You don’t walk into African Grey bird shop looking for peace and quiet.
The new store near East Iliff Avenue and Parker Road is a raucous place filled with dozens of parakeets, cockatoos and parrots of seemingly every type that make sure you know they’re there. And for Aurora bird lovers, the shop’s relocation from Denver to Aurora last month just might elicit some cheers of the human variety.
“A lot of my clients live out this way,” said Karen Goodman, one of the owners. “When we were telling people we were moving everybody said, oh you’re so much closer to me.”
Before African Grey moved into the new digs at 10021 E. Iliff Ave., the specialty bird store had been in business for 38 years on Monaco Street in Denver. Goodman has owned the shop for 23 years and in August was joined by co-owner Carmen Cote.
The store is a sort of one-stop-shop for bird lovers, offering bird food, bird toys, cages, birds and boarding and grooming services.
Cote said the new store is much bigger than the old one — about 2,700 square feet compared to about 1,200 at the old space.
While African Grey has been up and running on Iliff since early October, Cote said there are still plans to make some improvements, including installing large playpens for the birds, and a bigger quiet room where customers can meet with a bird away from the loud shouts of the other birds.
Seeing African Grey move into a much larger location is a welcome sight.
Ree Thompson has been coming to the shop for about three years and said she was thrilled when they moved closer to her Aurora home.
“They do such good work and they just had no room,” she said.
Thompson said she has long been a bird lover and is in the market for a bird now. She’s considering a Senegal parrot or a Conure, something that’s on the smaller end of the parrot spectrum.
“They’re smart and they figure you out and make you think,” she said.
That fondness for birds is shared by the store’s owners.
Goodman said birds are a different kind of pet from dogs or cats because they have a massive range of emotions, and, they can live for more than 50 years.
“People don’t really understand until they have one, but they are so intelligent, so engaging,” she said as an umbrella cockatoo named Rags shouted nearby. “Even the ones that don’t talk, there is an intelligence there that you don’t get with other animals.”
For Goodman and Cote, making sure their customers are ready for the commitment that comes with buying a bird is always important.
If someone comes in and seems like they are ready to simply buy a bird on a whim — without grasping how long a bird can live and how much work they can require — the staff at African Grey will try to slow them down.
“We can always tell when somebody is an impulse buyer,” Goodman said.
That doesn’t mean they won’t eventually sell a bird to a newbie, Cote said, but they like to have customers do some research, maybe volunteer at the shop and grasp what having a bird entails before they make a purchase.
Goodman said it’s crucial that bird owners understand the commitment they are taking on when they buy a bird.
“It’s almost like having another child that never leaves,” she said.
For more, visit www.africangreybirdshop.com