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 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.
 Photo by Lewis Ramage
We have two house guests staying for a month or so. This is Chewie, a young female. The other one looks very similar, and is male, named Max, and a bit older. They are Blue and Gold Macaws.
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.
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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:
