krosp

My suggestion for the cover time is that maybe you can decide which end of the day you would rather spend playing with him (before work or after).. and then cover him longer on the other end. like if you decide you want to play with him after work, then keep his cage covered in the morning all the way until just before you leave, or vice versa.

Looks like a boy, and looks heaps like my Cosmo...... But, I will not totally commit to this opinion while it's so blurry lol

I think this is a bit far-fetched, but I've heard that there is a link between stress and gender, and i think it's that you're more likely to have a girl if you're more stressed haha. So good on you for trying to buy a new home while trying to conceive LOL

Have you ever seen her plucking, or have you seen her preen a lot more than usual? If she is plucking she could either be bored or have something irritating her like lice

That's a good idea. Will find some budgies on youtube to play to him. Thanks Yeah I expect him to be a bit funny for a while after we get him back.

I don't know anything about canaries. From what I can tell, they seem content enough just sitting there in a little cage doing nothing much but making pretty noises. I hope that's true, because there are a lot of canaries out there doing exactly that! I think a budgie on its own needs a lot of attention. If you don't mind yours being more of a playmate that distracts you and flies onto your computer and interrupts your work, then they will make a great pet. But if you want it more to look at then maybe a canary would be better? Hard to know. I guess you can't go wrong either way, but you'll certainly learn a lot about budgies here. Welcome to the forum!

At the end of this month we're going away for two weeks and leaving Cosmo with my parents. This was the arrangement since before we even got him. My parents have budgies and have had tame ones before too so they will look after him well. My only concern is that he will probably hear all the other budgies all day. I don't think there's any avoiding that. I don't know if he will get really upset by that... he'll be all by himself and hearing all these other budgies all day. When we first got him he was fanatical about hearing outside birds. He still calls back to them but it isn't as bad. I just hope that in a new place in new surroundings he doesn't revert back to going really crazy about hearing other birds, especially budgies. My mum is going to get him out every day but she has a cat so it's not like he'll be fully with humans 100% of the time. Any thoughts or tips?

Lately Cosmo has got really bossy and a bit difficult. It's really cute at the same time but hard to put up with. He's become really possessive of my hands, and sometimes if i'm using the computer, he'll fly onto my hand and viciously attack my fingers if they're typing on the keyboard or moving the mouse. The other thing he's doing is that he keeps trying to fly onto my head, or he'll climb up there from my shoulder. I wouldn't mind, except that i don't want bird poo in my hair so I take him out every time. Then of course he proceeds to bite my fingers after I've got him off. He also flies onto my glasses and gets stuck to the front of my face! Also, he attacks my hands if I take him off something that he is chewing to bits. None of these are desirable behaviours... but I'm not sure what to do about it. Any tips?

Funny how things go. So..... does that mean you lost your little crested chick? So sorry to hear that

Another vote for all hens. All extremely beautiful little hens too :hug:

Ooh good luck, how exciting!

They all look like girls to me, but it's hard to know from pics... and my philosophy always tends to be "when in doubt it's a hen" lol

They're so beautiful! I can't help you with what they are lol but I enjoyed seeing them. Interesting you didn't seem to get any normals out of the batch, seeing dad is normal. You got such a nice mixture there! LOL Kaz, solving a mystery hey?

I'm not much of a genetics whizz lol... but unless the dad is split for blue they'll probably all be green. At the very least you can tell already that they're all either green or yellowface, because they have all come through with yellow not white. I can't really tell what they are because I have never had greywings before. So even though the first one looks like a spangle to me, I don't actually know what greywings look like so I don't know if it could be one. I hope that is an old photo of the mum! Because that hen looks very young in the picture. They are both very beautiful birds though and i look forward to seeing the babies when they're all feathered up

They can definitely bond with others. In fact, in my experience they tend to always pair up, not stay single.

That is really sad. I don't think there is much you can do, they are grieving, understandably. Just affirm their feelings and let them be sad while they process what has happened to them. There's not much else you can do but be a loving mum. But in the meantime, I hope they can still enjoy the babies and seeing the dad raise them. Yes I have had one come back before... it was a few hours later though. Maybe the maternal instinct will give her the drive to find her way back. I sure hope so, for your sake, but the reality is that the majority don't come back unfortunately. I really hope all works out the best for you guys.

Yeah absolutely it was clear.... haha I know, I'm slightly reluctant to post about it in case it disgusts anyone too much, but we all put up with the yucky side of budgies as well as the cute and fluffy, so I figured it should be okay No... his cere itself looked a little wet immediately after, but the feathers above his cere look soft and clean all the time.

This is a bit disgusting but anyway, bear with me.... Cosmo was sitting on the window sill today and then he sneezed. Now, he sneezes from time to time like any budgie, but he's not sneezing all that often or anything. But it REALLY shocked me to see how much his sneeze sprayed out onto the window! It formed a splotch maybe the size of a 5c piece or a little smaller. Is this normal? I guess i've never had a budgie sneeze onto a surface before so that I could see how big the sneeze was. Haha sorry guys for the horrible topic, but I just thought I'd better be safe than sorry and just make sure that occasional wet sneezes are not a sign of something bad.

Scary! Glad he's okay. I honestly don't think you'll have much reason to worry about him still having "too much flight" - if the main purpose was to tame him and keep him from banging into windows I doubt he'll have much flight to do that, even if he still has some.

Yeah I have no idea how old Cosmo is either. He hasn't moulted yet and his iris rings are only just starting to lighten up. I reckon could be anywhere between 3-6 months which is a huge range lol. I think the main way to tell if it's YF1 or YF2 that age is to see whether the yellow is only on the face, or whether there is yellow between the wing patterns too. Like for a normal, they have dark feathers on their wing but the tip is either white or yellow, if that makes sense. Also whether there is any shade of green at all through the body. Cosmo is a YF2, if you look at my signature you can see his blue is a kind of slightly greenish tinge - at least, compared to the very bright blue that nonYF can be.

WOW! Beautiful!

Awww ... and sitting on your finger already is a great sign for a pet to be!

Aww pretty... reminds me of my Cosmo It could be older than 2-3 months - the age of the first moult and losing the bars varies a fair bit. But obviously still a baby, and young enough to tame. I can't see the cere well enough at all from the pictures, but I'm not convinced it's definitely a female. I would really need to see the nostrils to be sure, but there's enough colour there that it could be a boy. Not that I am certain it's a boy, just that from that distance I think it could easily be either. Good luck and looking forward to seeing close ups!

Sometimes I wonder though, if you buy seed in a 20kg bag.... can it go stale?

Beautiful! Just be careful not to let closely related budgies interbreed, when the time does come.