My past budgies

 


Home Free Budgie E-mail My Past Budgies My Current Budgies My Cockatiel ET Sign My Guestbook Feedback
Forum About Budgerigars Breeding Budgerigars Budgerigar Photos My Awards View My Guestbook Links

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Nicke eating salad and cucumberThis photo is of my very first own budgerigar Nicke. He never got that tame so that I could stroke his head or hold him in my hands (except on the day when he passed away). However he was tame enough to hop on my hand to eat some seed, salad, cucumber or bread. He used to kiss my nose through the bars whenever I talked to him in the cage, he taught that trick to my other budgies as well. They won the Pet Class during the Swedish Championships in 1993, which I was really surprised and happy that they did. One of the reasons why they won was that the judge just melted when my budgies instantly and without hesitation went and kissed his nose through the cagebars. :-)

Back then when I got Nicke, I didn't know how to sex a recessive pied budgie. For a long time I thought that it was a hen since the cere (above the beak) never turned blue, as I have read in books that the cocks would have, it was still the pink blue colour that baby budgies have. I even bought him a partner, a light green cock... Then I started to wonder a bit since their behaviour wasn't what I expected and after reading more books I realised that Nicke was really a cock. Now I had two cocks. The hunt for a hen started and I bought a yellow face albino hen, Kicki.

I paired her up with the light green cock, Viggo. They got a nest box and pretty soon they had budgie babies. I was stunned that so small creatures developed so fast, in only five to six weeks they were independent. There have been several clutches during the years, with different pairs, I've saved some of the youngsters myself, but most of them got new loving homes.

Marja-Liisa and VickyOne of my sisters (Marja-Liisa on the photo) helped me to tame some of my budgies. One of them got her wings trimmed when I bought her (Vicky on the photo), to get her tame. After that I let her wings grow back, the trimming had served its purpose. Otherwise I've let all my budgies have their wingfeathers intact because I managed to get most of them fairly tame anyway, they have eaten seed and food from my hand.

I've been through a lot of joy but also sorrow. It has been, and is, fun to study the budgie's behaviour towards other budgies, the cocks trying to make the hens interested and the hens pretending to be totally uninterested about what's going on, and their loveable temperament.
The worst grief was when my first budgie Nicke died in my hand. He was still going strong and playful even though he was old. After he passed away I didn't buy more new birds, I let my little flock of three old birds take it easy and enjoy as they got older and older.

When eventually all the members of old flock were gone I didn't feel like having new birds right away. But then I was helping around during a budgerigar exhibition and there I realised how much I did miss the sound of budgie chatter and I was stuck again. I came home with a recessive pied dark green cock, this time it was the exhibition type of budgie, or English budgerigar as they're also called.


Free Guestbook by Guestpage

Bravenet tools for webmasters

 


Home Free Budgie E-mail My Past Budgies My Current Budgies My Cockatiel ET Sign My Guestbook Feedback
Forum About Budgerigars Breeding Budgerigars Budgerigar Photos My Awards View My Guestbook Links

Copyright © 1998-2016 Susanna Rajala. All rights reserved.
Site design, layout and maintenance by Golden Ring Design.
Reproduction of any content or aspects of this site in any form, electronically
or otherwise in whole or in part, requires specific written permission by Susanna Rajala.
You may not use any of my backgrounds (from my guestbook or the old version
of the site), graphics or photos, I've created/photographed them especially for this site.