Budgie bonding

I've really enjoyed reading the various comments left by people telling me how Brian reminds them of a beloved budgie. In my opinion, budgies are completely underrated, probably because of their inexpensive price and small stature. Most people don't know what they are missing.

Brian has an amazing talent of scurrying around the breakfast table and standing exactly at the part of the story you're trying to read.Tonight, we were eating dinner on the couch. Beeps was in his cage to protect Brian and Stella was in her cage to protect Calypso, but everyone else was out. Brian was on my shoulder. This has been the routine since Brian came to stay with us.

Suddenly I realized that he'd been regurgitating up there. I was amazed at how many partially digested seeds he brought up! Neither Thomas nor I could remember any of our budgies regurgitating for us before. After he brought up the seed, he'd shake his head, so I had to clean up the wall, back of the couch, Thomas, me, the air filter, floor, etc. His projectiles really have great range!

I ended up putting him back in his cage as I do not want to encourage mating behavior; also, he needed to refill after losing so much! That being said, it did make me happy in a way that he feels comfortable enough with us after only a few weeks to do this. And that he is healthy enough to. Let's just hope this doesn't become a pattern.

Half-hearted

Over the weekend, Thomas was showering with Rocky and Max perched on the shower curtain rod. Apparently, Max tackled Rocky and the two of them fell into the water in the tub. That meant that Rocky got really drenched! I went to take a picture of him as I find it funny how his head dries so much more quickly than his body.

Of course, as I approached, he had to show me how big and scary he was, but it didn't seem like he was really into it:

Plucked Max

Here is a picture of Max after last week's feather destruction incident. She bit the feathers off at the end of the shaft, which frequently is a result of low humidity. Although he denies it, I have a feeling that Thomas was not maintaining the humidifier as he should have been.I have not found any more feathers at the bottom of her cage since I've been home. It doesn't really matter, as feathers do not make the bird, but it's a little frustrating since she'd most likely still be fully feathered if I hadn't had to go on a business trip.

More Brian at breakfast

Yesterday morning, I was eating my pre-run breakfast of an apple with peanut butter. Brian came over and helped himself to some of my apple, but when he saw the camera, he ran over away from the apples and towards the camera.I'm going to try to get some video of him running around the table on the newspaper. He's so quick! He frequently perches on the fold of the paper, like here.

Weird nesting

Friday night after work, the caiques were still worked up about my absence. For some reason, Beeps has been taking out his frustration on Thomas instead of me. He launched himself at Thomas and was about to attack, but Thomas managed to shake him by dropping to the ground and protecting himself under the table.

What a surprise for Rocky as Thomas stayed under the table until I could get Beeps in his cage to cool down! In years past, Rocky had tried to build a nest for the two of them under the table. When he saw Thomas there, he ran as fast as he could to take up his place.

As Max is obsessed with Rocky and with attention, she came down to see what was going on and started demanding head pets as well:Since Stella is obsessed with making sure things are equal between her and Max, she came over also. She flew to the chair from her stand and then slid down the chair back until she had a good view of things:
You'd think this would be enough for her:
But she wanted to be on the same chair as Max. This could not end well and we don't want to encourage any kind of nesting behavior in enclosed, dark places, so everyone was removed from the nest and returned to stands.