KOCHI:Stocky, a short blunt tail and a relatively large sharp beak are the characteristics of a lovebird and people love watching the antics of these beautiful birds. But techie Fayaz Majeed’s love for these birds translates into training them as he believes lovebirds socialise well with humans. Fayaz too had an opportunity to bond with a 11-month-old lovebird whom he calls ‘Roben’.
“It was a summer morning when I got a call from one of my friends who owned a pet shop. He told me he sold one big lovebird cage to a customer with a small flock of Budgies. But he failed to notice a four-day-old baby budgie lying on the floor. The customer also left the pet shop without noticing the baby bird. He didn’t know or never had experience raising a baby bird,” said Fayaz. As Fayaz’s friend knew about his passion and love for pets, he called him. He adopted that baby lovebird. “I searched in Google on how to raise a baby budgerigar. I found a page called ‘Parrot Wizard’ written by Michael Sazhin from Texas, US, who is a bird expert and has a doctorate in Bird Life Science.
As per the instructions on that page, I started hand-feeding my bird using a small syringe with a small tube fitted on the nip. It was a multigrain powder mix which I bought from a medical shop that I fed my tiny pet with.” Soon, the fledgling responded to his care and grew very well. This bird trainer has about 30 birds in his house, including pigeons, parrots and lovebirds. He said, “We should never enclose birds in cages as they are meant to be free. I haven’t caged these birds as I believe we should win their trust. Unless we do that, they won’t socialise with us.” He feeds his birds whenever he returns home from office and due to his training his birds make some beautiful sounds.
He said, “We should train our birds by calling them. They are very sensitive. First, we start with a short distance then we should gradually increase the distance. This is how I trained my lovebird and now it responds to my calls.” Now, Roben is 11 months old and is a member of Fayaz’s family. “He flies into his cage during the night. The doors of his cage are always open. Never shop for pets. Instead, adopt them and bring them back to life,” said Fayaz. Besides having a space for birds, Fayaz is also passionate about pisciculture and has a wide collection of ornamental fish.