by Pajarita » Tue Oct 01, 2019 10:15 am
With your schedule, the only kind of parrot that will work out is a male/female pair of an aviary species. Why? Because, during the winter, you will never see the birds during the day and that means they have to have some other type of company for them to be healthy and happy. People that have just one bird almost always say that 'their' bird is happy and healthy but, in reality, it's a scientific impossibility and more wishful thinking than reality. ALL parrots are highly social animals that evolved to have the 'safety net' of their flock around them from birth to death. This is not a personal opinion or preference, it's a fact of science. Being alone is extremely stressful to them and chronic stress means depressed immune system, this, added to the fact that captivity always causes stress as well as the unnatural conditions we keep them under (we are talking housing, diet, not enough exercise, no flock security, etc), it does for a unhappy, unhealthy bird. Again, not a personal opinion but a sad fact of parrot keeping.
As to which species... well, there are several you can choose from: budgies (aka parakeets), cockatiels, lovebirds, canarywings, parrotlets, etc. Personally, I would adopt a pair of mate-bonded cockatiels. They are beautiful, hardy, smart, easy to take care of and, by far, the sweetest tempered of all parrots. The males will learn to whistle songs and some of them even talk but, if kept right, they are not noisy (females hardly ever make a peep and males only vocalize often during breeding season), easily available and inexpensive. If you decide to go with lovebirds, please make sure the birds are DNAd male and female (cockatiels and parrotlets are sexually dimorphic when adults) because although you can keep a male/female or a male/male pair, you can't a female/female.