Bird Sitting

I never had any experience with big parrots, so its a new kinda experience for me when a friend asked me to bird sit his Blue and Gold Macaw for a few days. Surprisingly not too noisy unless he is hungry. That too is at a tolerable level unlike some cockatoos and lories that I have encountered.



Magnificent bird. With good care, I would be six feet underground long before this fella is :D

Update: It took him 3 days to gain confidence & trust me. Or was it the other way round? It took me 3 days to be confident enough to offer my finger as potential chew toy? hahahaha!



Update with video:

Tale of a bird's tail

There is not as much preoccupation with a bird's tail as the White-rumped Shama (of course there are those Japanese chickens that are bred for tail length), but I am talking about a songbird. Nobody worries about how long a canary's tail would be or a Magpie Robin's ;) There is this hard tail, soft tail, curved tail (prawn tail), scissor tail etc.
The fault lies in the birds, I suppose. They just can't standardise their own tails and have to grow, some longer and some shorter than the average. Anyway, I am not complaining, just an interesting note.

Zeus had a bad year this year. He started his molt on 21st Sept 2009 and today (27th), he dropped one of his primary tail feather. His last primary tail feathers was shed on 9th Mar 2009, so this is an unscheduled molt. I suspected that he was ill for a short period of time and that, coupled with a few events, push him into a molt.

Of interest is that his tail recorded a longer length even when compared with the longest one from his previous molt. This coming from an old bird and the fact that during his previous molt, he was fed basically on a live food diet. The longer tail recorded was from a molt fed largely on a dry food mix (Shama Song Food with chicken feed). Hmmm.... food for thought. This current molt, I will be putting him on P28 (a dry food sourced from Singapore)

The below photo showed the newly dropped feather placed on top of the old feather (from previous molt). It didn't show a distinct difference, but I would think its a 0.2" difference.



Comes the next important question - how on earth does one measure the feather? how much allowance to give for the part that is embeded to the backside of the bird :D



Using my inexperienced estimate, Zeus has a tail length of 8.2"
Will update when the other tail falls, hopefully by tomorrow....

Update: 29th Sep 2009

Finally the other primary tail feather dropped. Don't know whether the 2 days difference will make the tail grows uneven. Base on current tail length, both primary tail feathers are of equal length.

Bartering in birds

Sometimes it is so hard to find good owners for unwanted birds. So, when someone express interest in one of mine, he quickly found it delivered to his door step hahaha! Now, maybe I am in the wrong business if I decided to breed birds.

Anyway, the new owner insisted that I take one of his Green Singing Finch as a barter. Probably he felt uneasy to receive something free. So, I took home another Green Singer reluctantly. Not a bad singer, in the background is the sound of my other Green Singer challenging him. Now, where can I find a female to pair this fella off ;)

Mata Puteh

I have always regarded this tiny bird as the most demanding bird to keep. Demanding not so much in the sense of special requirements, but due to their traditional cage size, food and water cups which is small. Coupled with their healthy appetite, it is prudent to check daily the food and water level of these birds. What makes it challenging is when I am required to be away from home for a few days. Using tubes of water is a solution, but it makes the cage quite unsightly. Anyway, the issue is there is a very narrow safety margin for errors.

I nearly gave up on these birds, what more with one that only chooses to sing at home but not elsewhere. And finally I have been rewarded with my patience (2 years) and this little fella decides to sing anywhere. Many of my Putehs has been given away over time but somehow, this one stayed with me.



Will try him out in the next Puteh competition and see how he ranks.