Pious the Parrot's Page

Pious hatched on April 22, 1997.  I had picked up a Bird Talk magazine a few months later looking for information that would help me with my new cockatiel and instead discovered an article on a bird I had never heard of before – pionus parrots.  Because my cockatiel was such a delight, I wanted to move up to a slightly bigger parrot, one that was small enough and quiet enough for living in an apartment and easy going enough to get along with my then-five year old daughter.  The article suggested that pionus were an excellent “step up” from cockatiels – about the size of a pigeon, relatively quiet.  I decided to go with a bronze wing pionus, which the author claimed was her favorite species of pionus.  Using the classified ads in that very same magazine, I found a breeder in Brewster, New York who had five baby pionus available – four bronze wing and a dusky.  When I went to visit, none of the birds stood out for me.  The bronze wings were almost weaned, but the dusky was ready to go.  Because I absolutely hate driving and didn’t want to make the 3 hour drive a second time, I decided on the 6 month old dusky and brought her home with me that very day.

 I named the little dusky Pious, because I thought it sounded good with “pionus”.  She looked like a fat little hawk and I have wished ever since that I had named her “Peregrine”.  She was quiet and seemed to study her situation thoughtfully.  She was missing a nail on one toe – the breeder said that it had she had come out of the nest box with it twisted and that it had fallen off shortly afterwards.  It took her about 10 days to settle in.  One night while I was standing at the stove I heard footsteps behind me and felt someone pulling on my pant leg.  Thinking that it was my 5 year old daughter, I asked, "What do you want, B-" and looked down to see not Beth, but little Pious peering up at me with a curious expression.  I picked her up and she's been my baby ever since.

 Pious was such a wonderful bird that I decided to get a second pionus.  This time I went looking for a maxi and found  - a bronze wing!  At first Pious wanted nothing to do with the new baby and attacked her every chance she got.  It took a good 6 months before Pious finally allowed Gaelie to preen her - and another week after that before Pie decided to return the favor!  We lost Gaelie through a freak set of circumstances - two doors opened at different ends of a hallway at exactly the same moment.  Gaelie never came back to us.  To my horror, Pious managed to fly out the next day and disappeared over the roof of the next building.  I'm convinced that she went to look for Gaelie.  Thankfully, she  flew back into sight a few minutes later and landed on the screen where I could reach her.  Bringing her in, I told her that I knew she missed Gaelie, that I did too, and that we had tried to find her but couldn't, and now she had tried too,  but couldn't.  I told her if she tried again, she might be lost too and that if she was, we would miss her forever.

 The next night someone said "I love you."  I was shocked, since only Gaelie had ever managed to talk.    I turned around and it was Pie.  Putting my hand up, I said, "Come here" and she flew right over.  She studied me for a minute with beautiful, chocolate brown eyes, then said, "Pie bird.  Pretty Pie bird.  I love you.  Want some?  It's good." And then slowly put her head down for me to preen.  She had never spoken before nor since and had never let me preen her once she had Gaelie to do the job.

 I thought that that might be the end of it, but over a year later I was flipping through a baby parrot calendar.  When I came to a picture of a baby bronze wing, Pious puffed up on my shoulder and began to run up and down my arm, crying and whining.  Finally she tried to pull the baby out of the picture, right off the page.  It was heartbreaking.  Over a year after Gaelie was lost, Pious not only still remembered, she was still grieving.

 Later that year, we bought another bronze wing for Pious.  At first Pious was fascinated and spent every minute she could by its cage.  Unfortunately, the baby wanted nothing to do with Pious and screamed whenever she approached.  Disheartened, Pious eventually gave up trying to be friend the new baby, and has been a "Mama's Girl" ever since.

 Pie is the undisputed queen of the flock.  She likes nothing better than to perch on my shoulder and boldly go where no pionus has been lately.  When she comes, the other birds get out of her way.  When a stranger comes into the house, she comes barreling over to me to stand on my shoulder, gape her jaws and glare menacingly.  There is something both absurd and endearing about a 4 ounce parrot trying to take on the 200 lb cable guy, which may be why out of all the birds in my house, she is my special favorite.