studies on my Nursing Degree and not taking time out to really research birds in general, I was a bit bored with them. Well, I brought up 4 kids, launched nursing as a career, was widowed and remarried to a man whose best friend owned a pet store. A few lovely visits to the store got my fascination way over the top and we bought a Quaker and named it Nikki. I did not know if Nikki was boy or girl, but since then have also purchased another Quaker, a blue one.
Picture edited by my Opera buddy Jax, thanx much! Since then, they have become inseparable and a few eggs ensued, sterile though they were. WELL, I decided last year to add nesting paraphernalia to the cage they shared and LOW AND BEHOLD the one sitting on the eggs and thus the one who probably had laid them was my NIKKI. The Blue Quaker, Sky, aptly named, did next to nothing to help except to irritate all parties involved by becoming even MORE territorial around the cage if that was at all possible. Away from the cage the Quakers are fine, listen well, talk a bit, mimic every sound they hear, step up, all in all are fine pets. Well after the incubation time had long passed with no subsequent patter of little claws about the home cage, I removed the nesting site and found 3 sterile eggs. SO. I believe they are both girls. It is NOT uncommon for 2 female Quakers to forge a close bond and produce the odd egg or two. In the past 5 or 6 years I have had both birds together, eggs have appeared only 3 times. We only found out who had probably laid them when Nikki took the lead and sat on them. The Quakers are a noisy little bird but aside the territorial attitudes (will bloody any hand that decides to come within an inch of the cage bars and they can reach very well with their little pinch y sharp beaks to grab anything that breaches their force-field) they are very intelligent little devils and we honestly don’t know what home would be without them!