BS: Millions of Budgies!

Subject: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 01:11 PM

Millions of Budgies inhabit the Australian Outback. Here is a video showing the vast flocks of these colourful little parrots in their natural habitat:

Budgie Heaven!

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: gnu
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 02:12 PM

Cool. Good find. A gem.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 02:47 PM

Here's another lovely video featuring some wild Australian Budgerigars, who show very little fear of human beings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoJ6PTY0mzE

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 03:41 PM

Wild flocks in Florida. May soon be a problem to fruit growers.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 03:47 PM

Their main food in Australia is wild grass seeds.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: gnu
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 05:17 PM

Not a lot of fruit grows in arid grasslands, LH. Not many of those in FLA.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 06:08 PM

tell them budgies not to be smug

Martha

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 06:17 PM

Looks like a swarm of locusts. There isn't much to them, but they do make decent eating.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 07:15 PM

Recommended food for budgies-
70% seeds, 30% fruits and vegetables. Apples, oranges, peaches and pears are best fruits (but not their seeds); broccoli group and corn are good vegetables.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 08:00 PM

Nice to hear that they can eat fruit, because I've been looking to give mine a good variety in their diet. So far they have shown great enthusiasm for millet sprays, standard budgie seed in the feeders, and romaine lettuce leaves that are hung from the roof of the cage. The Budgie book warns NOT to serve them avocado, as it will make them quite sick.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 09:57 PM

hebudgies are all right (note their original colour - green - other colours have been deliberately bred), but my favourite bird is the blue wren Only the males are blue, the jenny wrens are brown.

They can still be seen in places around the city although a lot of habitats have been destroyed by suburbia - & blue wrens & cats can't co-exist. I've seen them in the bushes at our very famous Bondi Beach.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 11:54 PM

That's a very pretty bird, Sandra.

Here's an example of 2 budgies and a cat coexisting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c8aIgNLL_k

Species which are hunter and prey in the wild can often get along very well together in company with humans, providing they are introduced properly.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 12:02 AM

awwww, cute

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: JennieG
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 08:07 AM

We have those little blue wrens in our back yard.

Recently, too, we have had a pair of King Parrots visiting the eucalypt tree in our front yard - they are really ggrgeous.

Something to be feared in Oz: Budgie smugglers

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 11:24 AM

A good article with advice on feeding budgies-
http://www.budgieplace.com/advanced.html

I used to keep budgies. I always kept more than one, as they like to socialize. After they were "tamed", I let them fly in a closed room. They would eventually return to the cage if it has their food and toys.
I never really got into advanced taming since I was away working most of the day.
The place I linked also has a good basic care section.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 12:00 PM

Cool. Thanks for the links, Q. I keep several of them for the same reason you cited. They need company, and I can't provide them with that myself a good deal of the time, but they manage very well with each other's company, and they get along well together. I think I have 3 females and 2 males in the cage at present, although it's hard to tell with the fancy varieties who have different colours from the standard budgies. I plan to start breeding them once I've read up on it and provided them with nesting boxes and whatever else they may need.

Those King Parrots are lovely, Jennie!

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 12:52 PM

I also had a couple of larger birds of the group. When they got out hey nibbled on wooden shelves, the curtains and everything else. I gave they away to a friend who had a room-sized cage.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Rumncoke
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 05:03 PM

I used to keep budgerigars, about 100 at the highest point.

They bred very well - but it is really important to ensure that the food for the hatchlings is handled with clean hands, put into clean pots and any old food is removed. I used to rear almost every chick which hatched whilst other breeders lost about half or more of each nest - they could not be bothered to be clean.

Don't try to breed in the aviary if you have an odd number of birds - separate the breeding pairs into individual cages or there could be fighting, eggs being destroyed and the like. It is not inevitable, but if there ARE two males and three females it is quite likely.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: JennieG
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 05:48 PM

LH, you can tell the boys from the girls - the little bit at the top of their beaks is called the cere. It looks like a nose with nostrils. It's blue for the boys and brown for the girls.

When I was about 10YO or so we had a big aviary in our back yard, I think half the town was into budgies at that stage.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 07:23 PM

Yes, I was thinking of getting a 6th bird, but I hope I get the gender right. You can easily tell the gender by the colour of the cere, yes....but that's on the standard coloured birds (green & yellow)...it doesn't necessarily work the same way on the fancy coloured ones (blue, all-yellow, white, etc)...hence the uncertainty as to the gender of certain of my birds.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 13 Sep 13 - 05:34 PM

Thank you for the link, LH. I never knew where budgies come from.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: JennieG
Date: 13 Sep 13 - 06:21 PM

Well, I didn't know that! I suppose that the breeding over many years which has made possible budgie colours like blue, turquoise, white, yellow, and all combinations thereof......considering that the original colours are only green and yellow......have also made variations in cere colours.
I recall a drive from my home town (I moved back to a few years ago) to a smaller town half an hour away as a child, and seeing flocks of budgies rising from nearby paddocks. Locals were saying earlier this week that budgies haven't been seen round here for a while.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Rumncoke
Date: 13 Sep 13 - 06:38 PM

The various colours all have the blue or brown cere - there is one variety which doesn't - possibly the male of the pied sort, but introduce one to a hen and they will do all the usual things - lifting their head feathers and the pupils contract, and they run around after them and show off something dreadful.

