May 12, 2025

Willie

Willie was a cockatiel we had for about 10 years. I am writing this on November 15, 2025 after losing Willie two days ago on November 13. Actually we may have had Willie for 15 or 16 years. My memory is terrible, but this seems to be the truth.

They say the average lifespan for a cockatiel is 12-15 years. I don't know how old Willie was when he came to us, so this puts some things into a different perspective. With good care, a cockatiel can live 16-25 years, and 30 years in not unheard of.

Nice memories

Willie lived most of his life in our "bird room" with 3 macaws, a cockatoo and a couple of amazon parrots. For about 10 days in October of 2025, I brought him out onto our dining room table for about 10 days when my wife was out of town. This allowed him views out of our big windows and more interaction with me. I would sit down next to him with my breakfast and he would run over for a piece of my pancake, enjoying it a lot.

After spotting blood on his face and an injury under his wing, we made a trip up to Phoenix to see the vet. After a nearly 2 hour trip in a carrier in the passenger seat, he was happy to get out in the room at the vets. Perhaps my favorite memory is that he was glad to get up on my shoulder, relax next to me and bent his head down to let me scratch his neck and behind his head.

Overall history

Willie came to me as a rescue bird. He is a "regular" male cockatiel. Many people comment on his nice colors. He ate a diet of nothing but the fine Harrisons pellets. As I remember at the time he came in, the idea was to not fool around, but just switch birds cold turkey to a pellet diet. It works (and did work for Willie). He ended up living with me and my bigger birds.

For a time he had another male cockatiel as a companion. This bird was more wild than Willie. I thought it was a good thing for him to have a companion, as I was not giving him a lot of attention, but they would fight now and then. When one day I found tail feathers (from Willie) and blood I realized these weren't just friendly squables and they had to be separated.

Later the other cockatiel (Patches) died. Unknown causes. He was just dead in his cage one day. I investigated taking Willie out to the Oasis sanctuary where he could join the cockatiel flight with dozens of cockatiels. The problem was that he had lost enough feathers and his wing had been injured due to the fights with Patches that he was unable to fly. We learned during examinations much later that there wasn't just feather loss but tendons were injured in such a way that he couldn't fully extend his wing.

So he stayed with me, and lived out his years with macaws and amazons for companions. Far better than being an "only bird" but hardly ideal.

You don't know what you've got until its gone

Willie was a people oriented bird. He was probably hand raised by a quality breeder and/or tamed by a kind prior owner. Had I not been so busy with my bigger birds and had given him a lot of attention I am sure he would have been a wonderful bird. He still was of course, but he was neglected as far as lots of close human attention. He would get happy if you brought your face up close to the cage and gently whistle or hum a tume. At one point he would get up on a finger, but as he got less attention, he became reluctant and would "challenge" a finger presented to him and run away. I did not try to recover his prior behaviour, though I no doubt could have. See my comments on his behavior at the vets at his next to last visit.

Now that he is gone, I realize what a wonderful sweet bird he was and what I missed by not investing in him. He probably would have been happy to spend a lot of time on my shoulder while I was typing on the computer like I am now.

Two heads are better than one

Before I get into details of the disaster, I have to say that one mistake I made was not talking to my bird friends. After Willie was gone, I called my mentor, Barbara. While starting to explain, I said, "I thought Willie was 10 years ...". She immediately interrupted with "Oh, no ..."and told me what I know now, namely that he was at least 20.

A good vet gives one sort of advice, but is usually strongly biased by "let's do something". Of course a good vet also lets you decide. I am reminded of my favorite line from a certain movie -- "Sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing."

Getting advice from several people, with different perspectives and experience, is always a good idea.

The disaster

In October of 2025, I noticed blood on his face. He was picking at a wound under his wing that I was unable to see. I thought that this was some kind of trauma and after a week or so decided that he needed to go to the vet. He was absolutely happy, eating well and hiding the problem that he had.

The vet is up in Mesa, Arizona -- 100 miles from Tucson where I live. I took him to the Avian and Exotic animal clinic in Mesa to see Dr. McLaughlin. She examined him and we discovered that it wasn't a wound, but a large mass under his wing. He went home with me with a collar (made of polyester felt) and 3 bottles of medication for me to give him twice a day. So began 3 weeks of misery for Willie. The first week he just sulked with the collar on, but then he began to accept it and get around as best he could. I of course had to remove all perches -- and I had to take care to change papers on the cage bottom at least twice a day, otherwise he would "sweep up" all the poop on the bottom of the cage. The area he used to pick at got infected and began to stink.

Back to the vet at the end of 3 weeks. We had discussed options, one of which was removing his wing, which we decided to do. I left him at the clinic for 3 days, little knowing that was going to be the last time I saw him alive. Then just after noon on November 13, 2025, they performed the operation. Coming out of anesthesia, he "crashed" and could not be revived. I had driven up early that morning and was "killing time" in a shopping mall nearby when I got the call.

The miracle of life

It is one thing to sit in a classroom debating philosophy. It is something else entirely to find youself holding the body of a creature that was living, breathing, reacting, making sounds just minutes before. What is the magic of life that is now gone? Where did it go? Is it gone or just what exactly has happened?

Thinking about Willie, I got quite close to him over the past weeks, holding him daily to give him medications. Waking up at night to worry about him. Trying to decide what the right thing to do was. But mostly, paying attention to him as a living spark of life here in the room with me. I am hard pressed to visualize life as just an expression of the biological machine that just stopped working. But this is just me and my gut feelings.

I have some notes elsewhere about the magic of small birds. I spend a lot of time with my two amazons and three macaws and I treasure them and often am in awe of having them close at hand. But there is something different and special about a little bird like a cockatiel. Somehow when life get compressed into such a small package, it becomes even more amazing.

Dealing with loss

It hit me much harder than I ever imagined. But saying this is all about "me" which is not the point. I reflect on our decision. I pondered just taking the darn collar off and letting Willie work things out and make the best of it rather than doing the surgery. Once it had gotten infected, this option was pretty much gone. The growth was almost surely cancer and would have gotten worse and/or moved to other areas of the body. But how long would that have been? We thought that life with one wing and no cancer was the best choice. We took the risk and lost. Willie lost. This is the sort of thing I will kick myself over every time I think about it for the rest of my life.

But this zeros in on an important question dealing with animals with problems. Is it better to intervene or to let things go? Each incident is unique and different. I have a military macaw that is now doing great after we intervened regarding a big injury on the back of his neck. A month of misery with a stiff colllar led to a good outcome. That bird (Hopi) is now alive, well, and happy living at my home. However, I honestly believe that it may be better to let things go more often than we do. What about euthenasia? I believe many times we say that we are acting in the animals best interest and sparing the suffering when we are actually acting to save ourselves trouble and worry.

There is a story I remember about an old dog with a bad leg. Neighbors would say, "why don't you shoot that dog, put that dog down?". The owner said that he figured another day to sleep under the porch then lay on the porch in the morning sun was a win for that dog, and probably what we would choose if we were in his situation.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's parrot pages / tom@mmto.org