Post by anastasia on Apr 17, 2018 13:48:38 GMT
I hope it's OK that I made a new thread, I thought as the title of the last one is out of date now it would be better not to mislead people into clicking and reading through thinking there is still urgent advice needed.
This weekend I showed some photos to a local exotic pet shop that breeds parrots, and they said Bo (that's her name by the way, luckily we chose a unisex one despite thinking she was definitely female) is definitely not an Abyssinian lovebird, and her tail is only short because the feathers got damaged and fell out. They think she's a male Indian Ringneck under 2 years old, whose ring hasn't changed colour yet. As far as I can tell from online information, you can't be sure of the sex until the ring does grow through, so I'll give it another year before deciding with any certainty about that, but I'm sure they're right about her species (I'll keep calling her 'her' for now).
I think she must have grown and changed physically quite a lot and we didn't notice because we saw her everyday, because when they said what they said, I looked up images and footage of Abyssinians again to show them how similar she is, and found she doesn't look as much like them as I remember thinking back in February. I thought the match was spot on before, but now, adult ALs look small enough for her to eat, lol. Their irises also remain dark after maturity and the eyeballs have only a subtle white ring around them, whereas IRNs' turn light blue, and each eyeball gets surrounded by an obvious white and orange ring. I studied both her and those images closely in February, so presumably her eyes were more like the ALs' back then, or surely I would have noticed the difference. I've looked up images of baby IRNs, and they do indeed look pretty indistinguishable form ALs apart from the long tail.
There have been other clues that I didn't think much of, like the timbre of her voice. We haven't heard any distinguishable words, but when she chatters the voice is exactly the same as the famous IRN squeaky toy impression, haha. Another one is her aversion to hands, which is more common in IRNs than other parrots.
When I get a chance, I'll update on how she's settling in and post some more photos.
This weekend I showed some photos to a local exotic pet shop that breeds parrots, and they said Bo (that's her name by the way, luckily we chose a unisex one despite thinking she was definitely female) is definitely not an Abyssinian lovebird, and her tail is only short because the feathers got damaged and fell out. They think she's a male Indian Ringneck under 2 years old, whose ring hasn't changed colour yet. As far as I can tell from online information, you can't be sure of the sex until the ring does grow through, so I'll give it another year before deciding with any certainty about that, but I'm sure they're right about her species (I'll keep calling her 'her' for now).
I think she must have grown and changed physically quite a lot and we didn't notice because we saw her everyday, because when they said what they said, I looked up images and footage of Abyssinians again to show them how similar she is, and found she doesn't look as much like them as I remember thinking back in February. I thought the match was spot on before, but now, adult ALs look small enough for her to eat, lol. Their irises also remain dark after maturity and the eyeballs have only a subtle white ring around them, whereas IRNs' turn light blue, and each eyeball gets surrounded by an obvious white and orange ring. I studied both her and those images closely in February, so presumably her eyes were more like the ALs' back then, or surely I would have noticed the difference. I've looked up images of baby IRNs, and they do indeed look pretty indistinguishable form ALs apart from the long tail.
There have been other clues that I didn't think much of, like the timbre of her voice. We haven't heard any distinguishable words, but when she chatters the voice is exactly the same as the famous IRN squeaky toy impression, haha. Another one is her aversion to hands, which is more common in IRNs than other parrots.
When I get a chance, I'll update on how she's settling in and post some more photos.
