Many years ago, as the crow flies and the water flows under the bridge and over the dam, I had a pet parakeet named Jimmy. The specific reason I had a parakeet and not a dog or cat was that we lived in Stuyvesant Town, a recently-built housing project in New York City’s lower east side.
We lived on the corner of 14th and Avenue A, apartment 10-C, 505 East 14th Street, NYC — there were no zip or area codes then. You could reach me at ORegon 7- 4443 or 4444, and still can, if you happen to know how to time travel with a phone to years 1949-1957, or have a Matrix and iPhone handy, in which case, go to http://www.matrix.org and type in the specifics.
So where the heck was I??? Oh, yeah, pet parakeet Jimmy. Why Jimmy? I dunno, I knew dozens of Jimmy and James variants at school and around the enormous neighborhood of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen and my favorite hangouts, Greenwich Village and Midtown Manhattan.
I was a subway rider; I could tell you where to stand on any given train in the BMT, IRT, IND systems in order to get off at the optimum spot for the exit you’d want to use to the street. No point walking two blocks in the rain, or an extra five blocks in a subway station, when you can walk it off on the train while you’re waiting to get there…and no point taking a local when you can catch an express at the same station, eh?
Parakeet.
That was the subject, wasn’t it? Well, the reason I had one was that Stuyvesant Town, meaning Metropolitan Life Insurance Corporation, which owned and operated it, said “no” to dogs and cats, period. So I had a tankful of exotic tropical fish, a box turtle, a bright green grass snake, a cacomistle (Texan ring-tailed cat, totally nocturnal, loved to run up the drapes about midnight-ish), two tufted & crested midget marmosets, a few assorted lizards and the aforementioned parakeet.
Jimmy lived in a cage. It was New York City, a city dominated by pigeons and hawks, in that specific order. There’s nothing like seeing twelve blocks of traffic held up by a strolling pigeon giving the traffic cop a bad look as he waddles in a leisurely manner, across the 8-lane wide avenue, head bobbing forward and back, ignoring the blasting din of hundreds or thousands of automobile horns. The pigeon is unimpressed. Hell, in New York, you hear that all the time.
Jimmy used to eat a combination plate — I guess it must have been Hartz Mountain at the time. He came to live with us in October of 1949, the same year my Dad Horace started Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine as its founding editor, which he did for the next decade; Galaxy is still going on strong, at http://www.galaxyezine.org
But I digress. What did Jimmy eat? Okay, here’s what I know about what parakeets can safely eat — and they definitely need more than just plain old birdseed. They’ll stuff themselves on millet if they can get it and not eat anything else, because for them that’s like catnip for a cat or a Mars bar is for a human.
So, the good veggies, as I recall, are these, cut or shredded small, which is how the little guys like their stuff…
These items they like and should have quite often, as in every day, rotating through and finding what your parakeet or parakeets might prefer:
sweet potatoes
winter squash
carrots
okra
zucchini
endive
red leaf lettuce
romaine lettuce
carrot tops
dandelion greens
mustard greens
collard greens
turnip greens
grape leaves
fig leaves
cantaloupe
blackberries
figs
grapes
persimmons
cherries
kiwi
papaya
kumquat
apricots
honeydew melon
peaches
mango
raspberries
watermelon
Now the list of occasional treats, meaning once a week for each type — note that they are potential sources of intestinal upset, the chief cause of death of most pet parakeets, so if you note that the potty’s a bit more loose than usual, cut out any of the following:
tomatoes
wax beans
green beans
corn on the cob
mushrooms
pod peas
citrus fruits
bananas
strawberries
apples
blueberries
seedless raisins
Here is a list of No-No foods for parakeets, not that someone hasn’t fed this stuff to their bird, but I feel that these foods should be put on the “Don’t Feed This to Your Parakeet” list:
broccoli
cauliflower
beets
cabbage
brussel sprouts
kholrabi
turnips
bok choy
radishes
soybeans
beet greens
chard
kale
parsley
chinese mustard
mizuna
mibuna
spinach
iceberg lettuce (inedible for any species of anything)
celery
DANGEROUS BIRD TOXINS:
Rhubarb
Avocado
Most of the foods listed have a very poor calcium to phosphorus ratio, so always have a cuttlefish in the bird environment, especially if the bird’s primary diet is seed.
Birds also require a good source of UVB light so they can make enough vitamin D3 to process the calcium.
I always have some gravel around, sandpaper-covered landing perches and plenty of watering areas, high perches, and … have the food as high as they want it….Parakeets like their food high up when they can get it that way.
Watch out for drafts and serious sunlight scorch, things like that can easily cause death or damage. Be attentive to where you place the cage. Jimmy liked to look out the window at the East River, where hawks circled above flocks of pigeons following a long bamboo stick on almost every tenement roof.
Well, that’s it for the parakeet diet at the moment. Perhaps I’ll take some time to write a parakeet care book, if there’s enough interest.
gorby