Talk:Lovebird

Aren't my birds cute? :) --Fennec 18:43, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yeah. But of course, cute bird is a bit of a redundancy. I love parrots. I have a pair of peach-faces myself. Well not a pair exactly, one's a widower, the other an adopted spinster, and they don't get along at all, still, I have two of them. You might want to be careful about the feather-plucked one. We lost Perch's mate because he plucked her and even when we put a heat blanket and a towel arond their cage she froze to death.

--Quintucket 23:45, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Image:Agapornis_roseicollis.jpg You almost can see her ponder about that odd camera you're holding, slightly squinting...

I visited this page because tonight I was reminded of a peachfaced that unfortunately passed away a year ago - although she reached the respectable age of 13. I've decided not to have pets anymore because I don't think animals are supposed to be kept or caged, but to her I was quite attached.

Curious bird, always eyeing you and the thing you're occupied with at that moment - be it a book, a laptop, your digital camera or the TV's remote for that matter.

Cheeky, too. Anything that's paper is at risk of being reduced to strips because she's got a beak that's got to be put to use and so she shall, and she won't hesitate to land on the top of the magazine you're reading (and be her noisy self) if that gets you to pay attention to her.

And affectionate. For all the pirate cliches that there are (hehe) she still loved to sit on my shoulder and unintentionally deafen me with her cries.

I quite miss her.

--MiG 21:43, 07 July 2005 (CET)

My lovebird does this vomiting ritual every time I scratch him. I guess he's attracted to my finger...

I went to a relative's house when they were not home and they had a caged lovebird, which I did not know anything about. I started to stick my fingers in the cage and he would (affectionately?) nibble on the fingernails. Unfortunately, I kept doing it, and after a day or so of on-and-off torture the bird would attack my fingers on sight, even drawing blood on one occasion :)

Then when I realized it could be let out, I had a bit of trouble because it was perfectly friendly with roosting on my shoulder, climbing under my shirt and popping its head out as if it were under a blanket, trying to clean my teeth, nibbling on my earlobes for some reason, etc. But if I stuck out my hand, trying to get it to stand on my hand, it would simply attack and bite it.

While I have been typing this (everything up to this point has been recounting previous experiences with the bird), it has been biting my ear a lot. It climbed down my left arm and tried two bite two little moles on my arm. It got to my left hand, started biting the keys on the keyboard, then attacked my right hand, drawing blood again (and if it makes its way down my right arm to my right hand, it will attack my left hand). Also, sometime when it was on my left arm, it stuck its butt off the edge and pooped onto my knee, which I did not realize until I scratched that knee and felt something there.

As it is so mean to my fingers, it was hard to get it back into its cage, but I just now managed to do it, being fed up with its antics. It's a fun bird and I was laughing most of the time, but I'll wait until my relatives (the owners of the bird) get home tonight and I can watch them play with it. This is Sajt reporting live.

Hi. I have a black masked lovebird and he is a sweet bird. He can be a bit of a rascal sometimes but I think that only makes him more hilarious. When I get home from work he crawls down into my shirt and preens me while I do my chores.

hi i have one of these,he's kinda irritating when im on the computer.spat10 i like birds i want an african grey but it's expensive.spat10

egg

Our lovebird recently laid an egg although its partner died over 6 months ago. Im wondering how long does the "pregnancy" or how long does the egg sit in the belly before being laid? are all eggs a bird? could it just be an unfurtle egg?

It's an infertile egg. An egg is produced in less than a day, think about birds laying a nest of eggs. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 19:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

More Solid Info

This reads like a care guide on lovebirds rather than an encyclopedic entry. See Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not under the section Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. I think that the section on Agapornis in the wild is too small to be useful, it is missing info on range, conservation status, ect.

Also, the section on diet is very POV, not everyone feeds pellets. --Flurken 20:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

The first picture on the page isn't a peach-faced lovebird. It is a split lutino peach-faced lovebird. There is no yellow on wild-colored peach-faced lovebirds. http://www.http://animal-world.com/encyclo/birds/lovebirds/images/PeachfrontWBLov_Ac103.jpg is a picture of a juvenile wild-colored peach-faced lovebird.

Possible omnivore?

Just a question. My love bird Tico attacked and ate a brown anole that wandered into my room through the crack under the door when he was on my shoulder. He eyed it for a couple of seconds and then came down upon it like a hawk and literally caught it with his nails I've been putting off to cut, and with it squirming he started pecking at it and eating it. Tico was pulling off strips off meat, ignoring the distraction of the flopping tail that apperantly was the lizard's last hope, and when he was done with it (when I intervened) it was missing three legs, the right side of its chest, and some of its abdomin. And its tail. Picking up the mess was sick enough and I regret not taking pictures, but are love birds supposed to do that? Ace Combat Fanatic 00:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Damn, Ace. I could've gone the rest of my life and not missed that description. 65.107.167.200 21:06, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Lovebird are usually strict herbivores —Preceding unsigned comment added by Afarila (talk • contribs) 18:15, 20 January 2007

Both of the (peach faced) lovebirds that I've had experience with will occasionally eat meat if it's offered to them. Additionally, some websites state that lovebirds will eat insects such as crickets.--Beezhive 18:44, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't regret you not taking pictures. 68.178.82.136 15:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

My brother's lovebird eats at the dinner table, and he'll climb over to your plate, totally ignore the fruits and vegetables or salad, and will go right after the meat.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.241.29.196 (talk • contribs) 18:16, 20 April 2007

Notice of import

A copy of this article was moved to wikibooks using the Import tool (with all revisions). If this article was marked for copy to wikibooks or as containing how-to sections, it can now be safely rewritten.

