two birds

Our parakeet is a little obnoxious, but curious and I suppose somewhat intelligent because of this curiosity. He plays with all his toys in the cage and notices changes right away. We let him fly sometimes, and he'll circle the room and land on my finger.

I thought our canary, and canaries in general, were just a lot more mellow. He makes our parakeet look like a pest. Our canary just sits and looks at the parakeet as the parakeet clambers all over the cage trying to engage the canary. The parakeet can even imitate the canary's sounds. The canary occasionally will allow the parakeet to be close, but mostly he sits at the bottom of his cage. He doesn't seem interested in his swing, or mirrors, or bath and only at night really perches on the stick across the cage - but the majority of the day he sits at the bottom of the cage.

I've come to think our canary is a little boring.

Tolga and I were cleaning the cages the other day. We've opened the door many times for the canary but he has taken no interest or curiosity in leaving his cage. Tolga guided the canary out onto the table where he hopped around some.

Then he tried to fly. He was in the air for a second, then dive-bombed the couch, bounced off and landed on the floor looking a little stunned.

I was frozen in a gasp of horror, and Tolga ran over and scooped our canary up gently, putting him back in the cage.

I think there's something wrong with our bird.