Jack Sparrow and Canola....

Jack Sparrow is our male cockatiel. He was given to me a few years back by a student. His mother didn't like the mess that was being made by him in the bathroom where he was being kept. Cockatiels spit their seed shells out of the cage while they eat. They had been given the bird and they were just passing him on to me. I kept him at school most of that year then brought him home during the summer and kept him home. Certain people in school, adults, get easily irritated by their sounds. It just takes one so I just kept him at home. A couple years ago, another student went to a exotic animal sale and she bought a female bird, for twenty five dollars, named by her, Canola. I kept her at school and when the girl graduated it became my bird. I took her home and put her into Jack Sparrow's cage. She was not a very old bird when she was purchased.

I researched last year how to build a nest box for cockatiel's, made one, attached it to the outside of the cage and then the fun began. The male bird just spent days trying to get her to go into that box nest. He would crawl into that nest and call hours upon hours. Finally she succumbed and they immediately had six or eight eggs in there. Jack Sparrow actually sat on the eggs more than the female. She did take turns but he spent most of his time on the nest. A dozen days or so later after all the eggs were laid, they started hatching. From that batch we had two full grown cockatiel chicks. We had a lid that let us look in but all of a sudden one day one of them, full grown just crawled out of the nest and was in the cage. Probably five days later the second one left.
Those chicks kept returning in the nest at night so I didn't take the nest away. Before I knew what was happening, the adult female had gone back in there and had laid many more eggs. So babies helped sit on those eggs as well as the adults. This second time we had three more chicks. With in a month and a half we had five new cockatiels.
Needless to say, I didn't hesitate to get that nest off the cage once everyone seemed old enough to be out of the nest. What a crowd. I did give two birds to the girl who had given me the female, Canola, and I then had to separate the couple from their three babies. As you can see in the pictures they look a lot like their parents. I like to call them the three muskateers. They are really a very sweet bird.