So, it’s been a while!

In the last few months since I’ve posted, Valen has continued to be in quarantine. Poor little guy has being having a real hard time with mites. There may be damage to his little cere, so we’re waiting for the all-clear so I can bring him in here and he can be with the other boys.

And. yeah. Boys. It turns out that Adira is actually Londo. It’s something we suspected with all his male behaviours, but now it’s official. When I started to realise he might be a boy, I stopped calling him ‘Adira’ and stopped saying ‘Good Girl’. Not soon enough, though. >.> He’s running around, saying ‘Good girl’ all the time. Ooops!

Speaking of. Well. Speaking.

He’s been talking heaps lately. “Gimme a kiss” is probably his favourite, though “I love you” was his first one. Since then, he’s been saying ‘Good girl’ and. As of today, “Come here”, as well.

But in the last week or so, he’s been saying “Chirp chirp” nonstop. It’s the most wonderfully obnoxious thing and I hadn’t actually intended to teach him that. It just goes to show with baby birbs: if you say something a lot to them, they’re going to pick it up.

I love it dearly.

His wing is still hurting, though. According to his vet, it’s strained and he keeps injuring it. But I can try to keep him calm and stuff, but when he starts deciding he -will- flap right this second, I can’t really stop that.

Tally has been a bit more standoffish lately, but Ivy is still a little millet monster. Little girl is just hilarious. She’s definitely the big boss out of the two of them. She’s also -so- tiny. I didn’t really appreciate the size difference from wild budgies and normal types. Lyta had been part English, so I really wonder what Ivy and Lyta would have looked like next to each other. I mean, Lyta looked -huge- compared to tiny and petite Tally.

And now Tally looks huge compared to Ivy.

Kosh is not happy. His jealousy has been getting worse since we brought Londo home. I would love to spoil him, but he’s making a point of showing me just how angry he is with me. All I can do is hope that he forgives me eventually. >.>

At Pin’s 80th the other day, our vet (bird people! As far as the eye could see!) asked if we wanted another baby budgie. Rijke said that this pretty little fellow spent the last three weeks at the clinic, waiting to see if someone would claim him. It was getting to the point where she was afraid she’d have to turn him over to the local shelter, but–

“On my way, I remembered you’d be here. You’re not just a bird lover, but a sucker! So I thought I’d ask if you’d be interested.”

Guilty. Guilty as charged. >.>

She seemed surprised I accepted him so readily, but. We have room. We’ve got the love. And with both me and Kim here all day, working from home, we have plenty of attention to give.

I’m a bit worried about his cere, as brown is not a good sign at all for a male budgie. We’ll ask Pin to check him over, just to be safe. With the amount of brown on it, it obscures the colouration of his cere below, so I can’t get a good look to see whether he’s been misgendered. I’m hoping he has been, but I’m also happy to do what it takes to get him as healthy as he can be. Or, failing that, give him the happiest life I can.

He appears to be active and pretty curious. I’d put him about a year old. He’s been through his big moult and his irises are fully developed, but he appears a bit on the small side. I’m really excited to see what his personality is like when he feels comfortable enough to express it!

In other news. Adira may be in line for a name change. She’s been exhibiting behaviour lately usually associated with males, from flirting with me and — during one amusing moment — deciding to bark at a bead that had fallen between the grate of her cage. I’m also noticing more yellow feathers. We’ll start calling her Londo if it turns out she’s a boy, but I won’t do that until her moult finishes. I’ve made a point of not calling her Adira in case a name change was necessary, but. God. It’ll be interesting wrapping my head around her being Londo. >.>

However! She’s starting to talk! At the beginning of this month, she caught me off guard with an “I love you!” Since then, she has been saying “Gimme a kiss” pretty regularly. I’m trying to get her to associate saying that with my attention, as both Kosh and Vir were pretty amazing about using words to get specific things they wanted. But I don’t know if a cockatiel is capable of that.

We’ll find out, though!

Kosh, on the other hand, has been perfect like always. Little guy is in his cage right now (It’s Adira’s turn to be out to wander and play) just singing up a storm. He’s a complete sponge: he picks up on everything around him. Recent new words have included “hungry”, “sparkly”, and “oops!”

