I have, since I was a child, kept Budgies as pets. I don’t have an aviary but I always buy 2 at a time so that they have company – Budgies are very sociable birds and having a companion is good for them although they’re very quick to strike up relationships with humans in the absense of fellow Budgies. They are usually great fun if a bit noisy when you’re trying to watch something on TV.
Each is an individual character – I can remember one we called Christine wrestling with my Mother’s needles while she was knitting and another, Micky, who liked to pick up objects on the table and drop them over the side then wait expectantly for me to put the object back on the table so that he could repeat the process!
Like humans they come in different sizes and our current two (both male) are physical opposites. Peter is a great big lump who hates to come out of the cage and views flying as something for the cats 😉 Paul, on the other hand, loves to perform daredevil flying displays around the room. So yesterday evening I opened the cage door to let them do their thing and encouraged Peter onto the top of the cage. Paul then came out of his own accord as usual except…
I couldn’t believe it – he clearly had no directional control whatsoever and wound up crash landing behind the TV! I went to investigate and found him, looking a bit sheepish, sitting on the scart cable. Unusually, he let me pick him up – he’s normally very independent. Investigation revealed that this moult he’s shed all his primary flight feathers at the same time on one side – no wonder he’s got no directional control! I guess he’s going to be flying around in ever-decreasing circles for a while 😉
I subsequently discovered that Paul probably had a night-fright. Something spooked him overnight and he had an argument with the cage, knocking out a set of flight feathers. Apparently this is quite a common occurrence with Budgies though it was a first for me in over 40 years of keeping them!
Images from Finchley 