A blog about my beautiful budgies.
Some time ago, I used the webcam a lot to watch my feathery friends whilst I was in the office. I would just check in for a few seconds, at intervals, to make sure all looked normal. This was invaluable on the occasion Raspy became ill.
Raspy’s illness & subsequent sad, untimely passing, is well documented on this blog (click here) so I will not repeat the details on this post. I will just say that on Monday 21st November, 2011, I kept an eye on the webcam as Raspy had been having problems with passing eggs. During the day she was fine; she was in the Ferplast with her beloved Bezukhov, & was lively & happy. When I arrived home & found her struggling, I could pin point that the problem had begun within the last hour.
It was a relief to know she had not been in pain all day.
Later on, I saved a video of part of what was streamed that day, on the host website. At the time, I believe the videos were too large to download to my hard drive. In time, the host website shutdown. They had sent an email warning of the shutdown & how to retrieve videos, but (annoyingly) I did not read it until it was too late. The website closed down & my video was lost. I felt sad as it was the last video of a happy Raspy.
Then we come to one day after the 8th anniversary of Raspy’s passing (24th November 2019), when I was browsing the internet & amazingly, came across the video! It was on another website. The video was almost 2 hours long, but I managed to quickly download it to my hard drive & then upload to YouTube (how technology changes!)
I present it to you here. Quality is bad & it is very long (!) but I wanted to dedicate a post to something I thought I had lost. Even though Raspy died just two days after this video, I feel happy watching it & seeing the good spirits that both she & Bezukhov were in.
Still in our thoughts.
Love you always my dear Raspy and my dear Bezukhov.
♥♥♥
Eight years ago today, our beautiful Raspy made her way to rainbow bridge.
Raspy
Still in our thoughts.
Love you always my dear girl.
♥♥♥
As you know, from my earlier post (click here: Three near-flightless birds), we are having a pretty bad moult season. Since that post, Lennie has lost more flight feathers resulting in one wing being, well…. not much use as a wing.
It has not stopped him from feeding Dalai:
To add to that, Dalai decided to grow his beak…
…that the vet trimmed down yesterday. She also investigated a strange thing beside his beak that I had noticed a few weeks ago. At first I thought it was a stuck seed, then I wondered if it was a strange feather. The vet confirmed it was fleshy & attached to him, similar to a skin tag. She whipped it off pretty smartly. Hopefully, whatever it was, it will not grow back.
The supplier I normally buy Dalai, Perry & Lennie’s seed from, put up their prices. Significantly! This led me to source another brand with a view to mixing them & thereby reducing the cost but still retaining quality. This approach also ensures that we are never dependent on one brand.
L: New seed, R: Original seed
To make sure they approved of the new seed I had selected, I put some in a separate seed pot. In Dalai’s cage it was in the small treat pot, & in Perry & Lennie’s cage it was in the seed pot at the back. The new seed looks pretty much like the old seed, but with less red millet (see side photo). I then just had to monitor their preference.
Dalai seemed non-committal in that he ate from both the seed pots, with no obvious preference.
Perry appeared to prefer the new brand, eating quite a lot of it, even with the old/current brand available next to him.
Though Lennie ate the new brand, he seemed to steer more towards the original brand.
Conclusion? Budgies are individuals with their own likes & dislikes! Dalai, Perry & Lennie are generally okay with the new brand.
A couple of days later I forgot I had separated the different seed brands & mixed them, so the experiment had to end! So currently, they are eating a mixture of the brands although still a majority of the original one.
Evidence they are eating the new seed:
It was three years ago on this day that I brought home these two beautiful, blue birds.
Happy adoption-day, my blue rascals!
We love you lots!
♥♥♥
It is moulting time again.
Dalai has been hit hard by it. Often he has a mini-moult before the main moult, lulling me into a false sense of security, thinking he has been let off lightly. He lost a few feathers earlier then stopped losing them, so I thought his moult was over, then overnight he lost 3 flight feathers & his main moult began. Flight feather loss has been severe enough to stop him from flying. To say he is grumpy about this would be an understatement! You can see from the photos below that he has one wing significantly shorter than the other.
Lennie has had flight problems since his last moult & though those flight feathers grew back, he has since lost some more, so is still struggling to fly. As with Dalai, he has one wing significantly shorter than the other. If only they could work as a pair – they would probably get combined decent flight!
Perry preening
Perry has lost flight feathers too though his loss is less severe. However, the combination of some feather loss & his growing lump, also results in poor flying ability.
For some days, both Dalai & Perry have stayed in their respective homes, with just Lennie dashing between them, either sitting with Perry, or sitting with Dalai (at a safe distance from his moody beak jabbing).
So, there you have it…. three budgies, all with flight problems. Hopefully both Dalai & Lennie’s wings will grow back quickly. I am still hopeful that Perry’s lump will just stop growing!
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Puddings & Toyboys 