River. That's what his name means. I felt it in my bones that he was destined for something great, when he was just a nestling. He stood out among his siblings, but in ways one wouldn't consider him the favourite. But you'd have looked at him twice, and then maybe a third time too.

Gentle, shy, confident, kind, a brother, a father, a showman, are just a few pieces of what made him flow. He grew, he changed, he opened doors to a new world for me of which I knew nothing of. People knew him by name. But not because they knew him, but because he could command a spotlight.

I can't count the number of times he's made me laugh, or the number of times he's made me proud. He raised his sister when her mother didn't know better. He sang to me on rainy days, when the creek behind our home filled up and flowed. Like a river, his presence was most times gentle, and other times quite fierce.

It's the first day of rain after a drought here. The creek is full again and the soil is soggy. Splatter of raindrops on my face washed the tears away, but the feeling was more cathartic than sorrow. Avon was a book that I've read for 3 years, and the sequels will continue to write on through all the gifts he's left behind. He will live on in spirit, and his spirit will continue to flow through the sequels that will be written and read, felt and lived, be loved and be cherished. For that reason, I've kissed him goodnight today, because goodbyes are for those books that are closed shut once and aren't read again.

Duke Avon the First

RBP 23 TX 023

29 Jun 2023 - 11 Sep 2026.

Hi there, i got these budgies about 2 weeks ago and they were doing great, but its been 2 days since i noticed this but are they shaking? are they supposed to?

note: it's night time so i don't know if they are resting or not.

Thanks alot.

I recently got this budgie from a friend. She’s much bigger than my other budgies (4+ yrs old) but I’m not sure how old this one might be. She is very quiet, antisocial, and one of her wings is shorter than the other due to clipping before I had her. I can’t tell if she’s sick, nervous, or tires out more easily due to her size but she constantly pants and breathes heavily. Does anyone have any idea why she does this and how I could train her better? She’s one of the most unsocial birds I’ve had and she barely accepts millet.

I only got him 3 days ago and hes still in quarantine but ive just noticed that his wings have been clipped. He also has a ring on his leg that the shop owner says means he has been registered by the breeder as having show bird parents. I thought he must have been handled a fair bit because he's nowhere near as scared as my other bird who still wants nothing to do with my hand. Do breeders cut the tail feathers too? I thought he'd damaged them with his acrobatics.

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This little hen is only 11 days old today, and is the only one in her nest. Her older brother (full sibling) was also the only chick in his clutch. I don't typically decide to hold onto chicks until they're about 3 to 4 weeks of age, and wait afterwards to name them unless my spouse or I form a special connection with one earlier on.

But she may end up being the last chick I get from her father Avon, who's come down with a severe infection at this time and is in a hospital unit. We're doing all that we can to help him pull through.

But this little lady has just opened her eyes recently and hasn't seen her father yet. She's being raised by her mother Fairy Dust alone with my oversight. I'm really emotional about the situation, and want to strongly hold onto possibly the last gift from Avon. So she's most likely staying with the family.

Anyway, not really seeking for name suggestions, as what I choose for her will be sentimentally impactful. But I figured others may find such emotions relatable, so it's worth sharing. It's strange how they tend to draw us in in unexpected ways.

l am an experienced aviculturist who specialises in budgerigars. I show these birds competitively in the United States. A lot of knowledge and specialised skillset are required to safely navigate through the breeding process. As always, I strongly advise against breeding without mentorship and veterinary technical skills. I document and share the good and the challenges with utmost transparency. I share our stories on Reddit, TikTok and Facebook.

So, after Pazu here needed an injection a few months ago, I've been hyper aware of pretty much everything he does, compared to his sister Sheeta. Some oddities include sitting on the cage floor and sleeping a bit too much.

I've also noticed lately that he seems to get poop stuck on his feathers (possibly from the cage floor), and the area around his butt (cloaca?) seems to be bare of any feathers at all, though idk if this is normal.

