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!
I took a nice photo of Blithe, Sky and Polly.
The follow up photo was not so great though..
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!
