This isn’t Just a Parakeet

Well actually it is a parakeet. But it’s only one of over a hundred types of parakeets. This bird is a budgerigar.

A new pet peeve of mine is when people call these birds parakeets, keets, or American parakeets. When I head of this American Parakeet, I was perplexed because I had never heard of a parakeet native to North America. When I looked into it and saw a picture of a budgie labeled American Parakeet, I only got more frustrated.

That is because budgerigars are actually native to Australia and in the aboriginal tongue means “good to eat.” Just because tanks full of budgies in pet stores are labeled parakeets, the sales people tell you they are parakeets, pet supplies are labeled parakeets, does not mean that budgies should be referred to as parakeets and the other 100+ types be neglected.

The term parakeet refers to small long tailed parrots and you may already know a few kinds:

-Ringnecked Parakeet

-Alexandrine Parakeet

-Monk Parakeet (quaker parrot)

-Lorikeet

There is in fact an entire genus comprised of parakeets called Psittacula. But there are species of parakeets all across the parrot family.

Calling budgies parakeets has only led to an enormous level of confusion. In an email addressed to me a long time ago (when seeking to buy my first bird) a friend who owns a cockatiel wrote to me, “Parakeets are a little more fun and will like to come out and play around…some can be trained to talk and do tricks……..will recognize you.

Budgies are sort of like parakeets but better.” My friend had apparently heard of parakeets and heard the term budgie and since they sound completely different he mistook it for two different species of birds. He did not realize that one is a specific species and the other is a category to which that species belongs.

And believe me he was not talking about parakeets as a genera of birds because the rest of the email discussed specific types.

On this forum, people seem to be quite confused about the difference between budgies and parakeets as well. Someone posted, “A Parakeet isn’t known as a budgie in England, a Parakeet is like a small parrot, a Parakeet is all green with a red beak, native been India but found mostly in South East England.” This was probably talking about a Ringnecked parakeet but this person was confused as well.

I think that if everybody called the birds by their right names, there would not be all this unnecessary confusion. A Ringnecked Parakeet is a Ringnecked Parakeet and a Budgerigar is a Budgerigar.

Just because budgies are a type of parakeet is not a good reason to call them parakeets. Every time someone makes a remark about parakeets, that are actually making a blanket statement about over 100 species of parakeet.

If you want to talk about birds like the one pictured above (ranging in colors from green/yellow, blue/white, yellow, and white), then you should be saying budgerigar or budgie for short. If you want to talk about the entire subset of small, long tailed parrots, then by all means call them parakeets.

But just because most people are misinformed is no reason for educated parrot enthusiasts to continue to mislabel these birds. I try to take every opportunity to correctly call my bird a budgie (or budgerigar in full) and point out that it is not just a “parakeet” but one of many different parakeets.