|
|
 Holly passed away last night, suddenly, as budgies do. Holly is the one on the left above; the one on the right, Pearl, passed some time ago. I think Holly was between 5 and 7 years old. He has some offspring out there somewhere, thanks to a little breeding holiday he took care of Cindy, our friend who used to live near here. Here is our current roll call of birds and other critters:
- Toby, a white, totally deaf English bull terrier / Jack Russell cross, male, neutered, drama queen, thinks he's a cat
- Max and Chewy, a pair of gorgeous Blue&Gold Macaws
- Fred, a cockatoo
- Leslie and Freddy, a pair of Amazons
- Four! Hahn's macaws (we now have more Hahn's macaws than budgies) : Han, Vernie, Kermie and Harry (we think they are all males)
- Three budgies : Bill-or-Ben, Little Bob (who is female, and she made babies with Holly) and Nelson (also female)
We are also temporarily boarding a pair of parrotlets, whom I have provisionally named Oscar and Lucinda. Of course, in truth, all these critters are Lewis's, although I do contribute a bit to their care. Quite a lot to Toby's, almost none at all to Fred, who would rip my hand off if I tried to handle him. Lewis has been making some forays into the world of web design on behalf of the charity he is an officer of, Soft Landing.
I haven't been keeping you updated on the birds in our lives. We acquired another Hahn's Macaw, after LouLou, after keeping the big Blue and Golds and after giving them back when their mummy got back from the holiday in the States that ended up being unexpectedly extended. (I did tell you about LouLou, didn't I? She's a Goffin Cockatoo, full of attitude, tends to bite women and snuggle sluttishly against men. She is seriously bonded to DH, who spoils her rotten.) Anyway, the "new" little green guy is with us now; he has had two previous homes plus our friend, the rescue centre keeper, and she gave him to us. He was called Mango, but we call him Vernon. He was missing all his feathers except his head and tail and then he pulled out his tail. Han, whose feathers had all grown back, started plucking himself too, but he only got as far as the grey fluff on his chest and then thankfully stopped.
Meanwhile "my" cockatiel, Percy, turned out to be a girl and keeps laying little clutches of eggs and sitting on them. They are probably not fertilised, but we have to let her sit on them for a while or she would just keep laying until she got calcium-deprived, which can lead to a sometimes fatal condition called "egg-bound". (I won't go into detail if you don't mind.) And another budgie passed away, probably of "old age". He was Huey, the last of our original four pet shop budgies. So we currently have budgies: Holly, Muffin, Nelson, Bob and Margaret; cockatiels: Winnie, Daisy and Percy; Hahn's Macaws: Han and Vernon and a cockatoo: LouLou. DH keeps saying he is going to take pictures of them all, but he has a lot going on just now. More on that later maybe.
A friend of mine from Minneapolis, Dolores, is coming over here to visit next week. She and her friend are mostly staying in the south, but they are finishing off their trip with a quick tour of Oxford and Blenheim Palace, followed by a Shakespeare play at the RSC in Stratford. So I am going to meet up with them in Oxford and do Oxford and Blenheim Palace. I am really looking forward to it.
Here are a selection of recent parrot and cockatiel pictures. We lost one of our two original cockatiels, Clemmie, to some unknown infection or wasting disease. But Cindy, our parrot rescue operating friend (also the person who gave us the pair of cockatiels in the first place) has given us a replacement partner for Winston, the survivor. We have named her Daisy.
Meanwhile, Cindy is on holiday in the US, and we are parrot-sitting three of hers, Frit, Frat and Maisie. They are all African Greys. Maisie has a liver condition which is why she is almost featherless. Finally, there is Han, our own little rescued-guy. Who says "Bye-bye" to me in a little boy voice every morning as I leave for work.
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.
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.
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.
 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.
Sadly, I must report the sudden death of Sanjay, our prettiest budgie. Last night, after a normal day of playing and chirping and other birdy activities, he suddenly fell off his perch and just died. So now there are four. They seem OK, so it must have just been his time to go. To budgie heaven.
I have thought, more than once, that the Catholic church could use blogging software as a vehicle for confessions. There would be no need for the "it has been nine days since my last confession" declaration, because the posting dates are very good guilt-tripping devices. (But you can tell I'm not really a Catholic - for one thing I think individual confession is now obsolete, along with limbo and St. Christopher.)
There's too much going on on the personal level for me these days. It's not that there are not plenty of outrages and other noteworthy things going on in the news, it's just that it has to be really extreme before I think my contribution is needed. (And of course, it's never needed, that's just hubris speaking.) I visit MySpace every day, but not my blog. In fact I have met (not in person yet, but soon I hope) a fellow female American ex-pat who lives in a village not 5 miles from here. She is also something of an expert on pet birds, and has a flock of them herself. I finally got the device hooked up to my "newer" laptop, the one that fried, so the little memory stick port no longer works :( , so that I can upload pictures from my camera and I have put here the best of many pictures of our five budgies. Their names, in order left to right, bottom to top: Huey, Pearl, Holly, Sanjay and Hilary.
Sadly, one of our budgies flew the coop on just the third day of his stay with us. Earl, the one lurking in the background in the picture below, shot out of the cage and out an open transom and we have not seen him since. But this was just after what was meant to be the fourth budgie was introduced to the cage. He is Huey, a yellow-green with grey factor (I think). Apart from that, the budgies are fine. I got Sanjay to come right up close to my hand, holding a millet spray, inside the cage. Pearl is quite wary of me, though, and the new guy, Huey, is somewhat subdued. His head is so fluffy it is hard to tell when his eyes are open. A lot of my Google activity the last few days, apart from trying to find a sports bra to replace the one that's missing, has to do with budgie behaviour and care. I will post more pics soon. The news from the outside world has mostly been too dreadful to comment on.
The size of our family has just doubled this weekend. Previously, it was me, DH and Des (a dog) and yesterday we added Sanjay, Pearl and Earl, three lovely budgerigars. They have already settled in, although we are going to get them a nicer and bigger cage very soon, and today we went out and bought lots of cute little bird toys for them. This is a new experience for me, although DH had pet birds in his childhood.
|
|
Holly passed away last night, suddenly, as budgies do. Holly is the one on the left above; the one on the right, Pearl, passed some time ago. I think Holly was between 5 and 7 years old. He has some offspring out there somewhere, thanks to a little breeding holiday he took care of Cindy, our friend who used to live near here. Here is our current roll call of birds and other critters:
