Monday, January 19, 2009

Update on Miss Patty's clutch, and a budgie injury

Miss Patty has laid four more eggs, one the day after the first one, and the rest a day apart. None of the later eggs received any more attention than the first! After replacing the first two, and having her ignore the fake eggs, I decided to leave in the real ones, just to see if she liked them any better. And it turns out that she doesn't! She sits on them dutifully from when she lays them until breakfast arrives, but after that...... they are left to fend for themselves! Usually the tiels go out to the sun porch to their flight cage for the day, but a few days were just too cold, even on the sun porch, for them, so they stayed inside. On the days she can go out there, she jumps off the egg and runs out of the cage so I can take them out. And on the days it is too cold for them to go out, she still jumps off the egg for breakfast, and then proceeds to completely ignore it, even at night. It has been a few days since the last egg, so I am hoping five was all she was planning on laying.


On top of this, a few days ago, I had Ava out in the bird room. She was the only bird out, and it is usually very safe to leave her out alone, as she is a very good bird, and does not get into trouble. That was not the case this time. I came into the bird room to find her sleeping on the playgym, and did not think anything of it. After I had been in there a bit, she did remove her head from her wing, which is when I saw the blood caked on the tip. Needless to say, that really gave me a start! My first thought was that she had stuck her beak in the quakers cage, and gotten it bitten. However, I decided that was most likely not the case, as the quakers have been very friendly to her lately, and did not even seem to mind her sitting on their playgym when I was in there. On top of that, I have seen what Frank will do to a bird he is mad at, and if he had attacked Ava, he would have removed her beak. After studying Ava, I noticed she also had a line of blood where her beak meet her cere. She also was acting a lot like she had had a minor concussion, as she was sleeping a lot, and acting very quiet.

I finally decided she must have flown into one of the windows. This is not a characteristic behavior of hers at all, she is a wonderful flier, and knows perfectly well what windows are. All I can figure is that a hawk or something at one window must have scared her into flying into the other, or some other similar scenario.

She did not eat for a day after this, even though I offered her plenty of wet, mushy food. She did go down to the dish a few times, but after dipping her beak in, would shake her head, and go back up onto her perch to sleep. Just when I was getting desperate, and planning on feeding her some baby food with a syringe, she started eating. Yay! She is now much better, and is sleeping less, and playing more. She is eating plenty now, and her beak looks much better! I would have taken a picture to post here, but as I suspect she had had a minor concussion, I did not want to stress her with a flash.

1 comment:

Mary said...

Scary -- I'm glad to hear she's doing better!