Live from Austin!

For Christmas, we got the budgies a new toy. It dispenses clean white paper in a long strip, so they can chew and shred it. Since they finished demolishing their Xmas tree last night, I put the new toy in the cage.

As soon as he got a good look at it, Chester went into a full scale panic attack. He was flying frantically back and forth, shedding feathers. Lola followed Chester’s lead and panicked too, though she clearly wasn’t sure what exactly she was supposed to be panicking about. I had to hurriedly take the toy back out and hide it away.

As soon as I opened the cage doors again, they both came out and demanded to sit on my shoulders in the office for comfort. Chester’s still a bit jumpy, and unfortunately unlike Lola he hasn’t worked out that I don’t like having my ear preened.

So, looks like I’ll have to introduce the new toy really gradually… Probably starting by hanging it up just outside the cage for a week or so for Chester to get used to it.

Lola will eat pretty much whatever I feed her so long as it looks like bird food. Chester, however, is a picky eater. I’d done the research when we got him, and knew I wanted to get him on a pellet-based diet, as it’s healthier in the long run.

With this in mind, I started off with Kaytee Fusion . It’s a blend of seed and pellets, designed to help convert your bird to a pellet-based diet. Result: Chester ate the seeds and mostly ignored the pellets. When the seed ran out and he was left with a pile of pellets, he scraped them out of the food dispenser onto the floor using his beak, and squawked angrily to demand something tastier.

So, I used a colander to sift all the pellets out of the mix and turn it into birdseed. I fed the pellets to the wild birds in the back yard. I got some Zupreem AvianMaintenance fruit blend pellets , which are pricier, but made with natural fruit and vegetables plus supplemental vitamins. I mixed these in with the bird seed. Result: He ate a few, but mostly stuck to the seed, and still threw a lot on the ground.

Next I tried Roudybush parakeet blend, on the recommendation of a local pet store worker and parakeet owner. It’s an all-natural pellet, with no food coloring, unlike the Zupreem. Results were slightly better: a few more pellets eaten, less waste.

I was seeing a trend: the more expensive and natural the food, the more acceptable to Chester. So to replace the seed part of the birds’ diet, I picked up some Ecotrition parakeet blend . It’s a blend of all kinds of seeds and vegetables, plus some egg, and very little coloring. For the pellets, I ordered a pack of extra fine pellets from Harrison’s Bird Foods . They’re certified organic, pesticide free, and the resealable pack recommends refrigerating them to keep them fresh.

So far, results are promising. No beak-scraping to get rid of any of it. Not much on the floor of the cage. Hopefully we’ve found Chester’s brand.

Baby girl had her first bath, after Chester showed her how.

Although she’s hand-tame, she still has trust issues–if she’s in the cage and doesn’t want to come out, she’ll run away and hide in the corner when you approach. Ah well, eventually she’ll learn that I don’t do the "grab the bird and make it come out" thing.

I got another play gym, a larger one. I also cleared enough space on my desk that I can put both of them next to each other. I’m hoping both ‘keets will spend the afternoon with me.

She’s eating well; in fact, she seems to spend a lot more time eating than Chester does. She already looks larger than when we got her, especially in the evenings when she’s content and fluffed up.

She has reintroduced Chester to the joys of sitting on my shoulders, which was wonderful until they decided to stop preening each other and preen me instead. I guess I need to carefully remove any random neck or ear hairs, and make sure I’ve shaved recently…

We still need a name for her, so suggestions are welcomed. Something cute and slightly comical, that works well as a counterpart to "Chester". Perhaps a name related to green-and-yellow-ness, or to climbing and clowning.

This morning I put some seed on a piece of paper so she could "forage". She seems to prefer eating that way.

I let both birds out. Today they are getting on well. They just sat together for about 10 minutes, with Chester quietly preening the new girlie. However, the only place where she felt secure enough for that was on my shoulder, snuggled against the back of my neck. Nevertheless, it seems clear to me now that they’re going to be good friends.

New girl also loves playing with my earrings. She hopped onto the side of my cereal bowl and had a taste, but wasn’t too impressed with the Shredded Wheat.

Now Chester’s over on the play gym by the window, and girlie is snuggling my neck and preening.

Whoever trimmed her flight feathers did a pretty savage job. She can’t do more than fall like a stone. Oh well, they’ll grow back, and as with Chester, we’ll let her keep them if she stays well behaved and safe.

