Pet passion

Parrots are more than birds. They are family, say parrot owners in Dubai.

Tango: music lover

She had always dreamt of having a parrot, so when her husband brought him as a present from Tanzania, she was delighted.

"We named him Tango because he does not walk straight but shakes his backside when walking, like he is doing the tango," smiles Bazire.

"He likes to whistle early in the morning and at sunset, so that is our usual wake-up call. Also, he is crazy about music and whistles whenever we play music. He is especially fond of Arabic and classical tunes."

The bird's cleverness is not always a good thing though, as he has learnt to open his cage, which is naturally worrying for his owners.

But as long as he is kept in a "social surrounding", ideally in the TV room or around mirrors, chances are he will not be tempted to fly away.

Tango enjoys eating fruit and peanuts and playing with his toys, which his owners have bought from France.
Not too much trouble for a much-loved pet, which, according to Bazire, "is a great companion. But the only problem is that it's very hard to cuddle him!"

Tweety: free spirit

If you ever see an African grey parrot zipping around Dubai perched on the bars of a Jeep Wrangler, it's probably Tweety with her owner Besher Obesi, a Syrian national.

Obesi, who bought her almost six years ago, is not worried at all about her getting away when roaming free like this.

"Two years after I got her, she ran away but then came back on her own after three hours. I will never forget that day," says Obesi.

African Grey parrots get very attached to one person in a household and it is usually the person who feeds and cleans it.

Although Tweety was Obesi's pet initially, as he got busier with his career the responsibility of caring for the bird passed on to his father. So the father is Tweety's "best friend" today.

She keeps everyone in the family entertained with her habit of imitating sounds such as police alarms.

In fact, this exceptionally bright bird also knows how to correlate sounds, so if the phone rings, she says "hello", or if someone comes to clean her cage, she calls out the maid's name.

Her antics have clearly made her an integral "part of the family".

"Once, when my family went away on vacation, I was supposed to go and leave her at my brother's house because nobody would be home all day, but when I took her there, I just could not leave her and so I brought her back," admits Obesi.

Koki: Cool bird

African grey parrots are not new to Dinesh Khiara. He owned two birds earlier, one of which died and the other flew away.

His latest pet, two-month old Koki, therefore, is in practised hands. Apart from looking after him in all the conventional ways, Khiara even sprays him with water to keep him cool in summer.

These parrots are apparently not very fond of air-conditioned comfort and it is "best to keep them at normal room temperature".

He is so fond of his new pet that he even plans to start toilet training him. Khiara believes that it should not be too much of a challenge, as, according to him, "they pick up things really fast".

"Koki knows my office timings, so whenever I enter the house, I have to give him a pat on his head, as he needs affection," he says.

African grey parrots can cost anywhere from Dh1,500 to Dh3,500, and maintenance usually does not cost the Khiaras more than Dh100 per month, based on a regular diet of fruit and nuts.

Khiara informs us, "It is very important to provide these birds with toys, because if they don't have toys in the cage, they start plucking out their feathers."

Habiba & Jumeirah: pampered friends

The Glenns (right) bought their parrot Habiba last February. "She was named Hamoudi when we bought her, but we were not sure of her gender, so we had her DNA tested and found out it was a girl. So we renamed her Habiba," says Tracy Glenn.

Their second bird, Jumeirah, was also renamed in an almost identical sequence of events.

"A friend of ours who'd had her for only a week was leaving town so we decided to take her in. She was a wild bird, so when she came, she was very scared and had plucked out all her feathers from her chest. We tended to her carefully, and now she has grown all her feathers back and is healthy. She is still a little timid, though." Glenn says.

"Jumeirah is still getting to know us. But once you've had a bird for long, you get to know their body language. For instance, I know they love being tickled. At the end of the day, it is nice to come home to them and they consider us a part of their flock now."

These birds are well looked after, considering they have their private jungle gyms to play in, which Tracy has painstakingly created for them out of PVC pipes.

They are also fed with bird food bought specially from their veterinarian, with the odd vegetable thrown in for variety.

Bird with no name: grand imitator

The story of how Abdul Rahman got his African grey parrot is an interesting one.

His wife, alone at home in their villa in Muroor, heard a booming laugh one afternoon and fearing it might be a trespasser, called for help.

Investigations did not reveal anything, but when the same laugh was heard again later in the evening from behind some bushes, the entire family decided to start hunting for the source.

Soon enough, an African grey parrot was revealed on one of the berry trees in the garden. Clearly a wild breed, this one actually bit Abdul Rahman when he tried to free it from the leaves it was tangled in.

Undeterred, Rahman covered its head with a thick cloth and brought it in and put it in a cage.

The bird managed to break free from its makeshift cage, so the family decided to buy him the entire infrastructure required to keep an African grey parrot as a pet, including a strong cage.

It has been 14 years since and this unnamed bird still remains with the family. They did not even know its gender until a month ago when she laid six eggs, miraculously without a mate.

"Her way of imitating sounds is incredible. Sometimes we rush to my baby's crib hearing its cries but then we discover that it's just the bird! She e