By Tanin Eh Boon from www.pet-cockatiel.com
Cockatiel bird have been kept and breed successfully in many countries all around the world. Cockatiel bird can be considered as the most widely kept parrot other than parakeet or budgie (budgerigar). Lots of research or expert of cockatiel emerge and many keeper have lots and lots of knowledge of cockatiel bird and their care.

I prepared this topic especially for newcomer birds enthusiast who still unable to make the decision about what species of parrot that they would like to buy. Well, there are lots and lots of parrot out there in the market. Some is very good for petting but some may not. However, for many people who haven’t own any pet parrot or any pet birds, many will feel that parrot will be the same, with good personality, very friendly, good talker, a cuddle creature and a good friend when we are lonely. However, in fact it is not. Some parrot may be very nippy (bite) and rude, some parrot will tend to attached to only one person (and rude to other people), some parrot may not talk at all, while some other species may not give permission to anyone to cuddle them.

Okay, now we may go the some of the reason why in my opinion, cockatiel is one of the best pet bird for the beginner. Having said this, I didn’t mean that beginner should only keep cockatiel or cockatiel is the only choices – the pet bird enthusiast actually have other option, lots of them but that is only if they are willing to learn more about the species that they choose or interested in.

Price
Price can become major obstacle for the pet bird or pet parrot enthusiast to own their dream bird. Since price of a parrot can range from few buck up until ten of thousand dollar, price is sometime a critical in deciding which parrot that the new comer should choose.

In Malaysia and I believed it happen to many other countries all around the world, price of a cockatiel is not expensive. Price may be different based on the colour mutation of the cockatiel and whether the cockatiel is handfed or parent fed. Normally parent fed cockatiel is cheaper than handfed cockatiel. This is because for handfed cockatiel, the breeder have to spent more time, effort and cost to feed the baby, while for parent fed cockatiel, the breeder didn’t have to put extra effort to the bird and definitely they will have lower cost.

If we compared price of a pet cockatiel ( a good, healthy handfed baby cockatiel which can make good pet) with other species with similar quality (healthy and handfed baby birds) of the bigger parrot , the price is totally different. For the beginner, I think the price of a pet cockatiel is reasonable (even it is not the cheapest).

Noise level
Personally I think all parrot will make some noise. Some of them will have rough squak while some other may have melodies whistling. However, for the normal rule the bigger the parrot it is more likely that they able (able but not necessary they will do) to make higher level of noice. I highlight this topic up because I understand that not everyone have the priviledge to own a very big house (and area) which will able to prevent the noice from their parrot to disturb their neigbhour.

In many occasion, new comer in pet bird or pet parrot keeping fall in love with their dreamed parrot in the first sight or from their reading. They may heard or read about the parrot ability from books or from internet or they may have some friend who have this species of parrot and the parrot able to ‘speak’ (mimic) or perform some trick. However, many fail to realise that different people will have different level of tolerance towards noice level. For some people, they are okay with the noise that their parrot have (in the morning, afternoon and evening and sometimes all day until middle of the night). We also should consider this with the people live around us a.k.a our neigbhour.

Cockatiel will create some noise or whistling sound every now and then especially in the morning and l