My favourite, though, was when Adira freaked out (she’s pretty skittish sometimes) and Kosh, who was out at the time, flew to the top of his cage and just started saying “It’s safe! It’s safe!”. I mean, he’s got a wicked sense of humour, but Kosh is a very gentle little bird.

Even if he finds Adira’s antics hilarious sometimes. >.>

Vir used to love to drive me nuts by either throwing her droppings at me if she was pissed off or by forced the air purifier on my desk to go to max and start blowing papers all over. I’m pretty sure that I gave her the exasperated reaction she wanted the first time she did that, but after a while, I noticed it kept happening every time the little tyrant was mad.

Which meant I was obligated to give her the reaction she was looking for, despite finding the torment absolutely hilarious.

Kosh also has moments where he just revels in the petty. Piss him off and he’ll make a point of calling you to watch him so you can see how deliberately he drops a toy behind a piece of furniture, because he knows you’ll have to crawl to get it out. And laughter is one of those things he does in context. He’ll legit start laughing if he throws a toy behind something in petty revenge. Or, if he’s in his cage, he’ll call you over “Come here! Come here! Pleaaaaaase. Are you coming?”

When you finally get there, he’ll give me Budgie Butt: which is the act of shoving his little feathered ass in your face to show you his complete and utter disdain. Kosh, over the years, has elevated Budgie Butt to a form of art.

But, lately, I’ve gotten in the habit of taking Adira into the other room so she can both get used to the movement as well as bonding a little with Kim. She struggles with it and there are moments she genuinely panics, so I will quickly hunch over so, if she falls, she’ll fall only a foot or so.

So. I was bringing Adira back in here when we paused to say hi to Kosh. Kosh, who isn’t really interested in other birds, just looked her over before going back to what he was doing before. But Adira? She started panicking again. So, I lowered her closer to the ground.

And she fell.

As she falls, Kosh rushes to the front of the cage, his little head cocked to watch her. Oh, I think. How -sweet-! He’s worried about her. And then I heard it — a loud and very joyous

“HEHEHEHEHEHE!”

I bend to pick Adira up and then the little brat laughs again!

By this time, I started laughing so hard that I was tearing up and poor Adira, who hasn’t learned what a laugh means, was just confused like. Wait. What’s going on?

Poor Adira!

It’s been a long week.

Things have been a little stressful on the cockatiel front. The budgies are happy babies, but Adira’s feathers are just getting worse and worse. Considering we really don’t know her history, there are a lot of scary things that could be happening.

Grandpa peeked at her a couple days ago to make sure that there weren’t any emergencies we had to deal with right then, considering the first appointment we could get with her vet was on Friday. But he said she was looking good. Her feathers, while broken, were not showing the deformities associated with Beak and Feather, thank god.

Rijke, her vet, agreed today and instead said that these were the effects of a very poor diet as a baby, so her little feathers are weak and brittle. We already knew her breeder wasn’t an ethical one, so that really did not come as a surprise.

We’ve been working on getting her off the Trill bullshit, but as long as we keep doing what we’re doing, her new feathers should be fine.

It also means she’s lost the feathers cockatiels use for stability, so she is especially prone to falls and injuries. That’s fine. Her big cage is waiting for when she is ready for it, but. Until then, we’ve got her in a hospital cage with a lot of out of cage time so she still gets plenty of (safe) exercise.

Which was an issue yesterday.

While I was talking to Kosh, she had been climbing on the inside of her cage. Little girl managed to stick her wing through the bars and fall on her back, twisting the poor wing terribly. So Kosh is flying around the room at Adira’s distress, I rush back to her cage and it’s like. I’ve got to actually move her wing to get her out. She did not approve and let me know with a bite. It’s the first bite I’ve gotten from her and it was pretty deep, but. Man. I knew she would because she was in pain and there I had to go and make it worse in order to help her.

Her wing is recovering now, thankfully! No serious damage done, though she is — understandably — skittish of my hand.

