Soma. Our second bird and first cover model!
Monthly Archives: November 2015
Peek-A-Boo
Siri loves to play peek-a-boo!
Pop! Corn. It’s for the birds.
One of my favorite forms of enrichment for my budgies is …popcorn!!! It’s fun to make, the birds love it, and I can sneak in a few nibbles myself when no one is looking.
You’ll want to make it in the microwave in a brown paper bag or a microwave popcorn popper, as that way you can make it plain. Don’t add anything like butter and salt, since these are ingredients that are no good for budgies.
To save time, I make a pretty big batch and store it in the refrigerator! It keeps for quite some time and is very handy for a quick treat!
Make sure to not give your bird large quantities of popcorn at a time, and only give the popped kernels. Although it’s fun for most birds to explore and eat, it doesn’t supply any real nutrition for your feathered friend(s), so you still want to keep them motivated to eat their more nutritious regular diet (I only give about three kernels at a time to two budgies).
I will leave you with a picture of our Segoe hanging on to his little fluffy kernel of corn. How cute is that??? I hope you enjoy sharing this fun treat with your bird(s)!
Trio
Our trio of budgies!
Siri and Soma with a Target Ball
Flying to You
One of our first, and still most popular, videos on YouTube is the one below. In it, we show how to teach a budgie free flight to a hand. So much fun! Budgies are quick and eager learners, so this can be used as a starting point for other flight tricks including retrieves! Enjoy the video, and be sure to check out some of our other fun budgie videos.
Siri and Soma
Goodness Grapes
Here at the perch, we get a lot of questions about what fresh foods budgies can eat. There are lots, and they are a great addition to your bird’s diet! Instead of just listing them off, however, we thought it would be much more fun to start sharing some fast and easy recipes utilizing fruits and veggies budgies can eat. The first is for a fun salad we have named “Goodness Grapes.” We just had to start with a tribute to grapes, since it’s a favorite of both Siri and Soma.
Goodness Grapes Budgie Salad
Ingredients:
Grapes
Apples
Kale
Directions:
Wash all fruit and kale thoroughly. If you can buy organic, it is better for your bird(s). Then take the seeds out of the grapes if necessary (or buy seedless….hello!) and cut a pretty good sized chunk of apple which has no seeds in it. Next, cut each ingredient into very small portions. As you can see from the photo below, the pieces need to be pretty tiny for a budgie. Mix even amounts of each ingredient and serve. You can give it to your bird(s) in a bowl or scatter it on a surface, if your budgie(s) like to forage. Also, don’t become discouraged if your birdie doesn’t try it right away, or even on the same day. Parakeets can sometimes take a while to warm up to something new. Keep experimenting with ways to present the salad and be patient! I like to keep a few large leaves of kale to serve whole, as my budgies like to bathe and nibble on them! If that is the case with your bird(s), you can try sprinkling the salad around the larger pieces of greens to entice them. Enjoy!
Final Day in the Nestbox
Siri and Soma are still laying eggs in our nestbox! There are two left which I haven’t checked, so I will let them sit for another day and then I will pull them, make sure they are infertile, and then discard them. This is unless there are baby chicks forming, which is highly unlikely. I will be heading to our local hardware store today to find some materials to patch up the hole where the nextbox currently attaches to the cage. This will allow me to remove the box and hopefully discourage the girls from laying more eggs (the holidays are coming…take a break budgies, whew)! For now though, happy sitting ladies!
Candling Budgie Eggs
Our birds Siri and Soma are laying eggs! I expected them to be infertile, as I have separated the two girls from my male Segoe for the time being. However this evening I decided to candle the eggs to make absolutely sure there were no babies forming within them. As I suspected, there were not! I just had to share a picture of the eggs illuminated by a flashlight as I candled them. So cute!
The Parrot Perch 