Jabberwocky92

Awesome. Thank you all so much. And thank you Dave about that heads up with the baby food, home made all the way now! And now i'm kinda happy that Dalek spat it back out, don't want them going in to his poor body. Mum is a little wary about giving them egg because she's always been taught not to do it. :/

That photo is adorable! He's like he is playing peek a boo! I have always heard how much budgies are meant to hate photos, clearly someone hasn't told Dalek about that rule of thumb. LOL I completly agree with you, it's one of those photos that you wished you could recreate under better lighting and a better background. LOL I think that I'm going to print it out and frame it with some other photos of him so I can put them around my room and my future house.

I'm so glad that I got a smile out of you. I'm now looking at other ways and props to use for more stage photography. I'm thinking of building a little forest and then putting Dalek in it. Just need to get the stuff and plan it all before I try it.

Hey everyone, I've heard that a boiled egg mashed up with everything and with no added salt is a great thing to give the bird calcium when the mother is nursing. I'm wondering if I can also give it to Dalek to see if he will eat it. I just tried some mashed up apple from a baby tin mixed with his seed and he spat the seed back out at me and looked at me like I had just poisioned the poor dear. xD

For me cheeky, it was out and out bribery and a lot of patience. Bob is a piggy for millet, and he only gets a very small amount each day, but that particular day, he got about a weeks worth. He kept grabbing the piece of millet and flying off! It became almost like a game. This was another effort, this was going to become a Christmas card. I look forward to seeing your other pics of Dalek...sure sounds like you have loads of patience too! That is a gorgeous photo! Dalek doesn't really like millet that much, that's why I used his normal food dish with some millet put in to it. But he just ignored it. Which is weird because the others go crazy for it. LOL His favorite thing in the world are seed bells with honey in them. Show him one of them and he'll be the best little budgie he can be. xD Normally I would just pull a little bit off the bell and bribe him with it. Or hang the bell up, like I did with his playpen now he can sit on it happily and pose with out the treat. This is one I took today while we took a little break from our stage photos: He loves doing the good 'ol head turn as if he isn't really interested. xD He does it in most of my photos until I tell him to stop it.

Best advice I can give you, is do it at a time that the budgie is calm and quiet. Dalek is a really little bugger sometimes and is extremly active and hard to get to sit still. But today was the perfect day because he was in a calm mood and it was around dinner time, so he was starting to relax and wanted his dinner and was happy to comply. So I think you should work out when Oscar has his chill time and do it then. I normally take my photos in this time, and Dalek doesn't seem to mind, because he gets some extra time out of the cage and lots and lots of fuss and snuggles. That and I think he's a camera hog... :/ xD

That is amazing, and so cute!! And i'm sure it would have made a perfect card! I am hopefully going to be able to set up one for a Christmas card this year to send out to my friends and give to my nana and grampa as well as my sister. So i'm glad this one showed me that I had the patience to do it. xD Thank you so much! I think my mum was shocked at the fact that I did have the patience to do it, because one; i'm not a really patient person and two; I have PTSD which means normally when something goes wrong I give up, but I hung on there today.

