Old Photo of Roswell, Snowy and Monty

I found a photograph that was taken only a few days after Roswell and Snowy had been introduced to Monty. Roswell and Snowy still had purple ceres and were about 3 months old here.

They did so much to alleviate Monty's grief after little Eric passed away.

Such a cute photo too, I think you'll agree. :)

Toy chewing culprit found!

I wondered who had been chewing up the new toys. Well we found him!

Snowy is the culprit. Caught in action here having a good old gnaw. I am really happy that he's using the toys for their intended purpose as I am always worried that they'll ignore new things.

Good Boy Snowy! :D

[categories budgies,snowy,toys,chewing,photography,cute,fun]

Monty and Jerry - Battle of the bruisers

It's happening again. Sigh.

Monty and Jerry have been at eachother over Snowy for about 4 days now. We keep having to separate them into cages and giving them time out.

Snowy decides that green is the best colour ever and constantly chases Jerry and tries to play kissy-face with him. This makes Monty mad and he pounces on Jerry. Jerry flies off and starts flapping his wings at Monty, making a growling, gurgly noise. Then they end up in a ball of feathers and claws.

Poor Monty has a cut on his cere that Jerry inflicted and my husband and I have had to physically separate them several times, getting bitten in the process. We had a look at Monty's cere and it seems okay, I cleaned it with a cotton bud. It'll heal, it's not the first time he's been slightly wounded in this area.

They both gets like this every few months, I guess it's their hormones..

Whatever it is I wish they would stop!

You can see Monty's cere in this photo, also here he is incarcerated with Snowykins.

Spoilt budgies

Corn and basil again today. Well, they do love it :)

Jerry tried to bathe in the basil, with varying degree's of success too. He did this while the others tried to eat it though. I don't think they were too impressed. Bathing in ones food is not considered good table manners.

Abbie has taken to climbing to the top of the new ladder toy and singing, sometimes upside down. I have also seen her nibble at the wooden blocks!

On another point, we got a new Chest of drawer from a lovely Freecycler. We have used it to house Blueboy and Hector's cage. All of the budgies love to run around on it and explore it. They are getting less scardy!

Sorry about the quality of the photo, I used my mobile phone camera as my digital camera batteries had gone splat.

Lilek's progress

Lilek came to us on 10th October 2010. His owner wanted him to be with a flock of budgies because he was lonely and she could not commit to another budgie time-wise.

When he first arrived he was very anti-social with other budgies. This behaviour would take the form of chittering at other budgies and lunging out at them (not biting) when they got close. Lilek would put his head down low, fan his tail and chitter until they moved. This meant another budgie could not even get close to him.

Sky was first to take an interest and started following Lilek round but he would either have angry noises made at him or just get ignored.

Lilek also had a very bad regurgitation habit. I mean compulsively, seriously bad. We wondered how a budgie could regurgitate so much food. He would spit it all out in a controlled manner onto his foot and then eat it back off again. Some of it would fall onto the cage floor, so I was continuously clearing it up and changing the papers.

I changed round the cage, removed perches but then he would just regurgitate onto the cage door and it would go all over out floor. Drove me insane!

Slowly slowly, he has integrated himself into the group. A few months ago, he let Sky preen him, it made me feel really happy that he would let another budgie that close to him.

Now he has actually stopped regurgitating, it's been about three weeks since he stained the perches and floor with seed and vegetables!

He also occasionally mingles with Monty and sits to listen to Jerry and Snowy sing. No chittering at other budgies - only at me when I put my hand in the cage to change food or move something at night!

look how beautiful and white his plumage is!

Naughty Fiends

We have had a nightmare day today with the budgies. They have not been their usual calm(ish) selves. The day has mostly consisted of Jerry being chased by Snowy. This upsets both Roswell and Monty. Snowy is King Montys bird and he gets very jealous if Snowy shows too much interest in Jerry.

It's strange because Monty doesn't mind Snowy spending time with any of the other birds, only Jerry.

Anyhow, the "Jerry chasing" outbreak has caused Monty to become angry and square up to Jerry, even leaping on him. Monty is scared of no bird, even though he's the smallest one here!

