I've got fourteen birds as of tonight.
Freddy, a young gray tiel, and his flockmates, three male budgies - Arthur, Sydney, and Sam. Sam is completely tame and LOVES people while Sydney is tame on his own terms and Arthur is a bit of a fraidy cat - he will land on your arm for treats though. We actually found Arthur outdoors last September lost, so his history is unknown, while Sydney was a rescue and Sam was bred here (we had his parents until recently). The four share a large flight cage and really get on well. Freddy must be with his buddies at all times or he is not a happy camper! (He is hand-tame, but he wants to be with birds, not people, unless you can help carry him somewhere he can't reach or have treats, then he has no problem hopping aboard an outstretched arm and using you lol.)
We then have, across five other cages:
- 2 little diamond doves named Dilly and Dally, who are siblings. Don't know their genders, they're still very young.
- 2 canaries, a grey male named Weaver and an orange female named Sierra. They're both about 8 months old, they're an unrelated pair and very much bonded. Weaver was raised in our home and I hand-fed him past 8 days old, when his mother was killed in a very tragic household accident and his father was too distraught to fully care for him. Sadly, though he was tame for a while as a result, once he met his female companion he went pretty wild again.
- 3 Society Finches, Apollo and Cirrus and Claire. Lovely, quiet, ever-so-sweet little birds that cause no trouble and love everyone.
-2 orange-cheeked waxbill finches, a female named Trixie and a male named Tango. These guys are gorgeous, beyond adorable, but they're not a domestic species and are DEFINITELY hands-off pets. They're beautiful to just watch and listen to, but there is no bond with this type of bird.
And finally, a big male brown ringneck dove named Sparky who've we've had since he was just a chick. He's tame and lets himself be petted but he's not really bonded to anyone and just sticks to himself mostly. The other birds all love playing with Sparky and sitting on his back and he's very tolerant lol.
Tomorrow though it will be fifteen birds! I will be adopting another hand-raised baby cockatiel from a local breeder and can't wait to meet him or her. Freddy gets along well with the budgies, but I feel he'd really be happiest with another of his own kind, too, so another bird will join the flock soon!
This is actually just a few birds to me - not long ago, we had more than forty, mostly finches. I bred them and had a beautiful large open aviary and loved it, but circumstances changed and it became less doable and increasingly harder to keep maintained as I liked it to, so many of the finches were rehomed and sold with just a few of the favorites staying around, plus of course our little parrots and doves. Fifteen is thus, to me, nothing at all to keep up with, and since our birds are all housed in groups they are not especially needy, meaning they keep each other company and play by themselves just fine when I can't be with them, so it works out well. They all share a large, sunny spare room now and get time out of their (very large) cages almost every day. Our budgies and tiel (soon to be tiels!) have an enormous f40 flight cage full of toys and enrichment, too, so they always have something to do.