I apologise in advance over how big this post is going to be, and I hope that I have put it in the right spot. I have seen some 'staged photography' using animals, and a few with Budgies in them. One picture included a budgie on a mini vacum which was on a mini rug. I thought it was so creative and adorable that I wanted to try my hand at something like it. And I thought that the people on this forum might like to see the work in progress. So I have decided to upload photos of getting Dalek used to the prop and then the finale shots. The prop that I am using is my remote controled red Dalek that I brought a few months ago. A Dalek is an alien from the BBC sci fi series Doctor Who, which has been going since the 60s. I hope you enjoy and find it usefull in case you decide to do something along the lines of this. ((I would like to just say how wonderful Dalek was about this whole thing. I only had the idea this afternoon and it only took him half an hour to get used to it and give me the shot I wanted. He is a dream budgie! )) okay, so on to the photos. This is the first photo I took, as you can see Dalek is rather nervous about the prop, and the only way to keep him near it was to use his food dish with some millet seed in it. I have the prop moved away from him so that he can get used to it, and as you can see, he is giving it a nervous look. I kept note on his apperance and breathing to make sure that he wasn't getting to scared. ~!~ This is the second picture that I took, it had taken me about five minutes to get him used to the prop that I was able to do this without him flying off on to my shoulder and glaring at the prop. I used a calm voice and let him settle on my shoulder, before putting him back on his food dish. As you can see, he is now more interested in his food then the prop. ~!~ This was taken without the flash on my camera, but as you can see it came up badly. This was him actually remembering that the prop was next to him and giving it a good look. The reason his beak is open is because he had just picked up a seed he didn't like and was about to chuck it at me. ~!~ So now he was used to the prop, I decided to remove his food dish and go in for a shot with out it. Which proved pretty much horrid, so after a few minutes of standing still with him grooming and chattering away to my hair, I decided to bribe him with a little bit of seed, just to see what would happen. This is the shot that I got: As you can see, he ignored the seed mostly and explored the prop. I flinched when he gave it an experimental nibble and then sighed a breath of pure relief when he decided that it didn't taste nice. ~!~ So now that he was used to the prop and used to standing next to the prop I decided to take away the seed and make the background a little better then my rumpled blankets, corner of my pillow and the backyard. xD And of course, just because he is used to the prop, doesn't mean you will get a good photo. Because a noise outside is so much better then the annoying flashing thing mummy has: ~!~ I decided to see if not using the flash would produce a good photo, but as you can see, it is to dark and doesn't really do justice to his beautiful colouring. ~!~ And then, just because he decided that mummy didn't have enough grey hairs from doing this, he gave me the photographers worst nightmare: The blink! ~!~ After a few head scratches and telling him that he's a good boy, I got this shot. It is a fantastic shot and I love it immensly. But I knew that the flash had kinda destroyed his face a little in a way. It wasn't the best lightening for it, and I knew that when I took it. But as you can see, he is now completly relaxed around the prop and doing his normal thing of posing when the camera comes out. Because he knows I normally like him to look straight at the camera when I take photos. ~!~ And then, the last picture I was going to take, because I knew that he was getting bored of this new game, I got the gem that I had wanted all along. And now I give you ((Hopefully my future show winning shot )) Dalek meets his name sake, Dalek! I hope you have enjoyed looking at my photos and my 'adventure' to get this shot and use some of these tips in case you decide to do it. Don't rush it and always keep an eye on your bird. I know Dalek and I know how much he can take before he stresses out. Nothing I did in these photos stressed him out at all, and when he did get bored and want to do soemthing else, I let him fly around squawking happily and then got him to come back and try again. I made it as fun as possible, by constantly chattering to him and using food treats and head scratches. And just remember, if the budgie is having fun, it comes out in the photos.

If they do start to do that, do you just take the toy away or is it safe to keep it in the cage?

I was just about to freak out about this because Dalek's bell is shiny, because it's all we can get in the petshops. Some how people like shiny things more then their birds do. But I looked over at him and instead of kissing it, he was biting at the thing in the middle, biting the edge and pulling it around to make it ring and then getting snooty at it and biting it. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't do that to a friend. LOL

At the moment my darling Dalek has fallen in love with bell. He loves it and if anyone touches it all *** breaks loose. xD He's only four months, so i'm guessing it is a stage. But he's still happy enough to come out and sit on my shoulder and chatter away, today he spent nearly an hour with me until he wanted to go back to his home. I would suggest swapping the toys around, like changing them with a different toy. I know this works on them getting territorial in their cage, because they don't have time to get attached. I have considered doing it with Dalek, but because he's so happy and still comes to me. I haven't. But for your problem, i'd say to swap them. Just swap one toy at a time, not all at the one time, because he might stress and start to refuse to eat due to it. I hope that helps. :3

AWWWW! he is so adorable!! And doesn't he have a cheeky look about him. I love the toys you have around on the floor.

Might have to get one at Bunnings next time i'm there. We have a horrible mouse problem and apparently we thought we got rid of them with the rat sac, but sitting here in my room at four am, I can here them running around the roof and walls. I'm wondering if there is a faster way to kill them then drowning, as it sounds like a rather painfully slow way to do it.

When you say it like that I understand completly where you are coming from. And as bad as it seems, I do see your point. I just hate to see animals suffering.

