Please Read I Need To Take A Step Back For A Bit

Zwielicht said:

Some of you may be aware that I had a cockatiel for years now.

I got him when he was around 2 weeks and I used to visit him regularly whilst he was being hand-raised by a friend of mine who owns a bird shop.

I was very close to this bird and spent a lot of my time with him. I even went as far as changing all of the fans in the house to bird-safe ones and putting netting up on the exterior doors just so he could be out in the house alongside the other two parrots we have.

On Christmas Eve, we had him and the others out with me in the living room. He got startled by a cup of water getting knocked over and started flying around. I thought I had closed the backdoor, but I turned around, realised it was fully open, and saw him fly right into the netting. This stopped him and he fell down, but for some reason, he climbed under it and flew out of the house.

He's flown out of the house before and I recall trained him with a specific whistle so he could come back. This time however, he got chased around by these crows and ended up in the neighbour's yard. I jumped over the fence to get him and he got chased around by yet another crow. He ended up a couple houses down, so we knocked on that person's door to get him. He was up against their house's wall and my wife got a towel to grab him, but he got startled again and flew off only to get chased even further down by yet another crow.

We've spent days looking for him, but he's no longer responding to the whistle I taught him. We're still looking because it's only been four days, but I'm posting this here because @Impulse and I are both at the point where we need to pull back with our activity here and onlijne in general for now. This has been an awful year for both of us and this happening has been the cherry on top of it all.

We'll still do updates occasionally and we have plenty of moderators here, so everything will be covered as usual.

If you have issues, please use the report button instead of DMing. If you have suggestions, use the suggestions section. Anything else, use the support desk on the forum.

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SirTop said:

Is there still a chance you could still find him if he comes around the neighbourhood again

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SirTop said:

if the neighbours are aware that it’s your bird?

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SirTop said:

I honestly don’t really know how the bird world works but I’m assuming that like most pets, when they wander off they often tend to come back close to familiar surroundings

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Zwielicht said:

Yeah, there's still a chance I could find him around. The area I live in would be very hard for him to leave, but he's also not the brightest bird and tends to fly into things he really shouldn't.

I don't talk much with my neighbours, but I ended up meeting new ones whenever I've gone out looking for him, so those ones are aware.

People on Nextdoor are as well.

Sometimes. It depends on the bird. Cockatiels tend to stay in the area, but he's not actually familiar with the outside of the house. Whenever I took him outside, I drove him to the local park and let him be out there for a bit, but it's been years since we last did that.

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polecat said:

Can you pay people to help you find the bird or ask the police or others for help?

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Zwielicht said:

No, I barely have any money these days.

I might be able to file something with the local animal control in case someone finds him and brings him into a shelter. I’ll look into doing that later. Thanks.

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