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last revised 11/15/2007
Petey – normal gray male, age unknown
11/15/2007 – We are Petey’s third home. His age is unknown to us, but I suspect he’s a young adult. He came to live with us the evening of Friday, October 12th, 2007. Our first mission was improving his diet to get him off the poor quality food he was previously being fed. He has shown significant improvement already on a better quality seed. I’m still trying to get him to eat fresh foods, but I’m not giving up.
I’ll upload photos of Petey when I can get some nice images.
TIELS OF THE NOT-SO-DISTANT PAST
I’m including information about PJ and Wally in the hopes that others can learn from both the things I did right and my final devastating mistake.
Prince John (‘PJ’) – normal gray male, came at 2 months of age, 04/15/1995-08/23/2007
Wallflower (‘Wally’) – cinnamon female (split for pied), came at 3 weeks of age, 10/03/2003-08/23/2007
05/15/2005 – Wally has a very sore little birdy butt. It appears that she started chewing the preening gland on one side of her tail. I am doing hot compresses a couple of times a day, keeping it clean, and treating with calendula salve.
Looks very owee, doesn’t it? But she’s a very cooperative patient. She is showing a marked preference for seeds over anything else that is offered.
05/17/2005 – Healing very nicely. No longer as red and raw looking and lacerations are healing. No weight loss and she’s showing renewed interest in anything put in her cage.
05/19/2005 – Wally is doing much, much better. No longer being a cooperative little patient, so she must be feeling better. New feathers coming in. One fairly deep laceration remains, but no sign of infection.
05/20/2005 - This happened because the cage was in a draft from the swamp cooler. Though their cage location was perfect for winter, it is directly in the path of the cooler vent for summer. So I’ve moved their cage.
NOTE: Wally fully recovered from this incident with no recurrences or complications.
07/26/2006 - The birds get a diet of seeds, nuts, dried fruit/veggies, sprouted seeds and beans, and fresh fruits and veggies. Wally will eat just about anything she is presented with. PJ, we’re still working on. Because a breeder who fed only pellets and seeds bred and weaned him, he views anything else with suspicion. But at least he’s now eating bell pepper hearts (with the seeds) and freshly washed romaine and green leafy lettuce, in addition to sprouted seeds. We don’t use pelleted food and haven’t since PJ was a youngster. Kibble for birds. Yuck! We try to keep the diet as close to nature as possible, and the two of them are flourishing on it, despite PJ’s reluctance to eat fresh stuff.
Wally likes the camera. She’s very inquisitive. J
PJ isn’t as keen on the camera, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter. LOL
PJ
Wally being her ever-curious self.
04/19/2007 – PJ is now eating pretty much anything he is given. So he’s getting lots of fresh fruits and veggies and other wonderful things just like Wally. They have been nesting for over a year now with no fertile eggs resulting. PJ just can’t quite figure “it” out.
08/26/2007– Sadly, I lost both of my precious little birds last Thursday evening. They resided in front of a window in our kitchen and loved to talk to the birds outside. In the process of using a rarely used eye on the electric stove, smoke quickly filled the kitchen. Apparently, there was some oil or something on the eye. We opened up the kitchen to air it out, but it was too late. I didn’t even think to check the birds after the incident. We found them dead the next day. L
The house is very quiet now. No birds carrying on in the background while I try to talk on the phone. No mimicked response to my sneezes (PJ) or hiccups (Wally). No one screeching at me when I swat flies in the kitchen. No good morning greetings.
Please, please, please don’t make the same mistake I did in disregarding warnings about how dangerous kitchens are for birds, particularly the little guys. I never knew just how deadly smoke could be to them. This is one lesson I’ve had to learn the very hard way.
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