This beautiful bird is the type of bird we bought today at the Spring show of the Greater Chicago Cage Bird Club held at the DuPage County Fairgrounds. None of us had ever been to one of these shows. We decided to go because Tristan really wanted to get a bird as a pet. He still remembers Ben and Jerry, our two parakeets we had many years ago when he was little. We went expecting just to have a good time looking around and seeing some interesting birds. But when Tristan and I saw an Asian American lady with two cages full of these birds, we thought they were quite irresistible. The woman who raised them gave us them for $5 off the list price because we were buying them for the children. I have never seen such birds before. They are called diamond doves (Geopelia cuneata — see more information at http://www.diamonddove.com/) and the specific kind we purchased is a blue diamond dove. We were able to purchase a pair; the male is about six months old and the female is about a year old, we were told. I think these birds are originally from Australia.

We bought a cage and food for the newest additions to our menagerie, and at the moment they are cuddling together going to sleep for the night.

After thinking about names for a while, we decided to call them “Onslow” and “Daisy” in tribute to two characters from our favorite BBC show, Keeping Up Appearances.

(Photo Credit: jmaximo)