I can hardly believe Sassy will be 34 years old tomorrow & I brought him home when he was just 12 weeks old. I finished hand-feeding him & he has been part of my life since then. He was quite tame for the first 10 years then when I moved here he stayed with my sister & her family while I painted & got things ready at the house. He really enjoyed it when my niece who was about 5 would read him stories. I honestly think she made up the words, because she couldn’t read much then. I think he enjoyed her sweet little voice. I am not sure if it was the week away from living with me (I visited so he saw me) or he matured & hormones kicked it, but he was never as tame. Sassy is smart & he knows about 50 words & often uses them appropriately. He knows when a phone rings you say hello. If you don’t answer it he will yell hi, when I had a home phone & I was vacuuming this came in handy. I had a young lady who helped with my foster pets when I fostered & when she would walk in the room where Sassy was at he would wolf whistle at her & say hi baby. He liked her & really only did that to her. He used to take his beak & poke a friend of mine near her waist & she would laugh, so he would repeat it & look up at her, he seemed to enjoy the laughter. Sometimes he would laugh as well, which made us all laugh more.
Sassy in his younger days went to bird club meetings with me & he even went to a school & met a bunch of kids & I talked about him & he enjoyed the attention.
Sassy has always had roommates throughout his life, but never a cage-mate. Sassy doesn’t do well as an only bird, but not happy if a smaller bird landed on his cage, so kept only larger birds near him. All the other birds were older & eventually past on & Sassy seemed sad & lonely so about 2 years ago I adopted Ringo as a roommate for Sassy. They are good buddies & enjoy hanging out together & when not out of their cages, Sassy does often hang out on the side of the cage near Ringo’s cage.
I didn’t know if they would ever be able to be out of their cages together, but it didn’t take long & they were fast buds. In this photo they are hanging out together on top of an empty cage. They often hang out on each other’s cage & go in & eat the thing the other isn’t as much of a fan of. Sassy likes almonds, but Ringo doesn’t & he prefers walnuts.
I know in captivity Sassy is considered a senior, he goes into the Vet for annual exams & we discuss anything he needs & so far just getting him to eat more fresh foods high in Vitamin A is the biggest concern. He is a good weight, Amazons tend to get overweight easily.
Parrots are a long term commitment, & there are a lot out there that need homes due to their owners no longer having the ability to care for them any longer. I know if Ringo passes before Sassy I will adopt a senior Amazon so Sassy has a friend or at least companionship even if they never bond.
Sassy still will occasionally put his head down & lean into the cage bars & say “Scratch” which means he wants me to scratch the top of his head.
We have a long history together & he truly has been a neat bird & I am glad for the 34 years we have had together. Happy Birthday Sassy
I hope you are enjoying my blog & are learning, smiling & looking forward to more. I have 119 other posts on this blog & you can find the table of contents on my home page under the show tab in the upper left corner, then you can return to the home page & scroll down to the posts you want to read. My goal of this blog is to help educate pet owners by sharing my 20+ years fostering pets experience & a lifetime with pets. You can help me get the word out there in several ways: click the like button at the bottom of posts, Subscribe to my blog ( you will get an email when I post, not spam), Comment on my posts, share something you liked or learned. Visit by blog often, all these things help my blog to be seen by more people & helps move it farther up on search engines. I appreciate all my faithful subscribers, please consider becoming one. If you have an idea for a topic you’d like to know more about please send me an email at echoinggreatpetcare@gmail.com Thank you for visiting, Debbie
Echoing Great Pet Care 
Beautiful. we have 2 Sunconures. they are so sweet.
LikeLike
Sun Conures are beautiful birds, I fostered 1 & many years ago I had a Sun/Jenday cross. It was an unexpected breeding with a friends bird. I adopted him, he was handicapped but that didn’t stop him from having a good life.
LikeLiked by 1 person