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New budgie owner? Check out the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for information on caring for your new budgie.

If you've lost your budgie...

Parakeet Links

Find an emergency vet - The American College of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care:
(click on 'Find a specialist')
Also try searching on Google for an emergency clinic in your area. But have this number handy *before* you need it.

Parakeet vet questions answered by a veterinarian, huge archive. Questions are transcribed and included on one giant page; if you have a specific breed or issue in mind, you may want to search within the page because it's too long to skim quickly. There's a huge amount of information here.: http://www.birdhotline.com/vet.htm

Want to buy a parakeet, and are you in the Bowie/Crofton Maryland area?
Pet Value, Crofton: 410-451-1585
The owner raises her own parakeets and they are really tame, healthy and adorable. If I didn't already have enough keets I would buy some of hers. Call her to make sure she is not sold out.
Located in the Village at Waugh Chapel, in Gambrills, MD.

Other Parakeet FAQs:

• The Budgie place - has FAQ, toxic plant list, and parakeet sounds
• Budgie care sheet
• http://www.lisashea.com/petinfo/articles/bird_faq.html
• http://www.geocities.com/sgr1220/FAQ.html
• http://www.upatsix.com/faq/budgie.htm
• How to take care of a parakeet (wiki)

Misc:

• What kind of cage to get and what to put in it
  
• Funny piece on what it's like to research owning a parakeet, and having one as a pet!
• This true budgie lover has a wonderful aviary and built a great website full of excellent pictures and even audio and video of parakeets. Also sign up for their budgie lovers e-mail list.
  

Budgie information and parakeet care

Good background info from BirdTimes magazine

Lots of info on budgies

More parakeet info:
(click on the heading 'parakeet' for more info. The pictures are cute!)

Budgie page, even has a few links so you can hear one whistle or talk

Me & My Budgie

Gatesey, the little blue budgie

Sign up for the Budgie list

Budgie discussion forum

Training

• How to hand train a parakeet
• Parakeet - Training videos (for sale): nicely-produced videos on the training of parakeets (and other birds). The trainers have a gentle manner and treat the birds very well. They use reward-based training which is a positive training method (a great way to train animals).

Food

• Healthy food for your parakeet and also a link to Harrison's bird food online
  
• Vitamins: I like Oasis Bird Vita Drops high potency multivitamin. It's found at PetSmart but you can buy it in numerous places.

Victor the budgie with a huge vocabulary:
http://www.parrotconfessions.homestead.com/introflash.html
http://www.worldsfunniestbudgie.homestead.com/indexmain.html
Victor & Betty: http://www.angelfire.com/my/betty/betty.html

Intelligence:
African Grey's intelligence: learn about Alex
Animal intelligence in general
From PBS: more on parrots (how they are intelligent, and often mistreated)
From Animal Planet (Discovery Channel), on bird intelligence
The Artificial Intelligence Resource: The Quest for Intelligence

For more information on birds caught illegally in the wild, read:

• Birds First: fighting against the sale of wild-caught birds
• Take action: write your representative (sample letter, make sure the info for your own rep is correct)
• Parrots in Danger - how these birds' numbers are dwindling, and a short piece on what you can do about it.
• Newsflash of a successful sting operation to break up a smuggling ring, and a few interesting 'did you know' facts.
• A paper on the parrot trade.
• There is also a lot more info out there - just visit Google and search away!

More information about shade-grown coffee, and helping birds:

• Background and info on shade-grown coffee (excellent article)
• Northwest Shade Coffee Campaign
• Smithsonian's National Zoo's Migratory Bird Page (lots of info here! Click on Bird-Friendly Coffee)
• Oxfam International - working towards many projects and campaigns to help people, such as Fair Trade, education, and medicine. Learn more about coffee issues in this article.
• Java for Justice - company that sells coffee. I like the news section on the right. It discusses the desperate struggle of coffee farmers as they try to provide food for themselves and their families. It's so important to buy coffee from a company that treats its farmers fairly (thus 'Fair Trade Coffee'). It's only a few cents more per cup to buy the good stuff (which usually tastes better, and can have less pesticides anyway), so this is one good way that you can make a big difference without a big effort.
• Songbird Coffee news - from a company that sells coffee. Pretty site - check out their news.

(note: I don't drink coffee so I don't recommend any one company one way or another. There are a lot more companies out there - make sure when you get coffee, you are getting the shade-grown stuff!)