SQUARE TOPS – ON TOP OF THE Head – Tweety

Meet Tweety who loved to sit on Frank’s head. We got Tweety in a pet store and he immediately imprinted on Frank. We didn’t go into that pet store to purchase a bird. We went to look at the fish. Love birds can live up to 50 years and we never wanted that kind of commitment. Tweety was smart and Frank trained him. When he wanted to be on Frank or get petted, Frank would tell him to go poop on command before he was allowed to jump onto his shoulder and he would. Many lessons learned while training a bird like this. If you let this beautiful love bird get on your shoulder before you got him to “squeeze it out”, you were guaranteed a dumping on your clothes, almost immediately. He had an open perch inside the house so he didn’t have to stay in his cage except at night. Sometimes he would come into the kitchen while Frank cooked. We always had to watch where we stepped in case he was walking on the floor. On a beautiful day in August, I turned my back in a second to retrieve a bowl I had just bathed him in after I set him up on his perch to preen and a red-tailed hawk swooped down and took him away. To say I was devastated was an understatement. These photos were taken over 10 years ago and I found them while going through my archives and thought they would be perfect for the Top Squares.

I wasn’t a birder back then, but loved photographing them along with landscapes. Shot a few weddings to afford my camera equipment, but while I was good at it, I didn’t want to make a living from it. If that hawk had not taken Tweety, we would likely still have him. No doubt about it and who knows if we would be able to do what we are able to do traveling as much as we do. Because of my mistake, I may never know, but I do know this, while he was alive, he was spoiled and lived as free as a love bird could live in a domestic setting.

Click the panel below to visit Becky’s site and the April Squares Photo Challenge: