mikeb@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Mike Burger) (07/13/90)
I was much impressed with the Austrailian posting about the huge flock of cockatiels attacking the spilled grain. I have just been reading a book about training cockatiels which has a large section on "free living pets". What they mean is training your cockatiel to just hang out in the back yard, not in an aviary, just living in the back yard! They indicate it is fairly easy with most cockatiels and they will decide the yard is their "territory" and stay put. In Hawaii we have many people who breed cockatiels in outdoor aviaries year round. The birds do great. They probably could really relate to all the watershed forests we protect for fresh water supply even on Oahu. The weather obviously suits them. Does anyone else know about or have exprience with this idea of simply training your pet bird to live in the back yard? This seems like a very dangerous practice. We have the Java Sparrow here as an escaped bird and it spreads noticably in range every year. We also have many breeders of love birds in outdoor aviaries. One could envision a moderate hurricane ripping open such an aviary and releasing several dozen already mated pairs of a single species into the environment. I guess it is surprising we have so few escaped bird populations, especially in a place like Hawaii which has "indoor" weather year round. Maybe released birds are less well able to deal with the swarms of mongeese and rats, or compete effectively with the English Sparrows. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mike Burger Department of Chemistry | 2545 The Mall | BITNET: MIKEB@UHCCUX.bitnet | University of Hawaii | INTERNET: mike@helium.chem.hawaii.edu | Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822 |