If contributors are interested in expanding on the practical information that was in this article, please do so on the wikibooks side. For pointers on writing wikibooks, see Wikibooks:Wikibooks for Wikipedians. --SB_Johnny | ^talk | _books 12:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Cannot be kept with other birds?

I heard somewhere that Lovebirds cannot be kept with other birds, as they will try to peck off their legs and hurt them. Is this citable and has anyone else ever heard this? Bilky asko 19:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I have heard that too about lovebirds in captivity, although I can not provide a reference. Snowman 08:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my love birds don't get along at all with any other birds, only amongst themselves are they friendly. And with people, of course.--24.85.171.109 04:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

needing cleanup?

I just reverted the article back to when some of the short phrases ("I love lovebirds!", "lovebirds will bite", etc.) were absent. Are most of these pet bird articles screwy like this, or is it just this one? I'm looking for a pet so I was browsing several cat/dog/bird articles and only some of the bird articles seem to share this problem...

Taxonomy

Are lovebirds Psittacini? Should there be some classification between genus and family in the taxobox? Snowman 08:55, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Requesting an expert to explain (or correct) the taxonomy. Snowman (talk) 08:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Lifespan

I think the 10-15 years estimate is a bit misleading - that really refers to them in the wild. In captivity, many owners report lovebirds living well into their 20s (IIRC, the greatest proven age is only about 18, but that's down to a lack of documentation more than anything else). Mine's at least 20 and I doubt that's anything special. -88.109.127.148 (talk) 08:19, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this could be sourced and written into the article; however, in my booklet (isbn 0866224114) about pet lovebirds it says "A lovebird may attain ten years or more in age", which seems to be consistent with the current article. Is yours a record breaker? Snowman (talk) 08:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I have no documentary proof that he was around in 1988 so it wouldn't be counted, and in any case there's lots of anecdotal evidence of much older lovebirds. 20 is undoubtedly old, but other owners have reported ages of 25 and up, so he's a long way off that for the time being (I suppose 20 years for a lovebird is a bit like reaching, say, 95 for a human - a very good run, but not quite into the exceptional bracket). -88.109.127.148 (talk) 16:50, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Toenail clipping

The following line, "a single sandpaper perch can help keep nails trimmed, but nails should be clipped every 6-8 weeks" added by User:Truehistoryjvba strikes me as incorrect. As far as I am aware (from keeping several species of small psittacine, including a Peach-faced Lovebird), it only becomes necessary to clip the toenails *if* they have become overgrown because the bird is pretty sedentary and does not wear them down naturally against a roughened surface (such as a concrete or sandpaper perch, or the sand sheet on the bottom of the cage) or by its daily general climbing and scampering around the house. Even if a trim does become necessary - it certainly doesn't need to be done that frequently, in my experience (I had my lovebird for 15 years and as far as I can remember, the veterinarian clipped her nails about four times in her entire life). Most birds also keep their nails trim by chewing on them as part of their daily grooming ritual. Any thoughts, folks? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 00:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I have found two references from general parrot care books and amended the article. Snowman (talk) 18:16, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, I do not think that parrots chew their nails to keep them short. Snowman (talk) 07:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

My Conure does. It's cute to watch. Thx1200 (talk)

sexually dimorphic

Why does the article say lovebirds are sexually dimorphic while in section Breeding it says "Determining Lovebird sex is difficult"? -- penubag  (talk) 08:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Three species out of nine are sexually dimorphic. Snowman (talk) 10:16, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Origin of genus name

What is the origin of the genus name? Stonemason89 (talk) 14:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Diet section is unsourced and biased

I have read many sources on the internet that have conflicting views on diet. A vet I trust said that either mostly pellets or mostly fresh food are both great and neither one is necessarily optimal as it depends on the individual bird's eating habits, likes, dislikes, etc. The only "bad" diet is one with mostly seed and junk. Now, I'm not updating the article with the opinion of just my one vet, obviously, lol, but I feel the current diet section is written from a POV and it is mostly definitely not sourced. I'm sure many would disagree that that a mostly (>90%) pellet diet is bad. I'm also sure that many would disagree that a mostly (>90%) fresh food diet is bad. The articles takes a 50/50-is-optimal approach. Not everybody believes that either. That's why I think the section is written poorly as is. I think it should take into account that there are varying opinions of optimal dietary health and SOURCE reliable articles that focus on the different dietary approaches from professionals avian researchers that are out there, while focusing on the fact that it's pretty well established that "mostly junk/seed" is the one diet that is pretty much universally seen as bad for bird health. My two cents. Thx1200 (talk) 21:14, 17 August 2010 (UTC)