We got a call from Gallery of Pets saying that they had taken delivery of two hand-raised budgies. We drove up yesterday evening to check them out. We came home with a new bird, a small temporary cage, some new toys, and some new veggie-enriched food.

The new bird is very young, barely fully-fledged. Her cheek patches are still stick feathers, and her vent is bare. She seems to be a climber. Because she was reared by a small breeder, she’s already hand-tame and used to finding food in a cage, which should allow us to start introducing the two birds this week rather than having to tame her first.

She’s much more active than Chester was when we first got him, less scared of her new environment.

Photos and video on Flickr!

(Note that in general, if you get a new bird you should quarantine it for 30 days in case it has any illness that can be passed on to the rest of your flock. In this case, since new ‘keet is from an independent breeder and the same store, seems good and healthy, and Chester is robustly healthy too, we’re risking early introduction.)

Chester has continued to be well-behaved, so we’ve let him keep his flight feathers. He flies around, but he lands in places we’ve taught him are safe–windowsills, his play gym, and so on.

He now likes to come out of his cage most days. He’ll typically want to sit with me for an hour or so when I’m working.

Weekends, we’ve been sitting on our back deck with him, by taking his cage outside. Sunlight is good for parakeets: they are tetrachromat and can see ultraviolet, so it helps their mood. Also, when they preen, they spread a chemical from their preening gland on their feathers; sunlight then causes a reaction which produces vitamin D, which they then lick back up next time they preen.

As far as training goes, Chester will now fly to my arm when I call him. He’s also good about being taken back to his cage when necessary.

We’ve purchased a larger cage, a flight cage big enough for 3 budgies. We’re going to get him a budgie friend. Also, a lamp with a daylight bulb for winter, when it’s too cold to spend time outside.

Once Chester had finished his molt, he began growing new a lot of new feathers. This included his flight feathers.

The flight feathers are the outermost 6 feathers on the trailing edge of each wing. When the bird has his wings folded on his back, they stick out at the bottom . If the flight feathers are clipped back so that they no longer protrude beneath the wing when it’s folded, then when the wing is unfolded the bird can’t gain enough lift to gain altitude.

In other words: with clipped flight feathers, a budgie can fly downwards, but can’t fly up. A bird with a full set of flight feathers is referred to as "flighted".

The question of whether a companion bird should be flighted is somewhat controversial . It’s said that being flighted makes a bird more confident. On the other hand, a house can be a dangerous place for a fully flighted bird.

My feeling was that so long as Chester’s flying didn’t become problematic, and he continued to be well behaved enough that we could keep him safe, he could keep his flight feathers.

Sadly, it didn’t work out that way. Last week his flight feathers got long enough that he was able to demonstrate his ability to fly up to ceiling level. When he landed on the floor, I bent down and offered my hand so he could step up to safety, which he had been trained to do and had always done in the past. He gave me a look as if to say "Screw you, human, I can fly !" and took off.

He flew around the kitchen. He flew into the utility room. He flew back out onto the windowsill above the sink. It became clear that he could easily end up on top of the kitchen cabinets, down the back of the fridge, behind the washing machine, or in the sink disposal. This was not good for him or us.

So regretfully, we took him to the vet and had his wings clipped again. It is, of course, a totally painless process. He was fluffing his feathers and enjoying the car ride by the time we were driving home. But for the time being at least, he’s grounded. He can make short hopping flights, but no soaring around the ceiling fan.

Ironically, he loves his cage so much that if we were willing to let him spend his life in the cage, he probably wouldn’t make any effort to come out, and we could let him stay flighted. It’s because we want him to come out and have a rich and stimulating life that he needs to be clipped for the time being.

Would you like to see some video of Chester enjoying his disco ball?

Chester the parakeet has been molting for several weeks now. Shortly after he started, I decided to collect the feathers. A pillow is out of the question, but I think I want to put them on a black background and photograph them. It’s quite amazing how many feathers a small bird can shed; at the worst point, about 20 per day.

Molting is a tough time for birds, and the process has made him itchy and cranky. He basically wants to be left in his cage, and has even pecked at my hand when I’ve taken him out. I’m a bit conflicted–since he wants to be left alone, maybe I should do that, but everything I read tells me that parakeets need out-of-cage time every day.

It might help if he was interesting in bathing. Yes, budgerigars are desert birds, but would it kill him to take a bath at least once a week? Mind you, today I misted him from a squirt bottle and he actually seemed to be into it for a while, or at least he didn’t climb the walls to get away from the water like he used to.

Chester just ate from my hand for the first time.