Message #6151

[caskur™]

From: Omnipotent888__ Sent: 12/30/2005 12:52 AM


Pretty Boy was persistent and patient with Bubba, despite the fact she attacked him all the time. Eventually she stopped thinking I was her soul/sole mate and started to put up with him. Birds are monogamous,… well at least budgies seem to be….lol…I think she still loved me the best but a physical relationship between us was simply out of the question.

We finished off an extension on our house, painted it all nice and white and had 5 inch polished jarrah floor boards to show off. I shifted some white linen presses in there and some flower stands and put the cages out there on top of them….It was a beautiful room. Bubba and Pretty Boy’s cage doors were always opened and funnily enough, they kept sleeping in their own separate cages….Bubba usually on unfertilized eggs. Then I decided to buy a nesting box and put it high up on one of the linen presses…..Bubba loved it straight away and by this time she was allowing Pretty Boy to mate with her….she laid some fertilized eggs and then 2 weeks later, when I was on the phone to Kurt, I walked out into the laundry holding the phone to my ear and I heard the faint, faint chirping of baby budgies in the extension. I was so excited…..the eggs were hatching….after about 2 yrs of laying eggs; finally something came out of them…..

And where was Pretty Boy when all this commotion was going on? Well he stayed in his cage and dared not come out…..of course; males play a huge, huge role in caring for their mates and their young and feed them all day. If the mother dies, the father will raise the babies without any trouble what-so-ever. But poor inexperienced Pretty Boy, wasn’t allowed anywhere near his offspring. Over time and with a few more hatches under their fluffy feather belts, this situation changed. Both of them got the hang of being parents after the first hatch.

By the time Kurt got back from the Gold Fields, the babies were fully fledged and flying around the house. It started to get dangerous. In the late afternoons, the babies flew around the house with lightening speed. I used to have to duck or be hit in the head. 

One more point, Pretty Boy did talk but not well and he said this, "Come here, come on"……all those months of trying to teach him, "Hello, Pretty Boy," never happened….it was what I used to call to the birds to come to me, "Come here, come on," that he learned. Bubba always flew to me when I called for her and so did Pretty Boy in the end

Too many birds in the house meant too much cleaning up so….it was time to buy an outside aviary. That’s another story to follow. I'm so glad I am finally taking the time to write all this out.