Percy has passed on

I mentioned "my" bird, the cockatiel Percy, who was named as a boy but turned out to be a girl. She just died last night, in the night. Only a week ago she was fit and well, and even flying around the house when out of her cage, and she had stopped laying eggs, which was a good sign. But DH noticed a couple of days ago that she had suddenly got painfully thin. We got her some worm medicine and drop-fed her some sugar water and put a heat lamp on the cage, but we were too late and by this morning she was gone. I am really down about it. She was such a sweet little thing. Sadly, the only picture I have of her is as a baby, where she is cuddling up with a clutch of baby Hahn's Macaws.

Bird news

I haven't been keeping you all up to date with the birds. At this precise moment we have eight of them. Five are budgies (I don' t think I updated the fact that another was lost - Mellow. I may not even have mentioned getting those two.) And I know I never posted about getting the "budgie from hell" (who is actually very sweet), Nelson. The budgies are (in the order of how long we have had them): Pearl, Huey, Holly, Muffin and Nelson. We still have the two cockatiels, Clemmie and Winnie. And just a week ago, we acquired a 9 year old Hahn's Macaw named Han. My DH heard about a young man who needed to rehome the parrot he had since the age of 13 due to his changed lifestyle (living in student housing, which was causing the bird stress) and he (DH) agreed to take him. That's him there getting his wing tickled.

Bird flu comes to the UK

It was always just a matter of time. I feel guilty. A former vegetarian, who even attempted to be vegan for three years, I have been making free-range poultry a big part of my diet in recent years. (The loud chattering of the budgies and cockatiels in the background doesn't help either. Yeah, I hear you, guys.) Bird flu has hit, hard, striking a turkey farm in Suffolk.

Hillary RIP

We lost another budgie. One of our young ones who had a damaged wing, and then had also lost her entire tail behind the sofa in a mysterious accident, died under unseen circumstances following an adventurous leap from the cage. We generally let them get out and back in via a long rope ladder throughout most of the day, and with their wings clipped, they can fly short distances, but seem to prefer an exciting plummet from the roof of the cage to the ground, sometimes followed by a little exploration, before climbing back up. But we found little Hillary, who was the tiniest, loudest and cutest of the bunch, expired on the floor, so we don't know if she broke her neck or possibly died of fright due to the dog Desmond's interest in her. We buried her in the back garden near to Sanjay.
We are hoping to get three more, to build our flock back up, as they seem happiest when there are plenty of friends to play with. The cockatiels, Winston and Clementine according to DH (even we chose those names to be androgynous, i.e. Winnie and Clemmie) are doing fine. I am beginning to suspect, though, that Winston is the girl and Clementine should have remained Clement.

Our newest birds

Here is a picture of the newest additions to our household. These are two young cockatiels named Winnie and Clemmie. Clemmie is the one in the foregound with the peachy cheeks; she is actually smaller but is standing in front. They join our budgies (but in a different cage for now, although they all get out a lot) : Pearl, Hughie, Holly and Hilary. And of course our little black (now black and grey) dog Desmond.
Winnie and Clemmie came to us as a freebie from my friend Cindy, who runs a parrot rescue centre (not actually restricted to parrots, she also has at least one pigeon!) and she hand-rears birds, does bird-counselling and bird-sitting and all kinds of stuff. She gave us the 'tiels supposedly because they were possibly becoming "feral" after their hand-rearing, so she didn't want to sell them, but really as you can see they are quite tame. We thought it might take a week before they would let us handle them but they were stepping up on our hands and perching on us on the second day.