After a period of quarantine (4 weeks) so that he could overcome scalyface mites, Lemon joined the gang in July.
He has fast made friends with Blithe and Basil.
Lemon is such a sweet natured bird and easy to get along with for the other birds.
He is also stick trained, which means it’s not too hard to get him in his cage for bedtime.
I think he’s enjoying his time with us 🙂
Polly and Lucy have just enjoyed a bath in some wet coriander. It’s more fun to play with food than eat it 🙂
Lately, Polly seems to have become very interested in Hector.
When he’s laying down on his shelf, she sidles up to the bars and spends ages staring in at him – much to his annoyance.
Also, if he’s eating seed, she bangs the seed trough (that he’s standing on) up and down and try and get his attention.
Let’s hope that her beau George doesn’t get jealous!
Sky has been with us for more than 8 years (since 5/10/10), he’s known all of the other budgies that we have had, except Eric. Before he came to us he had not been out of his cage, he was 4 years old.
In the summer, Sky was diagnosed with Avian Gastric Yeast and was treated with a 10 day course of Amphotericin B.
Unfortunately he recently relapsed, losing lots of weight. This time, we were unable to get his weight up even though we syringe fed him, made boiled egg (normally a favourite) and gave him lots of tonic seed.
Last night, we lost him. When I knew he was about to pass, I help him in my hand, stroked his head and repeated that he was a good boy until the moment came.
Sky was 12 years and almost a month old. We’ll miss the way he zoomed around the room whistling loudly. Occasionally he’d shout at us if he wanted to land on us.
He also had a fondness for “playing” with the coloured balls in the soapdishes by the window.
Fly high little man, we wish you could have stayed longer.
Sky has been with us since 5th October 2010 and is 12 today.
Happy Birthday lovely boy!
Billybob came to us in December 2013 with his lifelong hen friend JoJo.
We noticed right away that JoJo would hardly ever let Billybob eat at the seed trough as they only had one in their original cage.
The cage was also meant for much larger birds, it had wide bar spacing and a huge java branch that Billybob and JoJo had trouble gripping. Their feet were slightly damaged due to this and they regularly lost grip and fell off their perches. Therefore we padded the bottom of the cage with a fluffy towel.
We gave their original cage away and moved them into a hagen vision cage, which we adapted with a series of rope perches, Y branches and platforms. Billybob also got his own small pot to eat from, this way JoJo couldn’t hog the seed. Billybob would always run over to his pot as soon as it was refilled, so that he could rifle through it for tasty morsels, in his case, oats.
Billybob wasn’t much for making friends and would prefer to spend most time on his own, chewing on oats or leather strings. He also liked to sit on the swings by the window. Occasionally he’d headbob with Sky, but Sky would chase him around the room afterwards and Billybob wasn’t the best flier.
Billybob was approximately 11 years and 4 months old when he passed away today. His poor feet and legs had completely stopped working 2 days before due to a stroke or seizure, he seemed to have given up and stopped eating today too.
We love you Billybob, thank you for coming to stay with us. I hope your reunion with JoJo is a happy one.
Just over four weeks ago a lovely lady that I know (I wont name her, to protect her privacy) found a budgie being chased by magpies.
Miraculously, she managed to coax him down from a tree by talking to him and then catch him in her little boys blanket.
Upon inspection, she noticed that he had scalyface. She quickly made an appointment with an avian vet. I agreed that if nothing too ghastly afflicted him other than the scalyface, which is treatable, I’d take him in to live with us.
Thankfully, he seemed in good health. I say he, but the scalyface covered his cere, so we were not sure of his gender at that time. He was 36g so a little underweight, but otherwise very lively with no parasites in droppings. The vet gave the little budgie an injection for the scalyface and follow up medication for 2 and 4 weeks time for me to administer.
I made up our hospital cage for his arrival as he needed to spend 4 weeks in quarantine before he was integrated into our flock.
Yesterday was the day that he met his 9 friends!
First of all we gave him his last meds, vaselined his beak, legs and feet, weighed him (46g!) put him into Balmoral (a cage in the corner). He immediately bashed a mirror, but quickly got a bit frustrated that he was not about and flying!
I opened the door, but he couldn’t work out how to get out, so after 30 minutes, I fixed some millet in the doorway. After about 20 minutes more, George came over to inspect the millet. Lemon came out to see George. George biffed him as if to say “don’t think you’re taking over, but I’ll show you the ropes” and then they flew off together!
Yesterday was spent exploring everything, the swings, playground, racks on the wall, most of the cages. He ate and drank after about 5 minutes of being out, really fast progress!
At budgie bed time he tried to follow George into the Summer Palace, but there was the little issue of navigating doors.
So I offered him a stick to stand on, amazingly he stood on it, but wouldn’t let me put him in the cage. I tried again a couple more times and he went in. Success!
Lemon and the other budgies (George, Sky and Lucy) in the Summer Palace took about 10 minutes to settle down, but eventually did.
Welcome to our home Lemon 🙂
Lemon with scalyface when he was first found
In Balmoral when he was first placed in the living room
On the swing in Polly’s cage
Posing for a photo: Basil, George, Lucy, Lemon, Blithe and Custard
Lemon on the big swing next to billybob (yellow)
Lemon on big swing with Polly(blue)
Lemon, Custard, George and Sky on mirror
Lemon and basil, with George Polly and Lucy, Custard on lower rung
Lemon eating dill with Sky
George, Lemon, Lucy, Sky bedtime
Sometimes Hector can’t decide if he wants to be preened or not.
Some of the budgies have been enjoying their vegetables.
A lot of the carrot did end up on the floor though, it’s a good job humans don’t behave this way at dinner time.
George (green) and Hector (blue) had some celery, Blithe (white) enjoyed some carrot and Basil (grey) hid behind some basil!
As I type this blog post, Hector is sitting on my left hand, preening my thumb.
Today Billybob turned 11.
Hope you’ll all wish him Happy Birthday!
