Live from Austin!

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.

Today I was listening to "Every Man Got Dreaming" by Sandoz (aka Richard H. Kirk). At some point I noticed that each time the rhythm loop went around, Chester the parakeet was tweeting at the same point. I listened more carefully. Not only was he tweeting with the music, he was alternating between "cheep" and "cheep cheep".

A few days back I was listening to The Beatles’ "Abbey Road". All was quiet until Paul McCartney started singing on "Maxwell’s Silver Hammer", and then suddenly there was an angry sounding squawking. Things calmed down again after Paul shut up and Ringo took over for "Octopus’s Garden". At the time I thought it was coincidence, but maybe not.

The bird also seems to like King Crimson.

A local pet store has a sign up that says Parakeets will make your dreams come true!

This may be a justified claim, under certain circumstances. For instance, if you’ve ever had a dream about giant Marshmallow Peeps coming to life and pecking you in revenge, a parakeet can certainly make that dream come true. More appealingly, though, if you’ve ever wanted to be like Saint Francis of Assisi, that’s a dream parakeets have the power to help you with. Or you could be like Uncle Remus with a blue bird on his shoulder.

The bird has proven to be a somewhat expensive dream come true, however. A budgerigar is about $20 in the stores, but if you buy a baby budgie from a small breeder like we did, it’s a little more expensive. You also likely have to follow the buddy-up procedure. But that’s just the start.

Next there’s the cage. We got about the largest we could find with parakeet-size bar spacing, solid metal. I forget how much we paid, but cages run about $60-100.

Then you need perches and toys. Since budgerigars are miniature parrots, they need mental stimulation: brightly colored toys they can climb on, objects they can peck and pull at, bells, and so on. Plain wood perches like the dowel that comes with the cage are bad for bird feet, so natural wood perches are a good idea, and those can be surprisingly expensive for a product that literally grows on trees.

(We also got a fluffy bed, which he snuggles into when he’s feeling chilly. The first morning after we put it in the cage he had ‘bed head’ when he got up, which was hilarious. Also, when I go to cover the cage, sometimes I get to see him shuffle over into bed. Very cute.)

Then there was the initial vet checkup. We did it to be on the safe side, and so that the vet would have some baseline info on the bird. Then things got expensive, as we had to replace all our cookware.

The problem is, Teflon (PTFE) non-stick coating gives off toxic fumes when heated, assorted fluoride compounds. While the fumes are arguably safe to humans at the levels emitted during regular cooking, they are apparently much more deadly to birds. Opinion seems to be mixed as to exactly how deadly, and to make matters worse, there’s no warning–humans can’t smell the gas, so one minute you’re making an omelette, the next minute you’re equipped to take part in Monty Python’s most famous sketch.

We decided we had to play it safe. So, we replaced all our pans with stainless steel. New saucepans, new frying pans, new wok, new crepe pan, new baking sheets.

So overall, the actual price of the bird is a tiny fraction of the cost of getting a budgie, 10% at most. It still seems a bit odd, really, that the bird is so cheap when the actual investment required (in time and money) is so significant. With other pets, like a dog or cat, you at least have to come up with a chunk of cash for the animal. Hence the regret seen regularly on budgie forums, that people buy them because they look cute and are cheap, not understanding what they’re getting into.

We were at an outdoor street fair the other week. Someone was selling budgies, giving away a free cage with each bird. Needless to say, the cages weren’t really large enough to be a parakeet’s primary cage. It made me angry, but what can you do? I have to remind myself that millions of small birds die every day, of hunger or predation or illness. I can only make sure our bird is well looked after.

Chester just ate from my hand for the first time.

The parakeet now has a name: Chester.

Because of his subdued and distinguished colors, we wanted a name that suggested seriousness. However, it also had to suggest clownish sillyness, because that’s what they’re like as birds.

Some rejected names: McNugget, Griffy, Steve, Bruce. (The last two because budgerigars were originally Australian birds.)

He’s starting to be a lot more cooperative about being taken out of the cage, even when it’s to squirt antibiotics in his beak. He also happily jumps onto my hand when I catch him running across the floor, but he still tries to fly around. Yesterday he seemed a lot happier and more alert, singing a little during the day and apparently watching the TV with us. He also likes to sit with me by the back windows and look at the yard.

At the weekend we bought him a fuzzy bird bed. I wasn’t sure he would use it, but this morning he shuffled out of it with bed head–a fluffy feather poking out from his head. Now he’s done his morning stretching exercises, and is cheeping at me to put some music on.

For the first few days, the parakeet didn’t seem to want to eat much. I made him a high protein mix of boiled egg and shredded carrot. It seemed odd to be feeding eggs to a bird, but he seemed to like it well enough. His appetite began to recover, and he now seems to be eating normally.

He got his first visit to the vet the other day. Apparently most budgerigars are little bastards as far as letting vets handle them, but ours is very well behaved. He still nips a little, but he’s pretty gentle.

