In the following I'd like to present a list of the most popular excuses and comment on them:

Birds in pairs don't become tame
That is not correct dear single-bird-owners! In my bird room live usually at least a dozen budgies, some of whom were kept under very bad conditions. Their former owners have treated some of these birds very poorly, even mistreated them. Nonetheless almost all of my birds have become trusting or even tame under my care.

Without doubt it takes a little more effort and patience, to tame a new budgie in the group, but in 90% of the cases it works. The remaining 10% of the birds are very fearful because of bad experiences they've made with humans in the past and are untamable. This of course should be accepted.

But then they can't talk!
So? Is that really so horrible? Why does a pet-bird need to imitate our language? Budgies are very talkative beings who communicate through sounds, colourful body language (no pun intended!) plus for experts easily decipherable facial expressions with their environment.

No offence meant to the budgies, but we humans are more intelligent than them. Therefore it stands to reason that we humans learn their language and not the other way round, the more so as a talking budgie in almost all cases hardly really knows what it is "saying" anyway.

Get to know the body language of the budgerigars! And forget the hype about the gift for languages of these birds, because what is really behind this talking is almost always pure loneliness and despair. Someone who really loves his pet should under no circumstances close his eyes to this sad fact.

But a pair of birds means more dirt!
This statement is actually true. Two birds definitely make more dirt than just one. But the work a second bird causes per week can be measured in minutes. My birds have a whole room to themselves and I spend about three to four hours a week in there with cleanup efforts. But as I keep a lot of problem-birds the workload is manifold higher than with a pair of budgies that sleep in one cage and during daytime visit their favourite climbing trees and playgrounds. I believe that a second bird causes only insignificantly more work than a single one. The amount of joy that a fellow bird causes his feathered friend and also their keeper should more than compensate for that little bit untidiness!

German version of this text: Gaby Schulemann-Maier,
translation of this chapter: Tanni