How did you first get interested in birds?

Hi everyone
This one got me thinking. My recollection of being fascinated with birds is my grans canary who lived in her kitchen and rang like a telephone. Then also my grandad had a yard full of cages, he had guinea fowl, finches, crows, chicken phesants and peacocks from what I can remember. I loved the crow, named Blackie as he spoke.
Later on again I also remember my dad always loving wild birds and always feeding them and it is something I still do. I love watching them. My first husband also loved birds and we bred canaries and budgies. I particularly liked the budgies. After we separated I continued to feed the wild birds. About 18 months ago I longed to a have a pet bird, but I wanted something more substantial. My sister then bought Mischief for me the IRN. I added the TAG, Gogga about 7 months ago. No looking back, I love them to bits and wouldn't swop them for the world. I would love to own a Macaw but I am still not up to it and I am also running out of space. I seen to always have had birds in my life and been interested in them. As a young girl I also belonged to a bird watching club. Here is South Africa it is easy to get bids into the garden, so I love watching the wild birds everyday.
But then my family are keeping a close eye on me as I would take in any animal if I could. I adore animals and have always said I feel a far stronger bond with them than humans. I also trust them easily and they have as much love as they can stand.

Well I never ever had any before, my mom was scared to death of them! Anything with feathers!! But I always liked them. When I got married, we would always get our taxes done in this little strip mall. There was a pet store right next door and we would always go in there and look around. Jessie and I were always drawn to the big parrots. We always said we would get one. Than some people we knew had Molly, a Quaker parrot and they hated her, she was 3 years old and abused. They asked if we wanted to just take her, and after we saw how she was treated we took her in right away! You all pretty much know the story on her, it's posted somewhere in here lol. But we saved her, and even though she hated me, I still liked the noisy little thing. She is now 12 and we still have her. We than got SweetHeart our TAG and Casper our Goffin's Cockatoo and Spike our little cockatiel. We are wanting to add down the line a Macaw and a CAG. So one day when I get the bird room built we will add on!

Good idea Lyric!

Well my love affair with birds started like yours with a little blue budgie, but we were even more original in naming him, his name was Budge! He survived a broken wing and learned to fly again afterwards but the only thing he said was Dirty Bum Budge He used to eat cereal from the edge of our bowls, he loved fruit of all description. Considering we knew nothing about nutrition either he did have a fairly decent diet. But then my mother used to give him all sorts of left overs to make his seed last longer!!! Bird seed was quite expensive then.

Hi everyone! I thought it might be fun to post a thread where we can all tell our stories about how we first fell in love with birds. It will be a way for us all to get to know each other a little bit better. Since it is my idea, I'll go first!
When I was a very young girl my parents decided it might be a good learning experience for me and my sister to get pet budgies. They took us to a breeder's house and we each got to pick out our own from the cage full of little gem colored birds. We each chose blue budgies, my sister named hers Chessie and mine was Tweety- (yeah, I know that's real original isn't it? Hey I was little!) Both our birds tamed easily and quickly and before you know it both were also talking in that cute little way that budgies have of talking. My sister's even used to make the sound of a ball bouncing- that was really neat. We used to take our birds out a lot and play with them. They both lived quite a long time considering that back then we didn't really understand about proper bird nutrition and they both lived on bird seeds and an occassional piece of celery. Tweety is really what started my whole love affair with birds and once I was out on my own I got another budgie, a canary winged parakeet and then later even more birds.