Jerry and Roswell, Monty and Snowy have been put in separate Hagen cages until they calm down. We are on the second round of this now, as the first time I let them out it started all over again!

"Jerry chasing" used to happen often but this is the first time in more than six months we have had an incident.

Fingers crossed that it's not going to be a week long affair like it has in the past.

Shhhhwing!

Roswell, Snowy, Monty and Jerry having a lovely swing together :)

Amazing that they stayed on long enough for me to capture the moment!

Customised piccy of the fiends

Look at this photo my friend from a budgie forum made for me. Isn't it brilliant?

Thank you Zohie!

New Toy

The fiends have been getting to grips with their new toy. It's a swinging perch with eight places on it for them to land. They seem to like using it to preen eachother on, especially Monty and Snowy in the evenings.

I'll look up at about 8.30pm to see Snowy on the lower part and Monty above preening his head. It's very cute to watch.

Here are some photos of them enjoying the new toy having a swing-a-ling.

Also see Dumpling below, still obsessed with my feet. Just when I thought he had grown out of it!

Who da Pretty Boyz?

It's a nice morning for admiring yourself in the mirror don't you think?

and a Monty shall sit down with a Dumpling

The budgies were very quiet this morning, usually Sky will wake me at 7.15am on the dot singing and squawking to himself very loudly until I get up and uncover them all.  No noise at all this morning, I was wondering if the budgies had packed their nap sacks (millet and a piece of carrot each) and left to seek their fortunes. I walked into the front room to find my husband taking a photo of something in Monty, Snowy, Sky and Dumplings cage, all worried I asked him what he was doing. Nothing sinister had happened to the budgies thankfully, he had uncovered them to find that Monty was sitting on the shelf where Dumpling roosts next to his keys, quite happily side by side. Usually Dumpling would chase off any other bird that got near his keys as he's very possessive of them and of his shelf! Here is the photo he took, and one I zoomed in on so that you can see Monty and Dumpling clearer :)

Little budgies enjoy a splash about

Here are some photos of the budgies bathing and splashing about. Snowy seems to like a relaxing bathe on his own with only a yellow Ducky for company where as with the others it's a bit of a free-for-all. Roswell and Jerry did chivalrously let Custard bate fist which is most unlike them. Custard has really come out of her shell since she got here - at first she was frightened to go near the other budgies but now she wants to be a part of everything - especially where Roswell and Jerry are concerned. She even has girly chats with Snowy sometimes. :)

Have yourself a Budgie little christmas

The budgies have really been enjoying themselves this christmas. Some relatives came round on the 23rd and their "uncle" played with Lilek and Sky a lot, mostly Lilek. I think that uncle D enjoyed himself more than the budgies did, he even let Lilek stand on his head, Lilek looked very comfortable up there. Uncle D is lucky that Lilek had had made a dropping just a minute earlier!

Their nan and aunties bought them millet, which they obviously LOVE!

We got them a budgie mirror "disco" ball so that they can listen to their favourite tunes and boogie on the dance floor.

We put some small Xmas decorations up behind the budgie screen so that the birdies couldn't nibble any of them but the room still had a slightly festive feel to it.

Today the budgies are tired from all their Xmas feasting so I ran them a relaxing Basil bath. After they had finished splashing about in the water with basil in it, I pegged up the basil on to their climbing frame and playground for them to nibble on. Well you have to cleanse your palate don't you :D

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Snowy's ball never lets him down

Snowy has had a little nap with his ball this evening, they first had a chat about their day and then cuddled up for a lovely little snooze.

But were woken from their slumber by some Christmas music on the radio which all of the birds felt they should sing to - "Winter Wonderland" I believe.

Doesn't he look adorable?

He's playing Kissy-face currently with Monty and also his green ball-ball.

Happy Birthday Monty!

Yesterday we celebrated an anniversary with Monty - it has been a year since we brought Monty and Eric home. So in effect Monty is one year old (even though he's about a year and a half really, but we don't know his true date of hatching)

I made the budgies small white party hats and we bought them some treat sticks that fell apart so we put them in a dish (actually it's the budgie bath..) for them to feast their little beaks upon.

