Parakeets
A catch all for the small long tailed parrots, budgies included. The tail is the mark: on most species it runs longer than the body.
Overview
Parakeet is a shape rather than a group: a small to medium parrot with a long tapered tail. It covers budgerigars, Indian ringnecks, quaker parrots, monk and grass parakeets and a good deal more, from 30 g to 140 g.
In the United States the word on its own almost always means a budgerigar, and that is worth saying plainly, because someone buying a parakeet and someone buying a budgie are usually buying the same bird under two names.
Temperament
By species, and the spread is wide. A budgie is gentle and easy. An Indian ringneck is clever, loud and goes through a difficult year. A quaker builds architecture and talks constantly.
What they have in common is sociability. Every parakeet kept as a pet is a flock bird, and every one of them does badly alone in a quiet house all day. Either a companion bird or a genuinely present household is part of the requirement rather than an upgrade to it.
Care and grooming
A formulated pellet base with vegetables, with seed as part of the diet rather than all of it. Seed only diets are deficient in vitamin A, in lysine and methionine, and in calcium, whatever is sprinkled on top.
Long tails need care in a way that round bodied parrots do not. A cage too short for the tail bends it, and the bird carries the damage until the next moult. Perch placement matters more than perch quantity for this reason.
Living and exercise
30 by 18 by 18 inches upwards depending on species, always wider rather than taller, and always with clear flight between perches.
Lifespans run from about eight years for a budgie to thirty for a ringneck, so the word covers a pet that suits a child and a pet that outlasts a mortgage. Asking which species is on the label is the whole of the due diligence here.
Something here wrong or out of date?