Welcome to the forum. I hope you find all the help and delightful new friends on this forum, because I know I have. Wow, that many birds? I would love that many one day, but I think at the moment my parents would kill me. LOL Budgies and chickens are enough to have in the backyard. Though I hope to get a pig one day. Once again welcome to the forum and have fun.

So we need to let these birds suffer to show them that it is wrong to treat them like that?

Thank you both so much. Yes, Dalek is a very special budgie, and I adore him with everything. I was worried when I first got him that he wouldn't be taken care of well because I do suffer from PTSD (hence a lot of posts on here), but he has given me a reason to get up every morning, even if it is just to change his food and water and give him a little snuggle. And yes, Amanda, it is Matt Smith from Doctor Who. I adore the show so much, and that is why I named Dalek, Dalek. Though at the moment he's living up to his name with the biting. LOL

Oh my god that is the most horrible thing i've ever seen! O_O!!!! I think i've been lucky with living in the country, because any problems with the birds in the pet shops, they go back to the breeders and get the treatment. We had scaly face in our aviary, and after much freaking out by myself I calmed down and searched out. We couldn't get the stuff you told me to get, but I managed to get something else and took them out and put them in a hospital cage and treated it. Because our house is so small I ended up with six budgies in my room. xDD Lovely wake up call. I am horrified to read what you said about the RSPCA, because here they are really good, and if they don't help then someone else will. I have seen people buying the bad budgies just to save them and get them treated. We had one bad pet shop half an hour from me and the birds were horrible, after a few months he got his stuff together and now all his animals are perfect and well fed. He got a large batch of budgies brought in from a breeder and also more medicine for them in case any get anything bad. I was amazed to see how much someone can change by just being willing. If only all pet shop managers were the same. I hope someone buys those budgies and give them the life they need and deserve. If I was there I know I would buy them.

Thank you all again. I am completly sure that it is only pubity problems because today he has woken up and is snuggly and his normal playful, distructive and cheeky self with no biting. He looks like he's starting to moult around his beak, so i'll be buying moulting aid to put in his water next week when I get paid. Again I can not thank you guys enough, you have saved me the tough choice of picking between my family and my budgie (and to a teenager that is the hardest choice ever xD). I am working hard on not giving a response when he bites me or lunges, he did it before with my finger and I just ignored him. He then sulked on my shoulder, where he is still sitting. xDD

Gosh! If you film it you could sell it to MTV and have the brand new reality tv show! Budgies Gone Wild! LOL!!!

Nope Kaz, no mirror in his cage. I heard they were bad for him, so I never bothered getting him one. And thank you so much Hezz. I will take that advice with me and give it a go tomorrow. WHen he's on my shoulder and bites me, I lift my head up and open my mouth and that seems to make him settle down.Though he does get a little pissy that i'm the boss and he isn't. I've been watching the budgies in the aviary and saw them doing the same thing, so I thought if it worked for them it would work for me. LOL BUt I like the finger idea much better. LOL He doesn't like being touched either and bites if you try and do that, and that wasn't a problem, I mean, he's his own budgie, I wouldn't want people poking me constantly. LOL But it was when he started to actually lunge and bite that I had to get help on this forum. Again I can not thank you guys enough for helping me with this. I am so ecstatic that I can keep him and that this is only a stage. I was freaking out something chronic that he had a behavioural problem.

When you say they don't pair for life, can that sometimes be true? Because we have a huge flight aviary with budgies in it, and Dalek's mum and dad are still together and she is sitting on her second clutch of eggs happily while he feeds her. And if any male comes near her Prongs will attack them and drag them away, and the same with the females who go after prongs, Mama will attack them. Is this normal budgie behaviour, or are our budgies just weird? LOL

I'm so glad that i'm not the only one that is having or had this problem. I have told my parents and my brother to just stay away from him and just let him settle and that. I am going to continue letting him out, but only let him in my room, instead of around the house on my shoulder to keep him calm and that. And if he bites me, i'll just put him back in his cage until he calms down once more and hope it works. Thank you all so much for your help.

So I just ignore the biting and it will go away?

He isn't moulting at all that I can see. He has no pin feathers or anything like that. He is four months old. Nothing has changed in his world at all, everything is the same in his cage and in my room. I try to keep things the same as possible or if i'm changing something introduce it to him slowly, like a new toy or something like that so he doesn't get cranky or scared.