Gordie!

Did you know that January is “Adopt a Bird Month”?cageMeet Gordie – our newest addition! We found Gordie (we named him after Gordie Howe – Mr. Hockey) on Craigslist. Here he is in his quarantine cage.gordieGordie is approximately 5 years old and has had at least two former owners. His previous owner did a great job taming him after acquiring him from some neglectful owners. He loves to sit on shoulders, but is wary of stepping up. We’ll try to work on that.hgHarry is going to be a favorite perch. It’s good to be tall! This little budgie is a sweetie, and I can’t wait for him to meet the rest of the flock.

*The fact that he is blue is a just a coincidence! Gordie was the first budgie we saw on the animal shelter sites/Craigslist.

Budgie Dreams 10

budgiedream10Maybe when Sunny sleeps, she is dreaming about Dewey’s return. I miss him, too. This is what I remember about him.

We brought Dewey home because he had such bright colors and was a beautiful bird. After getting him home, we saw he had been sick and worried that we would have to return him. Instead, we cleaned him and watched him carefully. After going through quarantine, we introduced Dewey to Cooper. He immediately took to her, but she was somewhat indifferent to him. It wasn’t long before Ozzie came along and he and Dewey became good buddies.

Everything changed with the addition of Sunny. From the beginning, it was obvious that Dewey and Sunny were in love. Since they met, the two of them have never separated, until the very end. When Dewey got up in the morning, the first thing he did was go to Sunny’s side and start chatting her up. The two would always groom each other and when they did, it was obvious they were enjoying themselves.

I’d never really thought about birds having much personality, but Dewey changed that. If he wasn’t the leader of the flock, he was definitely the point man or the instigator. All the boys wanted to be Dewey and the girls wanted to be with him. He was the fruit ninja. Dewey played air hockey. He was my hockey team’s mascot. Whenever we opened the cage, he was usually the first one out and the flock would not follow unless Dewey was flying around.

How Dewey loved to fly. All the birds are fully flighted, but Dewey just seemed to get an extra kick out of flying. When he was on your finger, he was always looking to where he would fly next. The other birds climb down the cage to get back in. Not Dewey, he would jump off the top, turning in mid-air to swoop back in even though it was a few inches away. I liked to call that maneuver the “Dewey Drop”.

The flock has definitely gotten quieter since Dewey passed. You will be missed Little Man.

Caught in the Act

This had been happening recently:

spillOne of the budgies was knocking the seed cups down, spilling perfectly good seed on the bottom of the cage. We suspected Dewey. Though mild-mannered, he has been known to knock around the food cup when it has too many pellets (and not enough oats) in it. But to be sure, we set up the CooperCam to see who the culprit was. We later fast forwarded through three hours of footage and saw this:

badbudgieIt was Sunny! This little one definitely has a naughty streak.

harryHarry got to work and budgie-proofed the seed cups.

haYour move, budgies.