Male green budgie, Robin.

Not sure how all of this happened, a year ago I remember saying I like budgies and would like one of my own…somehow I ended up with 5. First there was Snowball and Robin, two males with a complicated relationship. They were aviary bred and raised birds but bought as pets about 6 months before I adopted them. Life in a small cage and a human trying to handle them wasn’t something they adjusted to easily…or at all really.

In my previous post I mentioned their wing clips which just made life that much harder for them. Robin grew out most of his flight feathers in one molt (how awesome is that!), but at the same time Snowball was going through a molt and only grew in ONE flight feather. At first I was hesitant to clip the other wing to even his wings out and restore some balance since Robin’s came in so well. But after multiple crashes into the wall and fluttering up somewhere high and not being able to come down, I decided to clip his feathered wing for his own safety. His feathers molt very slowly but luckily he is almost fully flighted now, just need 4 more.

Adorable white male budgie, Snowball.

Back to their “complicated relationship”, well they are both males with two very different personalities. Robin is very gentle and doesn’t have an ounce of confidence or aggression in that little body. He is also the smallest and I’m guessing the oldest amongst all of my birds. Then there is Snowball…what a jerk! Lol. He has a very overpowering personality and  is more confident and used to have a crush on Zaza (my senegal bad boy). I was going to separate them a long time ago but Robin is incredibly dependent on Snowball and is lost without him (he becomes frantic when Snowball is out of sight) and Snowball loves him too…in his own unique way. They do have their loving moments.

Lucky for me Snowball’s aggression towards other birds eased up quite a bit after I brought home Sky and Neon, two young males who don’t take kindly to being pushed around!

Budgies; Snowball, Sky, Robin and Neon.

A couple of months ago I took care of a terminally ill budgie for a couple of weeks, another male (it’s like the universe doesn’t want me to have female birds), even just hearing another budgie and seeing him outside was enough to perk Robin up and allowed him to come out of his shell a bit more. He was, after all, a previous aviary bird! So that’s how I started looking for another budgie to add to my flock.

Then I adopted two males. Shocker.

One of the newbies. That green and yellow fluffy thingy is my male budgie, Neon.

Sky and Neon, they are both around 3 years old. They have very interesting personalities, so Patty and I started with the “budgie match-making” process. At first Sky seemed to be the confident, cocky one but more even tempered towards the other birds so we thought he and Snowball might connect. And Neon, at first, seemed to be the sweet gentle one amongst the two, like Robin, so we thought the two sweet ones might bond. Boy were we wrong. Turns out Neon is worse than Snowball and Sky is the sweet gentle one who has no interest in birds! Nevertheless, adopting them certainly had a positive impact on all of my birds. Robin became more confident and has his moments where he will stand up for himself, Snowball calmed down a bit and is much calmer and gentler towards Robin and since Sky and Neon spend hours every day flying all over the bird room. They have encouraged Zaza to fly on his own. And they are much more confident than my other two, so definitely had a positive affect on Zaza’s budgie bullying attitude. Their boisterous and active nature has encouraged all of my birds to be more active, Snowball and Robin come out of their cage on a daily basis which I thought might never happen.

Zaza warming up to the budgies, you can see my hand behind him to take him away in case he changed his mind.

The last one to join my flock is Smooches (or Kisses as she is known by the rest of my family), my only female. She got her name by mimicking the sound of a kiss every time she heard the other birds. I’ve only had her for about a month and still deciding when I’m going to introduce her to my boys. Something I’m very nervous about because I know Snowball and Robin were previous breeders, actually one of their previous female mates died due to egg-binding. I plan on having her in a cage of her own and allow supervised interactions, but my “planning” hasn’t worked out so great in the past so…at least she’s still in quarantine for another month so I’ll let you guys know!

Blue male budgie Sky loves human company. (Sorry I don’t have any usable pictures of Smooches at the moment)