Читать книгу Birds For Dummies - Gina Spadafori - Страница 50

The rap on conures is that they should be sold along with earplugs for everyone around them — neighbors very much included. Some conures well deserve this reputation for noisiness — those vociferous sorts may be more closely related to macaws — but not all conures can be credited with a noisy nature.

We include conures with the medium-size parrots because some of the most common ones, such as the sun conure, aren’t all that large. As a group, though, conures display a wide range of size, with species such as the mitred really qualifying as a large parrot.

The conures of the Aratinga genus are usually the real noisemakers — the sun, jenday, golden-capped, mitred, red-fronted, dusky, and white-eyed, to name a few. Although not of the Aratinga genus, the nanday and the Patagonian conures are other conures with a well-earned reputation for noise.

Aratinga conures have formidable vocal abilities when it comes to shrieking and frequently have little hesitation to share their talents. Of these, the sun conure is probably the most attractive, enticing people to figure they can live with the noise just to enjoy the beauty and antics of these clever parrots.

The bottom line with these birds is the same hard truth you have to face with any winged pet: knowing what you can live with. You can’t change the nature of a bird; the best you can do is live with the traits that are challenging, to say the least. If the appearance and liveliness of a sun conure overwhelms any doubts you have about the noise, maybe you’re meant to have one (as long as you’re not living with close-by neighbors, that is).

The conures of the genus Pyrrhura are smaller and not nearly as loud. The green-cheeked, maroon-belly, and black-capped conures are the most popular in this group. Like the parrotlets and lineolated parakeets, green-cheeked conures can be quite the rock stars, easily learning many tricks and behaviors.

Conures range in price from $200 or so for some of the Pyrrhura to considerably more for flashier or rarer species or color variants, up to as much as $3,000. Life expectancies for healthy, well-cared-for birds can run from the twenties to the forties.