Wendamus

How cute! My birds (still pretty new, got them in January) have only recently started tentatively bathing in their water. I tried and tried to get them to take 'showers' when I first got them, but I think they were still too new to everything. These pics have me tempted to take my kids outside and see how they like another attempt!

I love this forum - I just read through some FAQs and realized that the cage I thought was big is actually the minimum size for one bird, and is tall rather than wide. Since I've just gotten a third bird and would like to eventually have them all in the same cage (QT right now) I just ordered this one off of ebay. (The free shipping sold me!) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=380105253309 It's 30"Wide x 18"Deep x 36"Tall. I've been letting my first two birds loose all the time, but several close calls with cats have convinced me that isn't going to work in my house. I can give them free play time out of the cage every day when the cats are locked up, but they'll have to go back in the cage when I can't directly supervise. Therefore I'd like a cage that's a little nicer and bigger for them, in my everlasting quest to get them to act like birds instead of little scared unhappy statues. That link has lots of cages available, and links to an ebay store that has aviaries and multi-cage stands and other stuff, pretty good prices. I've also found that rather than paying $8-$20 for 'natural' perches, I can go to the hardware store and get dual-ended screws -- one end screws into the wood, and the other end accepts a wingnut and bolt. Then some scrounging around my yard turned up some nice branches - total cost about 50cents per perch. I boiled the branches before drilling the ends to soften them (and keep them from splitting) and it also killed any germs outside birds might have left lying around.

If you haven't read it, there's a pinned topic that might help in the budgie behavior section: http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index....showtopic=12931 It doesn't talk a lot about how to solve this problem, but at least might give you some clues about where it came from, and other birds with similar issues.

Thanks! I'll get them back in there right away. Had a close call with a cat tonight, so I'm glad it's safe. It turns out this is a tough house to make safe for birds! I'm probably going to have to get them back into a cage, or at least convince them to move to perches up on the walls instead of sitting on the ground. I'll start another thread on the behavior forum on that. Thanks for the help!

I finally had to break down and use ant spray in the room where my budgies were. I saw the suggestion to use vinegar spray after I'd already done it, and I'll use it next time. For now, I've moved my budgies to my bedroom. I've wiped down all the surfaces where the ant spray hit, and vacuumed up all the dead bugs. I've put out a fan and opened all the windows. How long would you say before it's safe to put the birds back in the room? They've been out for about 24 hours. My bedroom is a higher traffic area than the office where they normally stay. My toddler comes in regularly, and I tromp in and out a dozen times a day. It's more social, but since the birds live loose, it also means more times a day for the cats to sneak in. In addition, there are open aquariums with no lids around, so it's not ideal. I'm not super worried - my budgie's wings are clipped, so it's unlikely that they could fly up to the aquariums, and we're careful about the cats. They're also more like bird statues on their perches than active, travelling little animals - they're very quiet most of the time. I'm more worried that they're going to get stepped on than anything. I know I should probably put them in their cage, but we're qt'ing a new bird there(beautiful white with black markings on her head, and bright blue under her wings), and they haven't used the cage in a month. So my ideal solution would be to get them back in the office, where they've been safe and happy.

Oh, thanks for posting that, it was greatly entertaining! Anyone know how to get budgies to exert so much self control?!

I know this thread is old, but I'm running into the same problem - ants in my bird area as well as crawling around on my fishtanks. I came to this forum trying to figure out how long I have to leave my birds out of a room after I've sprayed Raid (a common ant spray in the US) - I haven't figured that out yet, but I thought I'd post this link for the aviary keepers: http://eap.mcgill.ca/publications/eap4.htm The article is about diatomaceous earth - a silicate type of 'sand' that's very fine. When the ants crawl through the earth, its sharp edges slice through their exoskeletons and its drying properties remove so much moisture from their bodies that they die. I use this outside my home regularly, and it works very well - we've had flooding around the house, so it has currently washed away (and the ants are seeking high ground to get away from the flooding - hence the ant spray) but under normal circumstances its a very effective, safe pesticide. I recommend sprinkling it on damp ground - even though its non toxic, it has drying effects if it's inhaled, so damp ground and a wind-free day will make it most safe for your birds. I don't have an aviary to test it's effectiveness, so if anyone gives it a try, please let me know if it works for you!

Just go to this link http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ and download this software for the Windows Operating System (XP, or Vista - whatever you have). It should auto-install, and start. It's got controls that look like a tape recorder, the red round one will record. If you've got a built in microphone, that's all you have to do. I downloaded it and ran it on a Mac, and so I am not 100% sure the installation procedure will look the same on Windows, but it should be pretty close. I look forward to aviary sounds, I think my budgies will be thrilled!

