IndianRingNeck.com

Thomasina came into my life almost a decade ago. Her situation had been dire - neglectful home, shelter bird before that, who knows what had truly happened to her. She came to me a damaged and untrusting soul, who'd fling herself off perches and bloody up her wings if anyone even got near her cage. ...

As winter heating's become a bit of an issue at my house and the room they were in became unsuitable to keep them in 'til it warms up, Thomasina and I have acquired roommates: Baby Whitey and newcomer Stormy, the parakeets. Thomasina had never met them before today, plus she'd already gone to bed wh...

The one thing Thomasina never tires of is popcorn. I keep a plastic bag full of it for her (stove-popped from the kernels with a little bit of vegetable oil, no butter or anything like that) right at the stand where her cage is placed in the living room. I inadvertantly trained her to ring her bell ...

Baby was the last survivor of the pets I took home from Petco while I worked there. It was him, Larry the budgie (another return, former owners claimed he was aggressive, and that was his name when I got to him), three strawberry finches, two shafttail finches, and quite a few hamsters. So in a way,...

Several years ago, while I was working at Petco, I was informed that a budgie had been returned. This budgie's wing had been broken (it was suspected that some rather poor ownership had something to do with this), and the vet that the store worked with was planning on putting the budgie down. I and ...

She settled right down and started eating her wet popcorn (strange bird has to dunk EVERYTHING) like nothing happened. Cheeky bird. :) She already crosses that short gap between dishes to ring her bell for popcorn (because I told her to ring her bell if she wanted popcorn...and stupidly didn't expec...

OMG, it's the male Thomasina. :D I get the death glare whenever I give attention to any other animal, and I've made jokes while looking at birds at Petco that I'm not allowed to bring home any bird larger than a budgie (budgies and finches stay in another room of the house, where she doesn't go), le...

I think it's because she associates them with me, and she loves her mama. She even gets jealous of my hamsters!

Tomsy has a favorite game. She absolutely loves when I take a small plastic bottle and start gently tapping it against her beak while she tries to reach out and get it through her cage bars. I have no idea why she loves this so much, but she gets so excited, putting her wings up, pinning her eyes an...

Hrm. That kind of sounds like separation anxiety to me. As for talking, I've heard that female IRNs aren't as talky as males, though from my own experience, that might not be in actual words. My clever green gal has learned to sound out words she likes to hear, though she hasn't quite figured out th...

Thomasina came from a series of bad situations and really didn't know about much in the way of food other than her seed mix, so over the several years she's been with me, I've worked on introducing her to all kinds of new foods and learning her preferences. This happened late last year. I'd purchase...

Thomasina's food includes banana chips mixed in, and I noticed that she usually went for them first when they turned up in her dish. This made me think that maybe she would like it if I bought some to give to her. Around this time, pretty much every store that sold banana chips prior inexplicably st...

Stumbled across this board on Google, thought I'd join up. I've been owned by my green female IRN, Thomasina (Tomsy for short), for several years now. She was mistreated and neglected by past owners, and when she came into my life, she didn't trust anyone. It's been quite an adventure working with h...