Budgies anybody?

[Riddo 47]

We lived on Vicarage St in the 1950s. I remember my mum had a thing about Budgerigars. Whether this was something from her childhood days or perhaps triggered by visits to the arboretum aviaries I don't know. Anyway, she must have pestered my dad, because eventually she got one & it was kept in a cage in the "best" (i.e. front) room. Me & my sister went with her to fetch it from a house I've always thought of as being on Alfred St South, but I suppose it could have been any of the nearby streets rising up from St Anns Well Road. Anyone remember a budgie breeder around there?

Another memory, tying in with my other posts about Vicarage St, is to do with the old man who my mum helped across Huntingdon St to the Nags Head pub at lunchtime. I remember being in his house (at least I think it was his) and a much younger man poking away at a budgie with a kitchen knife through the bars of its cage!

Yet another memory is of a budgie being let out of its cage while I was in the room and having it flapping around my head. It really scared me & I've had a phobia of being in an enclosed space with a bird ever since............

Stop it!

[LizzieM 9,508]

Never had a budgie Riddo but we did look after one belonging to a neighbour while they went on holiday. My Mum just wouldn't entertain the idea of us having pets and I know she never had pets when she was a child. My Dad eventually got around her and went and bought a Mynah bird that we called Fred. He was in this big metal cage hanging on the wall in the lounge and due to his diet of mainly fruit the cage had to be cleaned out every day. Poor Dad would do that as soon as he got in from work every night. While the cage was being sorted out Fred was let loose to fly around the room, poo-ing on the chair backs. Mum tolerated Fred because he was funny and used to shout her name. Eventually, after quite a number of years, we gave the bird away to a work colleague of mine who had an aviary. It was time for him to go, his metal cage was beginning to fall apart!

[Michael Booth 7,364]

'I've had a phobia of being in an enclosed space with a bird ever since' (#1). Strange that, Riddo. I've always found it quite pleasurable

[banjo48 928]

Not budgies but canaries, my grandad was a miner and used to breed beautiful yellow canaries, he had an aviary behind his prefab near Wigman road. so as a child we always had a canary whistling away in the house.

Early in my marriage we had a miner bird, George. Food went in one end and squirted out the other !

He was an amazing talker and imitator, often I used to run to the phone only to find it was the bloody bird, then I would hear my missus call my name and would come in asking "what" and she would say " I never called you". He could imitate the vacuum cleaner complete with squeaky wheel !

The final straw was my wife's older brother used to pop in between jobs for a coffee and would sit at the cage teaching George profanities ! his favourite was "Janet's a prat " at the top of his voice ! my wife was not amused.

That was it, he went to a new home in a pub somewhere I can't remember and was the star of the show, he probably learnt some more choice words in the process.

[Bilbraborn 1,594]

My dad used to breed budgies when I was a youngster. He used to keep the breeding cages in the outhouse and was quite successful but he got really upset when any escaped. We had a number of budgies over the years and the tweeting used to keep my mum company when she was on her own doing ironing etc. They used to be let out into the front room in the evenings and one of them used to love sitting on my dad's (bald) head. I could say it was a passing fad but my dad was breeding budgies for several years.

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Mynas mimic every noise around them, there was one at the Tiger Inn, Easington when I worked at Boulby..It used to imitate the landlords German Shepherd dog, hardly any difference other than the barking came from a cage on the bar... He stopped keeping it on the bar after an incident one night.

Right next to the bar was a table used by mining supervisors from Boulby, the Myna picked up a lot of choice language, like whats the F*&^%$# belts stopped for......A miner who drank there picked a soda syphon up and let the Myna have it...You could hear a pin drop, then everyone except the landlord saw the funny side.....

He kept the bloody thing upstairs after that.

We had a budgie we found, when we lived in Sacramento one Sunday while out riding our pushbikes..Best talker I've ever had, if he was out at dinner time, you had to watch him, or he'd be in the plate eating mashed tators etc, or bathing in a glass of wine...He was a bu99er and we still miss him..

[poohbear 1,360]

Plenty of birds but no budgies...