Budgie bedtime is a military style operation

Budgie Bedtime can be a very fraught process at times. I have to follow the routine to the letter otherwise chaos can ensue.

After cages has been cleaned, food and water are changed we can get down to the serious business of the day.

Monty, Snowy and Sky all have to be on perches that are near the front of the cage. Lilek must be on his shelf at the far right end. If this is not followed, Snowy will knock Monty off the perch and Lilek will leap to his shelf in the dark - squiggling and chittering at any budgie in his path.

Photo One shows incorrect bedtime positions, photo two shows correct ones.

Blueboy, Jerry and Roswell get some millet to share before bed, this makes Blueboy feel like a more welcome member of the group as they all cooperate and eat together.

Photo three shows the boys eating.

Photo four is Dumpling (Lilek) on his bedtime shelf, ready to settle down for the night.

Abbie and Hector like to mess around a bit, making weird strangled noises at eachother and trying to preen eachothers feet.

Photos five and six are the two of them messing about!

The lamp is on, budgies are partially covered. I go to wash up their bowls and toys. This takes about 10 minutes as they are left to dry overnight.

When I come back I put the budgies to bed, gently whispering the "Bedtime for budgies rhyme" and pulling down the cage covers for the night.

If I am very lucky they will not stir until my alarm goes off at 7.30am.

Bed times for budgies, Budgie Bedtimes.

Fly my pretty!

Got a great photo of little Lilek flying towards me yesterday.

It makes him look a little more chunky than he is cos his wings are behind him and it makes them look short.

Look at the eager expression on his little chops :)

[caption id="attachment_1848" align="alignleft" width="595" caption="Dumpling...coming through...make room!"][/caption]

 

Hot? have a camomile bath..

The budgies have been enjoying camomile tea baths for the past few days. They love to take a sip of the water and then have a wade through it.

Roswell and Jerry like to get particularly soaked, little Roswell puts his face right in it to make sure his beard spots get soaked.

Just the thing to cool down on a 26 degree day.

I use a two litre jug, steep the tea bag in 200ml hot water for two minutes and then top up with lovely cold water. Remove bag of course!

Serve to fiends in see-through glass dishes. Relax and watch them splash about and have fun.

Fiends Frollicking - Photos from the day

Here are some photos from the day - the fiends have had corn and basil so are more excited than usual.

Pay attention to me!

Monty decided he needed a little bit of extra attention today so he flew over to the husband and hopped up and down his arm and sang.

Whilst this was happening Dumpling (aka Lilek) was on my shoulder squawking in his best high pitched way right in my ear)

Gotta love 'em, they do like you to know how they feel :)

Seed Storage and a new table for the fiends

We managed to get hold of a great cool box for storage of the 20kg sack of budgie seed that we took delivery of recently. It didn't all fit though so we had to store the remainder in some klip it boxes!

We also got a great new(ish - we got it from a kind soul on Freecycle) table on wheels to put the Summer Palace on, this should make it much easier when vacuuming and sweeping as it can be rolled out of the way.

When Monty saw it he felt he was one step closer to owning that Harley he had always dreamed of.

Recent photos of the fiends, humungous table and masses of seed are below..

Monty's amazing tail

Monty seems to have a lot of trouble hiding when he feels happy. He's like a little doggy with a wagging tail.

This morning it was held up so high that he looked like a remote control car with aerial. I am not sure what all of the other birdies made of this.

Roswell looks rather concerned in the photos.

What do you think?

My Monty is certainly unique! :)

Treats for the Terrors

How about this for a bargain - in our local pet shop we can get seven big sprays of millet for a quid. So this weekend we made a special trip via the Island Hoppa (Which is a free bus service) to the market and also ended up buying some 700g bags of budgie seed and budgie tonic seed, two ping pong balls - one orange and one yellow plus a couple of fruit treat sticks.

These treats will last them a while as I only give them a millet day once a week and the rest of time time it is used as a reward for good behaviour. They are not that well behaved!

These budgies are so spoilt..

Of course we had to reward ourselves with a Chelsea bun each too. Well why not!

Just the two of us, you and I

It's good to have a budgie buddy.

Blueboy and Hector are very cute together, they preen, feed and take care of each other. Budgies are sociable little fellows being flock creatures and enjoy each others company immensely.

Right now they are chasing one and another around the budgie playground, Blueboy stops to give a budgie "high five Kissy-face" to Hector now and again and then they are on their merry way.

All day is play-time o clock with these two.

I'm just a girl

What a lovely sunny bright day it is today, and HOT (22 degrees Celcius ... in April!) I am so glad (and I am sure that the birds are too) that we made the Window Screen last summer so that we can fully open a window and let the breeze and and allow some air to circulate. We need to make one for the other front room window so that we can have the full experience!

I am sprouting some seeds for the budgies - Alfalfa Sprouts, so that they can have something tasty and nutritious to eat. It'll take a couple of days but it's worth it and costs next to nothing!

The husband kindly put the budgie play-ground structure back together for me (well for the budgies really) today so I took advantage of this by pegging Basil to it for them and they enjoyed this a lot. Especially Snowy as he did what he always does, climbs up, nibbles on the stalks and throws the leaves to the floor!

Had to put a huge pink water bottle in Budgingham Palace as the little blue one kept leaking and soaking the newspaper, I am sure that this had absolutely nothing to do with the budgies penchant for climbing all over it and biting it. So far the pink monstrosity hasn't leaked so fingers and wings crossed that it stays that way.

The birds had a very sleepy afternoon after their Basil Munch but they are now in full evening song - today's song of choice on Kerrang is "I'm just a girl" by No Doubt!

Monty seems to particularly like the lyric "Oh I've had it up to here" :)

Photos..

A not so moulty Jerry

Jerry is looking a lot better now, last week he looked really spiky and moulty it was horrendous and now he's looking all feathery and lovely again.

The poor little boy had pin feathers all over his bonce, we were seriously thinking about grabbing him and preening him ourselves as Roswell was obviously neglecting to do this for him - well Custard wouldn't let him.

Here are photos from a week ago and today - judge for yourself.