10 day old Suns

5 week old Sun This bird is  exceptional light colored for his age

Adults

Sun Babies playing

Just weaned

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The Sun Conures are an absolute delight. They are beautiful to look at and are so cuddly, I have seen them described as the "Teddy Bears" of birds.  The latin name for them is Aratinga solstitialis and  they belong to the Aratinga family of conures. 

    They make wonderful pets and their only drawback is their sometimes loud calling. This occurs mostly in the morning and evening, however, it is more pronounced in breeder birds than in your tame hand raised bird. but as with all birds each bird has his or her individual trait. For example we have 2 pair of Blue Crowns in our aviary , one pair is loud enough to make our neighbors want to move, while the other pair seldom make any sounds at all.

     They are regular acrobats and little clowns, many a times I walk past their cages and they will be hanging up side down with one foot, swinging on their perches. They love to get your attention. Our young ones love to get misted with a water bottle to the point where they are totally soaked and cannot get enough of that. They never tire of this game no matter how long I have sprayed them they want more of that.

   They can learn to speak in somewhat squeaky voices, but their ability in this is somewhat limited. However they do make up for this with their cuddly personality. They can sit for hours on your shoulder and just nestled on your neck or want to be held.
    As for breeding they are quiet prolific and start breeding  between 2 and 3 years. Their price range is between 200 and 350  Dollars, depending on location in USA.
    The cage for your Sun Conure as with all other pet birds should be as large as possible, however we do recommend a minimum size of app.. 20 x 20 x 24. Your perches should be of various sizes and shapes, starting at 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Various sizes help prevent foot problems. We use grape vines  which they love, since they can chew on them also.
    And Sun Conures love toys, the more the better. We make most of our toys ourselves, since bought bird toys can get quite expensive, but there are  also some very good ones on the market. Some really inexpensive things they like to play with are cut up toilet paper rolls etc.

     Sun Conures love most fruits and vegetables and should have them at all times, we feed ours a good maintenance pellet, seeds every other day as an occasional treat, peanuts, they are very high in protein and you do not want to feed too often, as with sunflower seeds.

For more pictures of our babies click here

A very good article on sun conures  written by Teresa Jordan  can be found here
Article IV - Introduction To Sun Conures