Terri's birds

Sorry for so many posts, this will be the last one today! For those of you who don't know my search for another conure ended with a surprise species: Nanday! Loud, vocal, loud, smart, gorgeous, loud, nanday. She's amazing and her name is Inga. A friend of mine always said that I end up with the cutest, most unique animals and I have to say, fate (or whoever) must like me at least a little bit.

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These three got their own little post. :)

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Sorry guys, I've been posting most of my pictures in my other journal and neglected this one for a while. I come to you for forgiveness via a huge budgie picture post! (I've got a couple other picture posts to copy over as well so...are we even?)

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( With a ruff ruff here and a squawk squawk there... )

( The good )

( The bad )

( The cuddly )

Sorry, no pictures yet! I'll get some later after I deep clean the cages (funfunfun).

I've split up the budgies because the budgie barn was quite cramped. Phizzy and Peregrin are now in one of the 30" spare cages and Paine will join them after her vet visit (which will happen while Richard's here in a week or so). Paine is doing very very well and even though I've now had her well over thirty days, I'm gonna wait to introduce her once the vet visit is over. I've learned well, better safe than sorry. Phizzy and Pere seem very happy to have their own little space and they're the least likely to give Paine problems. Phizzy has always been a bit of the "peace keeper" which is kind of unique for a female budgie. Pere is very laid back and doesn't pick fights with anyone (so far) so that should work out well. The other little guys are very happy to have the big cage to themselves. (That would be Pixel, Paris, Pika, Arctic, and Crystal). Happy budgies means even more budgie chatter... which is ...well, I'm happy that they're happy.

Poe is doing well. The pants seem to be coming along slowly but surely and all the new blue feathers are still intact. The increase in fresh/cooked foods, foraging, and the switch from Roudybush to Foundation Formula really seemed to help.

Because I'm a bit insane, I've decided (for now at least) to keep all the birds in my bedroom rather than the living room. They were moved there while the mold problem in the living room (and elsewhere) was being addressed but after moving out a ton of things I really didn't need, there is just so much space in the bedroom. They're happy there and I'm actually happy to have them there. They drove me nuts the first night but now it's working out quite well. If my allergies return, they'll be going back to the living room. So far, so good. I will likely get an air purifier as well just to keep things liveable.

The way their cages are set up, I can sit on my bed and watch every single one of them and I looove it! It's better than TV. Out time is nice too as I can take Poe or Frankie into the living room and not worry about covering the other cages. They can just hang out with no worries of them eating on other birds. (Separately, of course, as they would also eat each other.)

Speaking of that, it's time to play with my Poe bird so adios. :) Pictures will follow!

Oh, almost forgot. Not that this will be news to anyone who half knows me but... Paine is staying. :p I love evil birds. :(

Here are some pictures of the toys I got from Rowan. Most of these pictures suck and I didn't get a chance to get pics of all the toys before the stupid camera died but here you go.

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Poe is currently eating her sweet potato/pellet/seed dish and watching tv intently. If only I could get everyone else to be so calm! But anyhow, on to today's very brief soap opera.

( All's fair in love and war. )

Yes, Pika has poo on his foot in these but they are SO CUTE I couldn't NOT post them. He also has a hull from a seed on there too (it's the red thing...it's not a sore) but he's looking pretty good other than that. :p On to crap bird. I mean er...bat bird!

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My birds love the lentils/brown rice/green split peas/crushed chili peppers mix that I cook so much that I've dubbed it "SUAE" (shut up and eat). If they have it, they're so busy eating that they are nearly silent. I don't feed it every day, more like a few times a week, I don't want them getting bored, plus they need more than that, obviously. But is there any reason I should cut down on it based on the ingredients?

Paine is doing awesomely. It took a LOT of work (in a short time, but hey it was still a lot of work!) to get to the point of not having to use gloves but we've made such great progress. Here are just a few pictures to show Paine's "breakthrough" training session:

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So, Paine is now finger trained and making extremely fast progress! Budgies are smart little birds, for sure.

( Pictures! )

Here are some pictures of Poe from each month since I've had her.

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These pictures were taken with the old camera, so excuse the cruddy quality.

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Wet (well, kinda damp) birds.

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I'll see about getting some pictures later. For now, I've only got teeny little updates. :p *Watches everyone scroll away.*

Poe's ekkie pants are giving existance another shot. We'll see how it goes. I never see her pluck but I guess she still does quite a bit at least on her legs. Her chest is looking slightly better though, she didn't pluck the new blue feathers that came in a month or two ago. There's a line right down the middle of her chest where nothing seems to attempt to grow. I have a feeling that she'll at least always be bald there. It would be kind of cute if she grew back the blue feathers except down the middle. She'd be walking around with her shirt partly unbuttoned. Lol.

