Hummer, It depends on the bird. My conure keeps all of her food in her cage, so it's the occasional feather that falls out. Very clean. The tiels on the other hand, when they molt, it's feathers EVERYWHERE. The budgies can occasionally get seed outside of their cage if the food bowls are towards the side, which mine are not
BUT, this is also keeping in mind that I'm a zookeeper, and also licensed to birds of prey and owls. So these rescues are not at all daunting to me, which may be vastly different to other people
Hummer, They're very easy to care for, in terms of food and cleaning. The only "a lot of work" is letting them follow you around and playing with them. But it's something you'd do anyways with a cat or dog, so as a person who's licensed to bird care, I can't say it's too much different. The biggest thing is their fragile respiratory system
I feel bad for our neighbors. Double lung transplant. Now he needs new kidneys because the a anti-rejection meds he was on trashed his. So he's back on the transplant list 😞
Hummer, I've got three cockatiels, all three are rescues. Several hand-raised budgies, and a hand-raised conure. The budgies are the ones who make mad dashes across the counter after the ping-pong balls lol