regarding the traffic of birds and animals that is sent your way by God…there seems to be a divine highway for them to your home!

/me off the read the post

I decided after this last lot of birds that I will not support the traffic in these birds and won’t buy any more…but now I am SO tempted…Tarique, it is all going to be on your head if I do!

Unfortunately we do not have such enclosures. The only a pet bird I had was parrot, when I was in school. He had befriended my Tom Cat who would protect him (they grew up togather).

One day the Tom cat left and never returned a couple of days later the Parrot also flew away…

Would like to know about the *smart* part of budgies.

Our balcony is enclosed with glass panels, and we would put the birds in a cage when we wanted to open the panels. Otherwise…lunch for the local predators!

There is a pariah kite which habitually perches on the palm fronds right opposite and sometimes I have seen these little birds cowering as the kite flew to the glass panel, looking hungrily at them! But other than that, budgies are such gregarious and smart birds that they are a real delight….and very low-maintenance too. Ideal pets for flat-dwellers.

He He! More likely the White Eye Buzzard which we released a month or so earlier started the chain.

Lucky that you do not have cats that can reach the balcony, a stunt like that in our house would mean predation in an hour or less

We have to be *really* careful with the palm squirrel which we so often rear , in fact there are lockable carry baskets to carry them around on shopping and other trips when we have them.

And obviously, word has got around about the TLC at the Sanis’!

It can be highly frustrating when you get a distressed creature and don’t know how to care for it. I once saw a spotted owlet…just a baby…in Cubbon Park, and the crows were fluttering around it. I took it to the SPCA, but it didn’t survive.

A maidservant who came to my door had a budgerigar baby in her hand…she said she was going to “let it go” as she didn’t know what to feed it. I am experienced with budgies, and explained to her that these are birds which cannot survive outside, and would be eaten by crows or cats. I bought it off her and bought a pair for it, and the two lived for more than a year in my balcony…I didn’t put them in a cage, but arranged twigs for them. They would fly around happily, and I trained them to come flying to my hand for seeds and grass (they are originally Australian grassland birds). They delighted all the children in our apartment complex, too…
but rarely do things work out so well.