I've stopped foraging with her almost completely for now. The toe tapping is still gone but upon weighing her, she's lost just a little bit of weight. I think I may have gotten overly excited about her newfound love of fresh food and pushed it a little too far too fast. She's going to get more dry food like she used to, to compliment the fresh stuff until I'm happy with how she's maintaining weight. Then, I'll slowly increase fresh foods and decrease the dry/pellet mix.

The budgies are all doing awesome. Phizzy's surpassed Pixel as far as weight goes and she is looking just a tad plump. Time for some serious flying. Aside from that little bit of weight gain, there are no weight problems going on in the budgie barn (everyone is around the lower to mid 30's except Phizzy who is 39). Phizzy's anything but lazy and I think shedding a couple of grams will put her back into her slightly slimmer form. :p Pika is also fine as far as his weight goes. 95 grams.

I recently saw some yellow-sided green cheeks at a pet store and as usual, I was shocked at how much bigger they seem than Frankie! Frankie's always seemed on the small side and seeing as he's now about nine months old, I think that's just his body type. He's a scrawny little punk at 57 grams.

Paris has been accepted into Arctic and Crystal's little fraternity. Or maybe he's just a part of their relationship now... I'm not sure but either way, the three of them now spend a lot of time sitting together. Paris is happier and that makes me happier.

Frankie's taken to mocking me throughout the day. :P He will now call to Tika (the dog) and make kissy sounds when I'm making them at Poe. (So then I have to go over and kissy sound at him too.)

Pika is currently fascinated by some imaginary being hanging out beside the cage. He spends a lot of time looking at "it" and singing to "it." Today, after doing some singing to his imaginary friend from the bottom of the cage, he lifted his wings and RAN to the other side while holding them up. I'm not quite sure what that was meant to accomplish but he seemed pretty impressed with himself.

Poe started toe tapping yesterday, out of nowhere. She started this several hours after eating the cooked food I'd prepared for them. At this point, I'm very suspicious of the pasta I used and think it may be due to that. It really could be anything, but seeing as she was absolutely fine until eating that dish, I can't help but think it was the pasta or something else in it that I haven't given them before (which was most of what was in there, really). Aside from the fact that toe tapping is the creepiest thing a bird could ever possibly to (short of saying "Nevermore" without being taught), it breaks my heart to see Poe like this. Well, I don't know if she's still doing it yet as I haven't uncovered the birds yet. I'll find out in a bit.

For now, I'm removing all the processed foods from her diet and starting all over. Foraging is out for her until I pinpoint what is going on. If the toe tapping doesn't clear up within the next few days, I'll schedule her in for bloodwork to see if there's some sort of deficiency somewhere. I'd be surprised, but you never know.

Poe is eating healthier now than she has since I got her. She came to me on an almost all sunflower seed diet and didn't toe tap at all. Now, I finally convince her to eat a good deal of fresh and cooked foods and bingo. Talk about frustrating. I have to suck it up and get past all this "god I suck and my cooking is going to kill my birds" crap. And the fact that I thought I was doing really good with them up until this point. After losing so many over the past 2+ years, it's hard not to be totally paranoid about this. Sometimes it's like no matter what I do, I do it wrong. But like I said, I have to suck it up.

This video is VERY dark but you can see her feet and the toe tapping.

I've been trying not to get all emotional about it but to be honest, I can't stand it. I feel so awful for her. My first reaction was horror. I heard the clicking of her nails (more like talons, they were going to be clipped yesterday until this) against the top of her cage and looked over and there it was. I'd seen video before (in fact, you should see it too because it's not horribly dark like mine) and always thought that if Poe ever did that I'd be completely freaked. After watching that video over and over and over to try and desensitize myself to seeing this, I kind of got over it. But by the time Poe settled in for bed, I just wanted to cry for her. It's an involuntary action, like a spasm, and I just felt horrible that she had to sleep like that. I told her I was sorry about a million times and now I'm just determined to get her back to normal.

As predicted, I did have a horrible nightmare that stemmed from the toe tapping. Oddly enough, the actual tapping wasn't a part of it. :P But I kneeew that would happen because I'm kind of retarded that way.

Anyway, I have other pictures and videos to share.

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I moved Frankie to a taller cage. It's not as wide as the other one but she seems to be making better use of this.



For more pictures, here's the link to my latest foraging post.

Just a note that all the foraging posts are going into captiveforaging now. I'll update here with general bird stuff as usual but this makes it easier for me and for those who might end up with both journals on their friends pages.

And with that, I will stop spamming those aforementioned people.

I am afraid to say that I didn't get any super cool ideas this morning, though I did manage to do things a little differently and that's my goal anyway. Even recycled ideas can be changed slightly, even if it means putting it in a different position than it was in the day before. That's how I look at it, at least.

Good news! My camera is NOT dead. The rechargeable batteries I was using apparently sucked. They work fine in my old camera but my new one must be more of a battery sucker. Anyhow, that means slightly better pictures than usual.

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