Papagena was hatched on July 24, 2001. She is an Eclectus hen of the Solomon Islands subspecies. Of the three or four most commonly found Eclectus parrots in the U.S., the Solomon Islands subspecies is the smallest. Papagena generally weighs about 350 grams unless her weight spikes due to biological changes brought about by hormonal (nesting) behavior.

Margaret named Papagena from a character (the female bird-person) in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. According to some reviews of the character in Mozart’s opera, Papagena “evokes lightness of being with her beauty, mystery and humour”. Well, she certainly is beautiful. She’s also relatively quiet. But she’s about as humorous as a train wreck.

Papagena is bonded to Allen. Quite early on, even before she was weaned, she decided that Allen was to be her soul mate. Allen had nothing to do with this decision – she decided it was so and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. To say that she is willful doesn’t really say it strong enough. She is stubborn and while she is compliant (she steps up without fail), she will certainly attempt to get what she wants when she wants it.

Papagena is usually very quiet, preferring to observe. However, on occasion, she’ll say “Hello” when somebody answers the phone. On our drive from Utah to Ohio while she was in her cage in the vehicle, she suddenly became very vocal and is a quite accurate whistler. When she wants something, she signals usually by saying a soft, “Hunh.” Sometimes there’s an inflection at the end, as if a question, “Hunnnh?”

Papagena is not interested in playing with toys. What she shows most interest in (besides Allen) is food. If she sees anybody eating anything, she’s interested. She’s especially interested in junk food. If she can get her beak around it – potato chips, popcorn, salad dressing – she’s in it before you know it. She’s especially fond of cheese and pasta. She’ll eat pasta to just shy of the bursting point. We try to limit her cheese consumption because of basic avian lactose intolerance. Although we’ve read that and we know that almost any food within reason is okay, even cheese, cheese is one of those foods that birds should not gorge on.

All the same, Papagena gets a basic diet of a bean mixture that we cook up and freeze, until it’s breakfast time.

Here’s our recipe:
Perch Mix Recipe