My friend has just acquired a budgie from someone who didn't know how to look after it and didn't seem very interested in finding out! (I hate seeing birds in cages!) This little bird (about six months old) seems very nervy. The household he came from had dogs which yapped a lot but my friend's place is v quiet and so we hope he'll soon settle.

Has anyone got any first-hand tips on how to make its life bearable? I think it should have a long-ish cage rather than a tall one so it can fly from perch to perch. It looks lonely and bored (if one can read a budgie's expression) so would it be a good idea to get a companion for it?

Any advice would be most welcome as my friend just wants the poor little thing to have the best life possible.

Thanks.

A long cage would be better for flying, although budgies will also use bars to climb about. Toys and mirrors help for entertainment and company but most budgies (being flock-living birds) appreciate another budgie and generally opposite sex is best, if possible.
Having said that, single budgies tend to get tamer with people as people become their primary social interaction.

It's a while since we've had a budgie, but if the OP wants the bird to get used to humans, don't buy another budgie - it will end up chatting away to its mate and it won't learn to talk or socialise with humans. At 6 months, it should still be possible to teach the budgie to talk.

Our first one was great, it would chat away, fly round the room and come to my dad when he called it - used to sit on his pipe stem while he was smoking! With the second one, we made the mistake of getting him a plastic budgie toy, and he spent his time talking to that - never learned to talk, and wasn't nearly as tame.

Great reading about making your budgie happy at budgerigars.co.uk. Lots of budgie owners there can tell you how your friend can make his/her little friend happy and comfortable. I learned rather a lot there and it made we aware of things I never knew I needed to know.

You may not like seeing birds in cages, but if you elect to have a budgie it is a safe place for it to be to have its own space and its own home where it can do what it likes and it can also have its out-of cage-time for an hour or 2 or 3 every (or most days). A good sized cage is a great start and as you say wider rather than tall and thin, then feeding healthily (budgies loves fruit and/or veg - mine (4 in a large cage) particularly love a dish of sweet corn kernels and they get a hard boiled egg each week on a Sunday).

Don't dismiss getting a budgie pal for the little one - like all birds they like being part of a flock. If it is a girl get her a boy - if it is a boy then him another boy or a girl.

I get great pleasure of watching my 4 interact together and being budgies and I am sorry about all the years that we spent in having only 1 budgie at a time.

Edited to ask if your friend's budgie is a girl or a boy?

Thanks for your responses. I'll show these to my friend.

Don't ask: I don't think he knows the sex. I'll ask him to ask the previous owner. Do you know how my friend could sex the budgie? Also, when should he open the cage door to allow the budgie to: A) get used to my friend, B) feel more comfortable in its new surroundings. My friend doesn't want the bird to be stressed and when I visited the other day, I noticed 'Bobby' was breathing quite quickly and seemed distressed when I went to the cage to say hello.

Could just be my face though, I suppose. Scary!

A male budgie has a blue "nose" above the beak, and in the female it's a brown/fawn colour. It should be possible to see this in a 6-month-old budgie. The males are the better talkers (oddly enough!).

To get it finger-tame:
Put the cage right beside you when you're not going to move for an hour or so, like watching TV.
Gently put your hand into the cage, through a hole cut in a sheet of cardboard which presses against the door opening to stop the bird escaping.
The bird may flap around a bit but will settle down.
You may have to do this for several days. Then put your hand in holding a piece of millet.
Again it might take a few days before the bird eats some.
When you want to let it out of the cage, take the food away for an hour first; close the curtains (so it won't fly towards the window). It should go back to the cage when it's hungry; most can't resist a mirror so you could use that too.

Yes - male has blue 'nose' and female fawn/brown 'nose', but be aware that immature females have light blue 'noses' with white round the nostrils - immature (and mature) males can have a different colours that show as 'normal' to their breed as can mature females. What shows on the 'noses' also depends on the breed of budgie it is, as some types do not follow the old 'blue nose-fawn/brown nose' rules.

Funnily enough our best talker was a female - budgies do throw surprises at you

That website I told you about has a great forum with much info there about determining the sex of a budgie and also the information you need about handling and taming your budgie, cage requirements etc. I would urge you and your friend to look at that forum as it has all the basic info and more (you would only need to register if you wanted to ask a question, join a discussion or show a picture).

We had a single male budgie in a large cage, but he did o.k because we talked to him and let him out every evening for a play, We drew the curtains and let him out, sometimes for 2 hours! He was really loved and taken care of, and had an amazing vocabulary, sounding just like me. Next time I think I will get two birds so they'll be company for each other on the odd occasion when you have to be out all day and evening too.