This is Tweetie, probably between six and nine weeks old, a green scaly- breasted lorikeet.
When Heather bought Tweetie and her mate Bobby she appeared to have had one
wing severly clipped. It looked so bad that we thought her wing had been
permanently damaged. She was also extremely shy of people and all other
lorikeets and would only get close to Bobby at night just minutes before
sleep time.
This image is of Tweetie when her name was Shy-girl. She has no tail and
looked at everyone with great suspicion. The wing closest is the one clipped,
you can see the longer feathers of the other wing. Tweetie could not fly
and when approached would panic and fall to the aviary floor landing with a
thud. She would then scuttle away and try to hide near the bottom of the
cage wire. Her main method of getting around the aviary was using her beak
and legs to swing along the wire. Eventually she learned to walk on
vertical wire and could move quite quickly in any direction.
Tweetie almost never made a sound, no whistle, no words, nothing.
Just twice she suddenly burst in a continuos jabber of quiet tweets
and cooing, this only lasted a short time then total silence again.
We thought she would eventually get better and more aproachable but not so.
Twelve weeks later there was no change and it was getting quite pitiful
observing a bird that was clearly not enjoying life.
Note the light orange beak and white eyes just showing a tinge of orange,
indicating that Tweetie is a quite young bird.