My parakeet just died and i am looking for another bird, but i want a different breed. I need one that will do well on its own and be very friendly that i can get without spending a lot of money.
Also is tap water bad for birds?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: premier690,

I'm sorry your budgie died. How old was s/he? was it an unexpected illness?

Ok now I'm probably going to make you mad about all this but I (this is my personal opinion) do not understand why when a small parrot dies, the owner has to go out & get another straight away. Fair enough, I don't know why the bird died, that's why I asked.

But one thing I do know is there is A LOT more to keeping a bird in a cage for long periods of the day. They are NOT ornaments.

You cannot expect to have ANY bird, let alone a small one in the cage most of the day & have it friendly towards you without any effort on your part.

I would highly recomend you stay with the smallest birds as the bigger they get, the more behaviours they have if unattended to through the day. However, this can also happen to small parrots.

If you have to get another one, first of all, scrub the old cage & area where your old budgie was with hot water & vinigar (I don't dilute vinigar). This is to protect your new bird incase the old one died from an illness. you new bird can still catch the illness or desease.

Prices vary a great deal from place to place. Look around in bird shops & breeders. See what there is available, how well they look, friendliness etc...speak to shop owners & breeders & try & get parent info on them. If they look like they a little shakey, fluffed up, hostile, don't get them.

For a bird that has to be in his cage most of the day will require a big cage, & I mean BIG. It doesn't matter how small the bird is. S/he will need to be able to stretch his wings, play around safely with LOTS of perches & toys to relieve boredom & not be cramped so he can't move around or tangle up in toys. If you don't have things to relieve boredom this can cause some serious self destructive behaviours.

Friendliness will only ever depend on you. You can't expect a bird to be friendly & stay friendly if you don't interact with it. You need to spend some time training & teaching him things for him to stay socialized.

Most readily available & popular & possibly hardier that I can think of would be budgie, cockatiel or lovebird. When I say hardier, I don't mean these 3 do not need human interaction. They all do, no matter what the breed, otherwise you will have behaviours like screaming, unsocial & bitty, feather picking & many more.

Google is an excellent resource so do as much research as you can on lifestyle, behaviours, diet etc before getting a bird.

Hope this helps.

Water again can depend on where you are but most people play it safe & use bottle or filtered water.

Kimforster,

I have to say that I agree with you 110% percent. We are very like minded from what I can see. I couldn't have expressed it better.

My first concern was what caused the demise of the little one in the first place. If it was an illness, it would be terrible to bring a new bird into that environment.

I have 12 year old budgies and 20 something tiels. I have a grey that is over 50 and I am always concerned about why a bird dies when someone makes a post like this. Not knowing what happened to the bird before and how old it was, I would be truly reluctant to advise another bird.

The advice given in the post above is excellent and right on the money.

Kimforster, I can see that you also believe that Birds Come First! Brava (The feminine of Bravo!)

I also agree with Kim forster because you really need to spend some daily time with your parakeet.Just imagine you being in A cage with nobody to talk to.Oh,and im sorry that your parakeet died.