Neglected Cockatoo Gets New Life With Loving Humans

A beautiful sulphur-crested cockatoo named Edgar had a rough start in life when he wound up with people who had completely neglected him. Luckily, his human Alex was looking for guitar equipment in the local Sydney classifieds when he saw a heart-rending advert for the then-unnamed Edgar. Alex and his partner decided to take Edgar home and bring him to a bird center later. They fell in love with Edgar, and the rest is history.

It was a really sad picture of him in the budgie cage. He was really malnourished. They hadn’t given a name. They had him for quite some time and didn’t even given him the dignity of a name. We said we just had to do something about it. The plan was to look after him for a week and then take him out to a foster care center.  He kind of won us over and we couldn’t say goodbye to him.

Alex explained that it took a long time for Edgar to trust them. He had never been given room to spread out nor toys to play with. Edgar’s only previous human relationship was with people who disregarded him, which made him defensive.

He was incredibly aggressive towards his prior owner. When I went to visit him he was actually trying to attack him, but after a week his sweet nature became evident very quickly and once he realized that he wan’t gonna get hurt, he relaxes stopped being defensive and started becoming a lot sweeter. ….It’s taken months and months and months to become his true self.

Edgar can’t fly but is happy to accompany his humans wherever they go.

He was just inside that cage he couldn’t open up his wings. He’ll never be able to fly, He’ll always be a flightless bird though he can kind of hop around … we take him out to cafes, we take him on drives. He’ll sit with us.

Cockatoos can live up to 80 years. Alex and his partner have committed to caring for Edgar for the rest of their lives.

We can’t make sense of how someone ever wanted to or let that happen to him. It’s incomprehensible to us. I can’t wear watches anymore because he associates watches with his past owner. He’s had a bad start in life but I’ve been making that up to him. He’s my baby.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

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