Several good news, guys!
First of all and such a load of my mind, I found a good home for Pookey AND the lovebirds! I had been corresponding with this lady who lives in LI (I mentioned her to you, she is the lady with the CAG with the severe heart condition) and she finally came yesterday to see her and, of course, she loved her! Pookey is fully feathered, very calm and eats a great diet so she was a hit! Her boyfriend came along (he was the one that drove her) and fell in love at first sight with the lovebirds. He was fascinated by their vivid coloring and cuteness so I offered them to them and they said yes so I am just waiting for them to tell me that they have the cages in place and ready waiting for them (can't let them have the cages I have them in because they are my 'emergency' ones) and my husband and I will drive them there.
Zoey Senegal has finally fully accepted Sweetpea Senegal into her good graces! I had noticed that they were flying, perching and eating together as well as looking for nesting spots (behind my draperies and sheers which are now all full of holes from their chewing -ay ay ay!). And, yesterday afternnon (right after their noon rest) I saw her lowering her head and he started preening her!!!! YAAAAYYYYYY for them!!!!
Davy and Isis ARB are doing very well, he continues to eat a large variety of produce and she continues to expand her range. She hasn't quite accepted him yet and every time he tries, they end up beaking -not bad -she doesn't bite him or anything- but still not good enough in terms of mate bonding. But it's way too early in the 'relationship' (Zoey took years to accept Sweetpea) so I don't worry at all.
The old ladies, Mami YCA and Naida BFA, are all plucked. Mami has been busy plucking herself and Naida and silly Naida likes it!! They are hormonal and have been going through cardboard boxes like crazy but no eggs even though they do have sexual relations every single morning like clockwork and sometimes in the pm, too (lucky girls!
).
I am going to be switching Pablo PFC and Codee GCC to a small cage because the big flight cage did not work out for Pablo. He loses his balance often and this cage is 5 ft tall and that's a loooong way to fall for poor Pablo. I'll get them a medium size flight, same as the canary hens and the cardinal have.
Sunny Sun Conure is doing very well, comes out to fly for hours every day and her skills are getting better as well as her muscles getting stronger.
Precie and Zeus YNA are doing very well. They only come out of their cage while I am in the birdroom because she is sitting on two eggs and he is VERY protective of the nest so better safe than sorry and all that.
Sophie CAG is sitting on her second two-egg clutch but I don't know if I am imagining things or what but it seems to me that Linus is participating, somehow, in the incubation! I had noticed that they seemed quite chummy with each other... not anything like preening each other or him feeding her in the beak but they have been sharing a dish and she did not mind his walking around her 'nest' at all and would even fly to a perch next to him. But yesterday's and this morning, when I first opened the door to the birdroom (I go in when it's barely light to give the finches some seed so they can have an early breakfast -they are so tiny that they have a very fast metabolism), I saw him coming from the 'nest' while Sophie was perching on the platform. I dismissed it yesterday as sheer wishful thinking but still made a mental note to go real early and peep in this morning and sure enough, he was right above the eggs! I don't know if he was sitting on them or not but he was right there and Sophie was not concerned at all so something is going on...
Now to Wolf's little ones: Paquita Plet continues to eat up like there's no tomorrow, it's active, has good poop, etc but I don't like the way she looks and it's not the fact that she is plucked, it's the way she sometimes stands - kind of with her head hanging down... I don't know what to make of it but I am putting them on extra vitamins and liver tonics and, if that doesn't 'fix' it, I'll try antibiotics although it doesn't look as if she was sick, it's more as if she had twisted her neck or something. She doesn't do it all the time, either, so I know it's not as if she can't straighten out... I don't know, I am a bit puzzled by this. Rajah Plet is completely and 100% wild. You can't even put your hand in the cage without him freaking out big time. And I don't know why because he had been with Wolf for a long time... Jerry Lovie is also an ex-breeder and was also real bad when he first came but I can put my hand next to where he is perching and he doesn't even back away from it so I don't know why Rajah is still doing this. No matter, he will get better.
Harley is doing well although it took me three days to get him to eat the gloop AND I got him a pair of budgies for company (Chloe, a yellow head deep turquoise female and Blue, a very, very pale aqua lacewing). I am still looking for a female budgie for him. The pair came from a lady whose husband had gotten the birds in December but, as he passed away in February, she was looking for a home for them. She said that Chloe was older and that she had been on her own for a long time before she came to her husband who got the young male for her. They had only seeds (and a cheapie mix at that -almost all millet!) and were kept in a small ROUND cage!!!
The poor, poor things! I also put them on extra vitamins and will do a couple of dosages of calciboost, just in case (they were so desperate for fresh food that they ate the whole dish of gloop the very first day they were here!). I put the cages side by side and in a matter of not more than five minutes, both Harley and the pair were on the perch closest to the other cage, looking and chirping at each other
It's amazing who flock oriented these little birds are! I decided not to quarantine them because both birds had been bought at a petstore, never had contact with any other bird after that and were fed crap before and after they were bought so, if one of them had had anything bad and contagious, they would have both been dead a long time ago!
Chip and Dale Squirrel are doing fabulously well! Their tails are beginning to get bushy (my husband says that they finally look like squirrels
), they both have their eyes open and know my face because, as soon as I uncover them (they sleep deeply burrowed into the little blankets I use to make a 'nest' for them), they start making the 'affection' sound (it's kind of like a repeated, short and soft grunt -like truk truk truk). They also know the syringe and eagerly reach for it with their little hands and hold it just like a human baby (SOOOOOO CUTE!!!). I had my husband bring a tall vertical cage I had in the basement and wash it for me and they are now in there when they sleep because I was afraid they were going to start 'exploring'. Now I have to wean them and, when this happens, they will be going to a rehabilitator about 2 hours away from us - there were closer ones but this lady specializes in rodents (does nothing else) and I've gotten two good references from other people who brought baby squirrels to her.
Cardinal, quail, canary, finch population all doing OK but I decided not to breed the canaries because I have way too much on my plate right now and I haven't even had the time to do my spring cleaning or plant the garden...