Bourkes Parakeet Poad(tm) Painted by Helen (this blog is written by Helen too!)

I got to paint a poad(tm)! And immortalize my little Bourkes parakeet Archimedes at the same time.

Bourkes parakeets are a type of grass parakeet from Australia. They do a lot of foraging on the ground, in the grass (hence their name) and she lives true to that by running around on the floors in our house when I let her out (despite the fact that I don’t clip her and she can fly around wherever she wants to… including up on the ceiling fan blades where I can’t reach her, and into my husband’s office to terrorize him.) Grass parakeets are different from other parakeets in other subtle ways – they are not so loud or chatty as normal parakeets or budgies and seem to be much more difficult to keep tame, even if they’ve been hand raised (though Archimedes in particular much prefers the company of people than other birds. I got lucky!) Right at the moment she’s busy trying to lay another egg… Her eggs cook up nicely to perfect little silver dollar sized fried breakfast snacks. 😉

I named Archimedes not after the brilliant Greek mathematician, but after Merlin’s owl in The Sword in the Stone, as she resembled a little owl to me. I was under the impression when I bought her that she was actually a male bird because she sang so much… but then of course she started laying eggs. Oh well!

This poad(tm) was a ton of fun to paint. I imitated the look of Archimedes’ wing feathers in the fur on her back – when she’s all done she’ll have a dusty golden stripe down her back as well. The Bourkes’ signature baby pink and powder blue adorn her chest and hind end. She’s got dark brown eyes, like her living counterpart.

Maybe I’ll paint another Poad(tm) to look like my other bird, Eureka, a Rosy Bourkes parakeet. 😉

~Helen