Unfortunately it turned out that the poor dear had picked up some kind of sinus infection, so now we have to administer antibiotics for just over a week. The best approach seems to be to catch him in a soft cloth, then flip him over and offer the syringe. He will peck at it, at which point you can squirt the liquid into his beak.

It’s most easily accomplished with two people. This morning my first attempt to flip him over failed, he escaped the cloth, and then he promptly ran under the sofa to hide. I suppose I wasn’t gripping tightly enough, but the last thing I want to do is hurt him. It’s bad enough having to maul him like this twice a day anyway, he’s going to hate us by the end of next week.

The parakeet finally came home with us on Monday, as he seemed to have settled down to life without other birds in his cage. He traveled from the pet store in a little cardboard box with air holes in. Unfortunately, the store is the other side of Austin, so by the time he got here he was huddled in the corner of the box, terrified.

We returned him to the cage, and set up his food and water. He spent Monday evening in what looked like a state of shock or misery, his head low. He didn’t really move or make a sound, and we felt rather concerned for him.

This morning I woke him when I went down to make coffee. He was more alert, but still very quiet. He had a morning handling from rothko, and we weighed him to check he was maintaining his weight. A mere 28g, but that’s apparently healthy.  He spent most of the afternoon sitting quietly. When I checked on him he would occasionally yawn, or fluff himself up.

I think he was basically recuperating, because after I finished work he suddenly perked up. Half way through my exercise break he suddenly started chirping loudly. He wandered around the cage, played with his toys a little, then went to the food dishes and started eating.

I think he spent a good couple of hours filling his face. At one point he paused and went and got a drink, then returned to the food; this resulted in his beak getting the dietary supplement powder stuck all over it, which was pretty amusing.  He sat and digested for a bit and watched me. After a while longer he took some of the crunchy food (seed and fruit-flavored pellets), and sat and munched at it noisily on the upper perch.

By around 9:30 he was looking sleepy and content. So I’m feeling better about his general health. Hopefully tomorrow he’ll be back to his normal self, clambering around like he did in the pet store.

We’ve been wanting some sort of pet for a couple of years now; rothko more than me. We both love cats, but with my cat allergy that just wasn’t an option. (I’ve heard about a breed of Russian cat that supposedly lacks one of the genes that leads to the salivary protein that triggers the allergy in humans; however, they’re a pretty rare breed, so I haven’t encountered one I could test.)

I’ve grown to like dogs. I hated them as a kid, but I really liked Martha’s beagle. We considered an Italian greyhound. I gave one a thorough allergy test, sniffing deeply. No problems on that score. But it would have fallen onto me to walk the dog, and I just couldn’t deal with having to pick up feces.

For a while we thought we might get a couple of ferrets. We bought magazines, read books, and gave the matter careful consideration. Certainly they’re cute, entertaining, and I like all kinds of weasels. We almost went the ferret route, but ultimately we decided against it. The main problem is that our house just isn’t even close to ferret-proof, and it would be a massive adjustment to make it so. Plus, they need very hands-on constantly supervised playtime every day, and we couldn’t come up with a good location for the cage. Overall, I just didn’t think we would be able to do a good enough job of looking after them.

Then rothko got enthusiastic about birds.

I have to say that initially, I had no enthusiasm for them at all. But then we looked after Jennifer and Chris’s canary while they were away for a couple of weeks, and the little guy’s cheerful cheeping grew on me. He seemed to love the noises the Wii made while I was playing Super Mario Galaxy. I’d wake him in the morning and chat to him each time I walked past. He’d flutter around, tweet back, and eye me curiously.

We started with the research again, and soon started to focus on parakeets; specifically, American budgerigars. Unlike canaries, you can let them out of the cage, have them sit on your finger or shoulder, let them play on toys, and so on. They’re basically miniature parrots, they like to be talked to, and many learn to talk back–it’s not unknown for a parakeet to have a vocabulary of a couple of hundred words. They also like music and occasional gentle grooming.

There was a minor problem, though. Budgerigars were a huge fad in the 1970s in England, and even the word "budgie" immediately reminded me of the 70s–and not in a good way.

However, it turns out that there are two kinds of budgerigar : the English budgie is the larger bird with the fluffed up inset inbred face that I find unattractive, while the American budgerigar, more often called a parakeet, is more svelte and avian. Also, there are colors other than the yellow, green and blue stereotypical shades that make me think of flared trousers.

So, we looked at parakeets. We got a nice large cage. And last week, we went to a store that had a new shipment of birds, and selected a blue-gray one who seemed to have a reasonably nice boyish disposition. (The males are more likely to talk, but it’s impossible to sex them until adulthood unless you get them DNA tested.)

The store likes to keep the birds paired up while they get used to their new cage, and have you visit them for a few days to handle them and have them get to know you. I was a little concerned about our ability to tame him, as initially he was fairly flighty and bitey. However, by the time we left on Friday he would sit on a finger for ten minutes at a stretch while we talked to him, so I think he’s going to be fine.