I operate wimdows vista on my pc......but how do you get the aviary sounds from aviary to PC ? Ah, I've had a laptop for so long I didn't think about a desktop computer! Duh! I was thinking you'd just carry the laptop out to the aviary! It took me something like three re-reads to figure out what you were talking about! I gotta stop reading forums at 1:30 in the morning. I don't have any great ideas, unless you have a nice long digital microphone or you find a laptop laying around. Most modern laptops have built in microphones, so that's all you'd need. Alternately, I could talk my boss into flying me to Australia for some made up business need, bring my laptop, and visit your aviary. If the economy weren't crumbling around my ears, I might even be able to convince her! :-) Anyone else have aviary sounds they'd like to share?

What operating system do you use? There are free sound recorders for almost every operating system - for the Mac I use http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17392. Looks like Audacity is free for both recording and editing. I don't know how easy it is to set up on Windows. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ If anyone wants to record aviary sounds, I'm more than happy to post them on the web and leave them up indefinitely - I have unlimited space on my web hosting account, and we can keep a running list here on the forum of the links.

I noticed this with my birds, and went a different direction -- I figured it was because their natural instinct is to forage from the ground for scattered seeds, rather than eat out of a full seed basket. So I covered the grate with newspaper and scattered some seed on the ground. Since they mostly sit in one place, they can eat in the other parts of the bottom of the cage. They've spent some time down there picking at the scattered seed, and haven't gone after their droppings again. I don't know if that's consistent with other birds or not, it's just my experience.

Anyone have any recommendations in the States? I've been trying different seed blends, all marketed for budgies, and they still currently throw out more than they eat. Thanks!

Hi folks, I've had my budgies for about a month now, and they're settling in nicely. They're easy to handle and calm and appear to pay attention when I talk to them, I have hopes the male might learn to talk. However, they don't act like the budgies I see on youtube videos. They don't play with toys, they don't move around their cage, they don't chirp much, and they overall don't appear to be very happy. They do eat consistently, both their normal seed and millet spray. (They ignore all veggies/fruit/mineral blocks I offer, but I keep offering.) I can't tell if they're scared from their new environment, or if they don't like the toys I've given them, or what exactly is going on. However, some reading and guesswork made me think that maybe their environment was too quiet, and they felt threatened. They're isolated in the office to keep them safe from toddlers and cats. I work in there ~8 hours a day, but often the only sound is my keyboard clicking. So I went is search of budgie sound files, in the hope of providing them some background noise. I've found a whole bunch of 10-20 second files people have posted, which I downloaded. I also found the following: http://www.listeningearth.com.au/albums/Fr...HealthyPets.htm I downloaded this, and I love it - it's 63 minutes of wild budgie flock sounds - good quality and my budgies love it. I also spent some time downloading the sample files from the other CDs they have available for other bird background noise. I was wondering if people had other resources like this? I've accumulated about 4 hours of sounds, a lot of which is canary songs from: http://www.cwwcbc.us/tk/ And other wild bird calls from here: http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/bird_info/ Any other things you all do to make your budgies feel more natural and at home?

Just wanted to follow up. Despite a couple more tries, we never got any significant medication into our boy. Eventually we quit trying, and he got better on his own with rest and low stress and lots of fresh veggies and treats. We're working on teaching him and Alice to talk. Due to quick movements by my three year old, they've lost some of their willingness to hop on a finger, but we've banned her from the bird room and we're working on taming them again. We're talking to them daily, and play looped recordings during the day when we're not around. We've also put together a playlist that we sometimes put on with songs we'd like them to learn. As they get a bit older, the edges of Alice's cere are turning a bit bluish. My housemate is hoping for her to be a girl, and cites Jasper (same age, dark blue cere) as evidence that it's just lighting, etc. I'm hoping for her to be a boy, because then we can get them an unrelated girl to mate with and spend the next year or so teaching them to talk. I just wanted to thank everyone for their help and to let you know that all is well, thanks to the expertise and support of folks on this forum.

With regards to the meds, I'm 90% sure he's getting none of them. I tip his head back and hold his beak open (He just loves that, lemme tell you) and squirt it slowly in. Most of the time, it just dribbles out the side of his beak. Today, I got 'lucky' and kept the meds in his mouth... so they just dribbled out his noseholes. The vet is 45 minutes away, so I couldn't go over to get help. He's getting better, less fluffy, more active, etc. I'm tempted to just quit the meds, but I'd like to find a reference, video, something about putting medication in the crop in case I need to do this again. Any Youtube or similar? If I should continue with the meds, will it help to put it in the water? I can reduce his water down to a small amount, but I'm afraid it'll smell foul to him and he won't drink it. Thanks again, this is a steep learning curve!