I'll see if I can find any of my old books to look up the exception.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Joe_F
Date: 14 Sep 13 - 08:07 PM

All engineers should keep in mind the story of the small boy who went into a shop and asked for a package of detergent. 'What do you want it for?' asked the proprietor. 'To wash my budgerigar in', said the boy. 'That won't do it much good', replied the man.

Next day the boy came back. 'How is the budgerigar?' said the proprietor. 'Dead', said the boy. 'I warned you', said the man. 'It was not the detergent that did it', replied the boy, 'it was the wringer.'

Designers, too, often fail to recognize where the real danger may lie....

-- Gordon L. Glegg, _The Design of Design_

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Dead Horse
Date: 15 Sep 13 - 08:01 AM

I fail to see how anybody can derive pleasure from seeing caged birds.
With sea creatures and land animals it is bad enough, but depriving birds from the freedom of the skies is totally beyond my comprehension.
I'm not asking you to justify it - I simply dont like it.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Rumncoke
Date: 15 Sep 13 - 04:19 PM

I've seen living rooms for Humans smaller than the aviary my birds flew around in, and they had an inside perching area over the breeding cages.

As for the freedom of the skies - there are also hawks out there.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Dead Horse
Date: 15 Sep 13 - 04:55 PM

So you'd be happy confined to one room for the rest of your life 'because there are hawks out there'?

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Sep 13 - 09:45 PM

Go ahead and dislike it if you want to. (shrug) I don't give a toot.

Okay, I got a 6th bird today, a sort of greenish-blue coloured one. These budgies in the stores here were all raised by people, raised in large cages, and none were taken from the wild. They are as happy as can be, I've seldom seen anything merrier than a group of domesticated budgies, but if they are accidentally released into the wild as sometimes happens, they panic and become utterly lost, not understanding the situation at all, and they usually end up dead very shortly after that....just as most of us civilized humans would end up dead very shortly if we were dropped in deep wilderness or jungle with only our clothes and shoes...and for the same reason. They have not learned the necessary survival skills.

That doesn't stop us civilized humans from being happy in our houses, cars, and towns, nor does it stop domesticated birds from being happy in a cage...a room...or a house.

To take a wild animal and confine it is rather cruel, yes...but it means nothing at all to an animal that's never known the wild in the first place. What domestic budgies need to be happy is company, and that means either some other budgies...or an owner who gives them a lot of his or her time, plays with them, and talks to them. They LOVE socializing, and crave it at all times.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: open mike
Date: 15 Sep 13 - 11:41 PM

I have 4 pairs of canaries. their songs cheer me up . They have been domesticated for centuries, and would not know how to live in the wild. Plus their coloring is not camoflaged enough to keep them safe outside. We do have wild goldfinches which are genetically similar, in fact some do get inter-bred with canaries. The result is a bird "mule" that is not fertile.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: JennieG
Date: 15 Sep 13 - 11:43 PM

Budgies are very gregarious! They love the company of other budgies, and failing that humans will do.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Rumncoke
Date: 16 Sep 13 - 01:26 PM

But a living room sized space, plus an extra under cover place with more than enough perching space is quite a large space even for 90 birds - and there were areas with things to climb on, bells and rattles for their amusement - and for mine. I used to go and sit in there just to watch them. They would land on me and climb around - having seen me every day they were totally unafraid.

I had every colour but white.

green, dark green, grey green, grey, grey yellow, lutino, blue, cobalt, and with the markings black or brown.

They have been bred in captivity for many generations, about a hundred by now. They are bigger, with more feather, slower in flight, and need more food than a wild budgie. To release one would be cruel, and illegal too.

Over the time I had the aviary two lost budgies flew into the Human side of the shelter when I left the door open for them. They don't want to be out in the wild lost and forlorn.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Sep 13 - 03:12 PM

Up through 2012, Water was plentiful in the interior, so flocks estimated of 60,000 or so seen around Alice Springs.
If it turns dry, many will die.

Budgies sold in U.S. and Canada are bred from caged birds; many color variations, etc., available from breeders.
Most would die in the wild, it is not suitable for these bred birds.

Subject: RE: BS: Millions of Budgies!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Sep 13 - 03:22 PM

Yep. Quite so.

I have named Number 6 "Rupert". He appears to be a male, judging by the cere. He's a bit nervous, being a new arrival and not used to me yet, but he's fitting in well with the other birds. Rupert's wing feathers are trimmed, so it'll take a few months before he grows full flight feathers like the rest, but he can still manage a short flight from cage bottom to perch. I've provided numerous perches and toys, so the birds have a variety of things to check out, but they mostly like hanging out together like a line of wild birds sitting on a wire.