Little Lucy always looks so cute, like she’d never put a foot wrong.
Looks are very deceptive for this little hen. She quite often chases poor Billybob around and gets annoyed with the other boys for no reason.
But she’s still very cute 🙂
Last week, Sky was really ill. This really worried me because Sky is my oldest budgie at 11 and a half years old.
The first thing I noticed was that he was not feeding the big mirror or doing his “Sky-Wild-Thang” in the soap-dish on the window.
His droppings became runny and green, lacking in any proper substance. He was also a bit fluffed up and lacking in energy.
I started feeding him surreptitious bits of red millet, and adding more oats to the seed mix. I also gave the budgies boiled egg two days in a row as I noticed that they were all moulting heavily.
I’d Swept up a pillowcase full of fluffy feathers in two days and together they had lost 4 tails feathers, several flights and many tail coverts.
Thankfully within a few days Sky’s droppings had started to firm up and he’d gained enough energy to preen his friend Blithe, whom he’d been neglecting.
Today I have seen him do the soap-dish thing twice, which is great, I feel that Sky is getting back to normal, fingers crossed.
Billybob spies the Red Millet
Polly says it wasn’t her that had a bath
Lucy Polly and Basil line up for a photo
Blithe stands still for 0.5 of a second to show off his blue belly
Yes mum, we are the pretty boys (Sky and Hector)
Custard destroys the balsa on the free-standing kabob
Sky poses for a photo while looking at himself in the mirror
Pretty Billybob
Thanks for reading.. 🙂
George follows Sky around hassling him to play with him, this has been going on for some months now.
George thinks that Sky is Mr wonderful.
The thing is that when George is calm, Sky lets him preen him. Unfortunately George gets a little overexcited most of the time.
Then Sky gets very annoyed with this and comes over to me for refuge.
The following two photos happened in a matter of seconds. Sky landed near me, George tried to play with him and Sky flew towards me to get away from George.
I have taken lots of photo so far this March.
Here are some of my favourites.
Billybob eating millet
George on playground eating millet
Basil feeding Hector
Polly. Mirror mirror on the wall…
Billybob on swing
Sky posing
Blithe photo-bombed a photo of Custard
Hector preening
Polly. Surfs up!
We have had a few days of snow here.
Just when we thought it was going to stop, there was another layer today!
I am not sure what the budgies made of it. Sky seemed to stare at it for a little while.
Polly and Lucy have given me a chance to try out my new camera which I got for the bargain sum of £18.99 on ebay!
They are both always so active doing cute hen-type things.
Lucy has discovered that sitting in the small swing can be lots of fun. It also means that she doesn’t get hassled by her current beau George.
Polly loves to chew things and we just had delivery of some balsa pieces, thankfully they also included a new chew toy which she has chewed to pieces now!
On my budgie forum, someone started a thread about Taxi Sticks, these are the sticks that we get our budgies to stand on so that we can take them to their cages at bedtime.
I’d also been asked countless times before how I get 9 budgies to go to bed in the evening and that it must be “chaos!”
On 6th February I filmed my budgies at bedtime using the Taxi Stick service. Here is is for your televisual pleasure. Please excuse my voice, it always jumps a few octaves when talking to my budgies!
Polly climbed straight into her cage when I put her chewables in so I wasn’t able to video her.
Blithe and Basil went in like a dream:
As did Billybob
Hector was already in.
I Taxi’d Sky in and then used the stick as a wand to herd in Lucy and George, it was harder than normal as they are very wary of my phone (which I was using for the video).
My little rebel Custard wont go in until everyone else is in and all the other cages are covered so I was not able to video him.
Sorry about the video quality, but the sound should be okay!
The budgie on the big swing is Polly. I was trying to capture her singing, she is the loudest female budgie that we have had and sings a lot.
Custard (photo 1) is a lot better since his 2 weeks of antibiotics. For a little while his weight went under 40g and this really worried me. As of this morning, he is 43g which I hope sticks as it’s a good weight for him.
When I go over to the seed boxes, he runs over and stares at me, using Jedi mind tricks to get me to put millet out for him.
Sky (photo 2) is his merry old self, I say old because he’s 11 now. He’s the only bird that Polly has let feed her since Pete passed away. George is still annoying him, so Sky comes to me for refuge a lot.
Basil (grey boy, photo 3) still has hopes of being Polly’s best friend. You can quite often see him perched on top of her cage when she’s on her swing, guarding her.
If he’s persistent it would be nice to see them as real buddies. But he’s not the most pushy of the boys.
Hector (Blue boy, Photo 3) still much prefers humans to budgies. He does a new thing to make me come and get him now. He pretends he wants to go to the water dish and can’t quite make it, so I have to rescue him. Then he wont go back in to the cage and insists on sitting with me.
Blithe (photo 4) is still Blithe! He comes over to me often because Hector sits with me. Blithe is the only one of the current budgies that was already “hand tame” when he came to us, and he still is. If you call biting us hand tame!
Lucy and George (photo 5) are still very much an item. Since the first day that Lucy socialised with everyone and chose George as her victim/boyfriend, they are pretty much inseparable. It’s funny how their relationship has changed though. She chased him around at the start and now he chases her.
Polly (photo 6) is very hard to get a photo of, she’s so wary of the camera! Polly loves to sing and head-bob in front of her mirror. She has a loud song and it is hard to distinguish from Billybob’s singing. Polly is quite playful and can often be seen hanging upside down or demolishing a cuttlebone. She seems very happy.
Billybob (photo 7) went to the vet 2 weeks ago and has been on vitamins every other day for a possible vitamin deficiency. He seems more animated, but I could be imagining things. He goes through periods of resting, but also chews oats, flies around the room, sits on the swing singing and goes to the playground to see if millet or herbs have been left there. After a month I am to report back to the vet on his condition.
Photo 8 is of all the budgies on a dreary afternoon. I don’t often manage to get a photo shot of all of them!