Earlier on Snowy presented Monty with some art that he had made from a sandpaper sheet that I had lined the bottom of the playground with. Let me know what you think it is, Snowy seems to think it's abstract and open to personal interpretation.

Lilek has been very busy landing on our feet , arms and hands then singing to them as well as his ongoing relationship with Sky - it's really nice to see them as friends.

Anyway I have party hats and millet to clear up..

Enjoy the pics

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Update on the mob

It's been more than a week since I updated the blog on the fiends so I thought I had better give an update! News in alphabetical order.. Blue-boy The Blue-wonder is settling in very well, he loves to sing and get on especially well with Jerry and Roswell, they all fly and wander about together like a trouble-some gang of teenage tearaways. Roswell is the muscle, Jerry the mouth and Blue-boy the pretty one that keeps his mouth shut. Jerry His cheekiness still knows no bounds, although occasionally he'll hang out with Monty and they'll sing and biff eachothers beaks both trying to gain the upper hand (wing?) on the other. Monty never backs down! Lilek Still slightly anti-social with the other birds but he's showing great signs of improving. In the past few days he has even been singing really quietly to the other birds. He took to the vegetables - especially basil really quickly!We saw him sit in his play rings a few time and this boy really loves keys, he flaps at them, chirrups softly and tries to feed them. We're trying to get him to play more and he enjoys an occassional head scratch from a wooden lolly-stick. He turns his head, it's very cute :) Monty What to say about the King himself. Just today he landed on the arm of the sofa next to me and started singing to me - he's never done that before, it was so sweet. Jerry came over and landed next to him to see if there were any treats on offer! It's very strange but Monty seems to know when I am concentrating on something and this is the time he's most likely to pay me attention and try and get me to notice him! Roswell His friendship with Jerry continues to blossom, Jerry can often be seen preening Roswells big fluffy head. Once I saw Monty try and preen Roswell slyly but Roswell backed away thinking that Monty was trying to beak him! Roswell sometimes hopps about and sings, it's really something to see because he's quite big but the dude can still hop wih the best of them! Sky Sky can be quite In-yer-face with the other budgies and frequesntly takes part in Snowy-chasing, in fact he quite likes to chase any budgies around until they get tired! He's the one that has most tried to strike up a friendship with Lilek, he's very persistent and I am sure it will pay off eventually. Lilek is definitely tolerating his antics more these days. Snowy He is really enjoying the play-rings that Lilek brought with him! He's taken to climbing down to the bottom ring and dinging the bell continuously with his little pink feet! I'll try and get some pictures on later too :)

Some pictures from the day

Keeps me busy running after budgies all day ya know!

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Classic FM for the budgies

There is still Snowy chasing going on today so we have deployed some Classical music to calm the birds down, they're all in their separate pairs tweeting away and preening to the soothing sounds of Classic FM.

Drives me bonkers when they start chasing each other around and wing flapping at their fellow birdies - it seems to happen at least once a month for up to a week.

Still they're calm....for now!

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Come and join the pool party

The boys have enjoyed a bit of a pool party this morning, with a Dill Cocktail each they made their way to the top of the Summer palace (seems ironic calling it that considering the weather at the moment - 16 degrees and cloudy according to my PC)

As you can see they had a lot of fun splashing about - especially Snowy, who did his little duck impression and waddled in and out of the water several times.

Basil makes my birds nuts

I am sure that basil is like some sort of wonderdrug that makes budgies go crazy-insane. Monty is currently singing to his food (the aforementioned basil) dancing around like a loon, not sure what song he's singing but maybe it goes something like this:

"basil basil, you are so green and tasty and leafy and I want to bite bite bite you"

I am beginning to understand the inner workings of a budgies mind.

Will someone please tell Roswell that there are lots of interesting things to bite here such as cuttlefish, iodine blocks, branches etc and that he does not need to bite the budgie playground every few minutes - it's really noisy because the wood is quite hard and we're frightened it will hurt his poor beak.

Now all four budgies are making a swiss cheese style pattern in the remaining basil leaves and totally ignoring the fig that I had cunningly placed beside it in yet another failed attempt to get them to eat fruit..