Sailorwolf

If it's not causing problems then let him have it. There is no need to throw it away, if he loves it, because if it is causing no problems then throwing it away isn't going to achieve anything, but make him sad. Get some more toys and make sure to swap them around a though.

I don't tend to clip my birds wings, even my inside ones. I like to let them fly around, but then I don't have kids. I do clip a bird on the occasion that I think it is being too flighty, cocky or scared of my hand as the bird can be hard to get back in its cage sometimes. I taught my self how to clip wings from reading books and looking at pictures. When I read your statement AV I was like "Oh no, I don't want to have to go to a vet to get it done all the time (or advised)," specially when I know how and have been doing it for years, then I went "wait a moment..." as I had obviously forgot what I've just been studying for the last few years :rofl: I've never seen that rule mentioned in all the books I've read on it. Maybe it doesn't apply to NZ.

Yep, go ahead and post them GB.

These two mutations are very rare mutations, you would have to obtain them first in order to breed them. To breed your own black budgie you just have to be very lucky and hope that a gene in one of your birds mutates while it is still a zygote, or mutates in the gametes of an adult bird. And then if you were lucky enough for this to happen you would have to very selectively breed your birds to produce a black spot or darker pigment and this can only occur if the gene gets passed on in the first place. It is possible for a bird to carry a gene but never pass it on, just because of the gamble in the process of meiosis. YOu could try and slectively breed darker and darker birds, but really you need a new mutation to occur.

Looks great!

Well I think show budgies have been bred to mature quickly. Makes sense. On the colour. Looks like someone had a naughty with a mauve or grey pet budgie somewhere along the line. Notice how his butt is a mauve too. The yellow doesn't go all the way. It is possible he is a purebred bushie and the mutation has just occurred in him, but unlikely.

Well effectively it could be worth investigating as we would develop a higher understanding of genetics and polygenic inheritance. Which could further help genetic diseases. Unfortunately I am in the wrong field to do this. I've gone the medical route rather than the genetic route, I find genetics interesting, but medicine moreso.

I've got an Acer laptop with Windows XP and I've had it for 2 years now. It has never crashed or got a virus (knocks wood). The only thing it has done is to somehow stop DVD movies from playing (DVD discs work fine, it stopped working after I watched 300 on it, maybe the Spartans destroyed my DVD drive so that I could never watch another movie . Selfish little fellas). I like Windows and PCs because I am a gamer and pretty much all games and components are made for Windows and PCs. What's wrong with giving money to Bill Gates? He supports many charities and without him and our good friends at Bungie there would be no Halo and my life would be less colourful. :baby: My mum managed to get a free computer by doing a computer course. You should check that out. They were up to date ones as well.

Well maybe bush budgies develop slower than pet ones. It makes sense that pet budgies and show budgies would develop faster as they have been bred to do so among other things. He looks rather dark for a bushie

But why would you want to pay all that money for a system that is essentially the same as the one you've already got? I'm a windows gal!

Scanning or transmission?

Yes and no. It depends what you are trying to prove. In events that occur over millions of years, things that take too long for us to observe, like evolution and plate tectonics this would ring true. In things that we can observe and measure like some aspects of physics like electricity, the event happens in a relative time frame that we can observe and thus can be proven a little easier. ha ha. But yes you did misread it as I mentioned that proof and some form of evidence is generally needed to form a theory, several times

They are gorgeous. I really like the violet

Or the scientific name. lol

Fero. There are many topics in the forums and FAQ as to why there is that age restriction. Just go look. To be honest I don't really know what I've learned here. It is so ingrained in my mind now that it seems like I've known it for years and I can't distinguish it from what I knew, before I came, from books. Now that is the sign of good teaching. But I have learned all the genetic mutations and their mode of action (an area I find tantalisingly interesting). I have also learned how to deal with my fellow person and have confidence in my knowledge. :rofl: Does anyone ever find after they have been reading books that they tend to write like the author? I've just been filling my head with the works of Terry Pratchett and Eric Nylund in the last few days and I have this urge to write more colourfully.

Aaah. But reread my post. I wrote sulphur crested cockatoo. In the first sentence I wrote "the cockatoo species", admittedly I should have replaced the "the" with an "a". However technically it is correct as I did not specify a cockatoo species at the time. :rofl: My first sentence was a statement and the following paragraph was an explanation. So technically I am not at fault. Don't you just love semantics. (me escaping through my own loop hole) Also the parakeet misnomer is so much larger than a cockatoo one (as that is a genus, I think) But yes, I almost shot myself in the foot.

Good on ya Kaz. Especially for getting the best answer too. That made me a little happier.

Yea. Budgie is short for budgerigar. No, parakeet is not nickname, it is lazy name! It just annoys me, because calling the budgie species parakeet is like calling the cockatoo species a parrot. It really goads me when I see pet care books entitled "Caring for your parakeet" and it has a picture of a budgie on the front and DOES NOT mention all the other hundreds of parakeet species and assumes that parakeet only means budgie. It is just like having a book called "Caring for your Parrot" and having a sulphur crested cockatoo on the cover and no mention of any other species. As if the name 'parrot' is good enough for a cocky and no other species of parrot could possibly be confused with it when you talk about it. Sorry, it really ruffles my feathers.

I hate it how they call them parakeets.

Welcome to the forums. Also another thing that people don't seem to think about in colony breeding is that a lot of inbreeding goes on as well, producing chicks that are less genetically healthy than they could be. This on top of birds too young and too old breeding, non-stop breeding and fighting over nestboxes and territory can lead to death for a lot of birds.

Iroquois ((french: pronounced Ir-o-kwoy) I quite like this and discovered it only today) Nero Darius Perseus Xantheus Xerxes

We had to do a training project for one of our papers and I managed to train Arkady to fly to and land onto his travel cage on command by using clicker training. I wanted to train him to go in, but I only had a week to do it and didn't manage to get that far. My question is. When do you introduce commands?

That's great to hear

Attack of the vampire budgies!!! So what are seedbells stuck together with if not honey?

That's great!