I made sure that she’s okay and just cuddle her to me, while Kosh was still flying around the room. I admit I was maybe crying a bit >.> because, you know, seeing a baby hurt is just a killer. And so Kosh, being the wonderful, empathetic little boy he is, flew over to me and landed on my other hand. (Which I was keeping away from Adira because I didn’t want to scare her.)

He starts kissing the back of my hand and going ‘It’s safe! It’s safe!’ And, dear god, just even thinking about this is going to make me cry again. But yeah. Suffice to say, he’s just the biggest sweetheart.

In short, I have the best babies ever.

Poor Adira has been having some problems lately with her tailfeathers. In the last couple of days, she’s broken off all the tailfeathers on the right side — which is the same side as her injured foot and the bad wing.

She doesn’t seem to be plucking, she does seem to be terribly rough on her tailfeathers in particular: mauling them in determined preening sessions until I can hear the feather shaft cracking. It’s honestly freaking me out. After losing both Lyta and Vir so recently, my head is not in a good place. So, not only does Adira have an appointment with her vet on Friday, but we’re going to take her to Kim’s father tonight for a quick check-up.

I’m ridiculously lucky in that not only is ‘Grandpa’ an avian vet, but Grandpa’s best friend (and the gentleman we got Ivy from) is an actual avian expert. Her current avian vet is awesome and she’s been seeing the babies along with Grandpa for the last seven years. So I know that Adira is in good hands.

Kosh has picked up that I’m worried and is refusing to leave me, which is making typing difficult but I am incredibly grateful for the kisses. He usually saves preening for Kim, who he has strongly bonded to, but the little guy keeps preening my eyebrows, which is a sensation I am not quite used to.

Speaking of the boy, he’s been spitting out new phrases like crazy in the past couple of days. He just said “Oh, I think so.”, which I’ve never heard before. And I got “You are the BEST boy!” an hour ago, which was something I said to him for the first time (and only once) this weekend.

It honestly amazes me how quickly he picks things up. His vocabulary is huge and he seems to learn phrases most easily if they are said with affection. Excitement helps, but it appears to be affection that makes the difference.

Birb kisses make the world go ’round.

For the most part, we encourage kisses to the ridge of those nose (since human saliva is really unhealthy to them!), but Kosh’s aim can be a little off on occasion or he’ll be overly enthusiastic and hit my eye. I love it so much. Kosh is as affectionate as they come, so he would much rather have a cuddle than a treat.

Talia and Ivanova are happier being birds rather than companions, though. We tend to just let them get up to their own craziness, though we do handle them enough to make sure they aren’t scared of our hands and don’t mind the daily kiss. If Ivy realises that’s what I’m at her cage for, she’ll practically run over Talia to get to me so she can hurry up and earn the millet.

Adira, on the other hand, is a sweet little girl. She’s hand tame, but also only a few months old. I suspect she was born in December or so, though her Happy Birdday is on Saint Patrick’s. So we’ve been working on getting her used to giving me kisses.

Adira kisses are absolutely adorable. She’s decided that kisses are when she shoves her little forehead to my lips and, dear god, do I love it. It makes perfect sense, after all, because that’s how I keep kissing her. It’s also safer for her so I think we’re going to try to keep it that way.

But I notice that she’s started doing it a little on her own. She’ll be crawling on me and suddenly just push her head against me and it’s like. Dear god, you are just the cutest little thing. But! For the most part, kisses are still a matter of bribery.

Even contemplating this website is a bit painful.

But my little ones deserve to be cherished and loved, even the ones who are no longer here with me. I figured that by putting this up, I could have a place to put all their little stories and pictures. They do so many absolutely adorable things that I’d really hate to see any of those little stories get forgotten or lost.

I’ve attached my instagram feed, which is a new thing for me. It’s been actually really convenient to just take pics of the babies and immediately post them. That’s been pretty nice, though I am a bit suspicious of all the social media stuff. That, I’m afraid, is the old lady part of me talking.

Right now, Adira is making a ruckus in her cage next to me. I swear she sounds like a little irate chocobo. It’s almost time for her to get up and, man, she is absolutely impatient for it. Well, time to start my day!