Woolworth’s

As a child, my first budgie, “Budgie” was purchased from Woolworth’s. Budgie was a wonderful little bird. He was finger tame and would turn the pages of my book for me (while taking a nibble).
While Budgie may not have been expensive, to me he was priceless.

Woolworth’s ad from 1955.

Woolworth’s ad from the 1960s.

Woolworth’s ad from the 70s.

Woolworth’s ad from 1993

artwork by Skip Hill

Awesome Aviaries

The budgie aviary at the Turtle Back Zoo in Essex County New Jersey.

The aviary houses approximately 500 budgies.

Visitors can feed the birds with seed sticks.

Love and thanks to our friend Adam Sullens for the photographs. Hopefully we’ll be able to visit the birds (and Adam) in the future.

Brainy Budgies

In a study published by the journal Science, it was found that female budgies prefer intelligence in a mate.
In experiments, select males were trained to open a box containing treats. Other males were not. The females were able to choose between males who could open the treat boxes and males who could not. The females overwhelmingly chose the males who could solve the puzzle, even if they had previously been passed over as mates.

Actual mating was never observed – so it is not clear whether the new male were chosen by the females to mate with or were just to be friend zoned. You can read more about the study here.