Oopsie!

One of the 4 youngsters in Cage #3 just fell out of the nest.  They're starting to lean out to look at the big ol' world, and one leaned just a little too far.  Luckily I found him shortly afterwards, and put him back in the nest.  Then I had an idea of how to make the nest deeper, hopefully to prevent the chicks from falling out again.  I removed all the nesting materials and just put a folded paper towel in the bottom.  The nest needed cleaning anyway.  It's my (and their) bedtime now, so hopefully they'll all still be in the nest when I get up.  I wish that trio would accept an Abba nest box, but the only nest they'll use is a canary nest.  For small clutches, a canary nest is fine, but with four wiggly, curious babies, it's not the best in the world.  I'll be separating the parents after this clutch anyway, to give them a rest.  In fact, I'll most likely be separating all of my birds into separate male/female community cages for awhile, once this clutch is weaned and the single viable egg in Cage #1 hatches and weans.  Edit:  The parents ate the viable egg. ARGH! There are eggs in Cage #5, but I believe they're all duds. Edit: One finally hatched on 2/10.

Oh!  All the youngsters are crested.  All four of them.  :-)

Kenny, Elvis, and Lightning (all chocolate pied males) are going to a new home this morning.  They're extras, and will be living with Kevin and Michelle in Ooltewah, TN.  :-)

I *may* be getting a parakeet and a grasskeet this weekend from a guy in middle Tennessee.  It just depends on how far a drive it'll be.  The parakeet is a handfed, tame youngster.  The grasskeet is disabled (splayed legs), and depends on the parakeet for companionship, so assuming it's not too far a drive and that they're healthy, I should hopefully be getting them tomorrow.

(Splayed legs is a condition where a chick's legs are on a slippery surface in the nest box for a long period of time, and instead of the bones developing so that the chick can stand in an upright position, its legs are pointed outwards.  As I understand it, this condition can be cured using splints if caught in time, but I guess it was too late when the man discovered the problem.  The man said the bird does have use of one leg, so it's not totally disabled.  We'll see how things go when we get there.)

Edited to add:  The guy with the parakeet and grasskeet stopped communicating with me.  He was supposed to send me a photo of the grasskeet, but it never came through.  I texted him back to let him know it never arrived, and he said he'd send another, better photo ... which also never came through.  I suspect he got annoyed with me for asking lots of questions, but I'm not going to take in a bird (or birds) without knowing all about their ages, health, diet, etc.  He also would never tell me which city in "Middle Tennessee" that he lives in.  "Middle Tennessee" covers a lot of territory!  Just as well, really.  I, for one, LOVE it when potential adopters ask questions.  It shows that they genuinely want to care for the bird properly. Oh well.  I figure it's HIS loss, not mine.  But I feel a little bad about his birds, if you know what I mean.  :-/  I hope they get good homes.

In the meantime, I found a parakeet/budgie breeder in Georgia, about 2 hours from me.  We're supposed to go look at a just-weaned male English budgie tomorrow morning.  :-)