Quote Originally Posted by bambu101 View Post
Sundial,
I had little birds for years, like finches, parakeets, and canaries. Our first parrot (Bambu, a Senegal parrot), was purchased as a baby a little over 10 years ago, and he can be unpredictable, and bites hard without warning. He usually loves me, but bites my DH at every opportunity. His bites are far more painful than our Blue & Gold macaw, BeeGee! She was adopted from a rescue in Philadelphia last summer, and was turned into them after being confiscated from a police raid on a crack house. She had been kept in a dark basement, and fed a crappy diet of peanuts and sunflower seeds. Now she is a beautiful girl in perfect health, and a sweet, loving, goofy character. We also have a moustached parakeet (Moe Green) that we adopted from a friend's family where the couple both died of cancer in their 40s. There is also a canary and one parakeet in our current flock.
Wendy

I, too, have a number of birds and have for years. One thing to point out, is that even though different birds have different personality reputations, you never know. I have a Meyer's Parrot (close relative of a senegal) and she's an opinionated pushy pest, but she'd never bite anyone. If she get's mad at you, she poops on you. I have a cockatiel that has been mistreated, passed around to several owners for various reasons and is frankly insane. I'm just giving her the best (caged) life I can. I have several budgies (parakeets).
My best pet of my entire life was a budgie! He knew 50 words and what many of them meant (he'd land on your shoulder and say 'hello' and say 'goodbye' right before he left, he'd ask for kisses...). So, don't discount the little "cheap" guys. (But budgies have been overbred and have lots of health issues and I'd like people to stop buying them until they aren't "disposable" cheep things anymore)
Birds are wonderful pets, but they are much much more intelligent than dogs and cats (I love my dogs), so they need a lot of attention, imagine locking a 2 year old child in a closet and expecting it not to go insane. That's what happens to so many birds. A minimum of 1 hr/day of attention is what every bird needs - and that can be a lot of work.
I was going to recommend that you consider a bird like a Senegal, but then I saw Sundial's post! Still, there are lots of nice small parrots out there - Quakers, Poisephelous (like Senegal’s and Meyer's Parrots), Conures...