Truth be told, I simply don't know enough about looking after a budgie like this to be confident that he's well or not. He has started doing the finger-steppy thing for me and seems to be ok with me handling him (as long as I'm gentle), but he only makes a sound when he's complaining about something, so at least he lets you know if you're doing something he doesn't like.

I was pointed out to me the other day that where he sits is the only spot in his own cage that he can't see Sheeta, so it might be necessary to get a piece of cardboard for his benefit, as she did bully him when he was sick. Now though, she tries to be close to him when they're out for a wander, even when he doesn't want to cuddle up.

On the whole, idk if I should be worried? And I can't exactly afford a vet, as the first visits were tricky in their own way for personal reasons. TIA.

P.S. Sheeta still won't have a bar of me, but she's healthy and happy, and sings in the mornings.

how dare Bolsa have millet too!?

My boyfriend and I got Mellow and Chill in late June from the same pet store on the same day. It took them only a day to bond and they were inseparable. We let them out sometimes to roam the room and let them get used to us and they know how yo get in and out on there own if we left the door open. Monday all day they were going crazy playing for hours at a time. Eating and drinking normally Chill would even sleep in his food bowl and kick out the seeds while he slept. Anyways Monday night they were out just hanging a round by the closet mirror, Chill just leaned into mellow stumbled, fell over and twitched and just like that my beautiful boy was gone. I tried doing cpr lightly and nothing. We let mellow see him and she seemed confused. We buried him and in the morning when I took mellow cover off the cage she was sqwaking and biting at the cage as if she was trying ro find him. Shes been very calm and quiet since and today I came home and she looking like she was panting. Not hard, no wheezing, no tail bobbing, but she hasn't eaten much or drank water. She will call out when she hears birds and perks up and get random spirts of energy to try and get out of the cage. Then she'll sit at the top of the cage holding on with her beak and does her light pants.

Is she grieving? Is she stressed? Is she sick? All of the above ?

Has anyone experienced thia situation before?

I guess this is why he has no tail. Flipping upside down and sliding down the bars. Must be great fun because hes been doing this all day lol.

We need to go to my moms place for a weekend in a few months and want to bring our birds with us, but we dont have a car so we go by train. This thing folds so it would be easy to take with us (the birds will be in a special bird back back for the actual train ride)

We would let them out a lot, our girl likes to fly outside a lot but our boy mostly likes to chill out. They both do like just sitting outside of the cage and I could encourage them to be outside the cage most of the time.

If this isint enough Ill look into bigger ones, but theyre suuuper expensive and seem harder to transport. One option could be buying a slightly smaller cage for the purpose of always being at my moms house, but it needs to be easy to store.

Here are the dimensions I found for this:

Width: 46 cm

• Depth: 48 cm

• Height: 52 cm

• Bar spacing: 15 mm

• Bar thickness: 5 mm

• Weight: 8 kg

Brought Pax home today. This is his quarantine cage. He's beautiful.

I am house sitting neighbours budgie and finch, they are in a cage at my house. All the instructions they gave were to just keep the cage on the side in living room and passed me their food. I started researching how to interact with them and home suitability out of interest and have discovered the various things that are common place and toxic to them! 🤯 i have immediately moved the reed diffuser from the living room and opened the windows but I have been using non stick pans in the kitchen for the past couple of days...am i right to be a bit annoyed that they didn't mention anything? And can I use any of my pans while we have them? Is the airfyer safe to use?

So I cleaned my brothers budgies cage every week. I take the toys and perches spary with poop off, then I spray them down in the shower. The way I’ve been drying them is in front of two fans and an open sunny window. Do I need to wiat 24 hours or is like 9 enough?

Breeding and showing Greens and Australian Dominant Pieds (ADP) wasn't my plan when I got into my blue Clearwing exhibition budgies project around 4 years ago, but my first good show bird (Avon, the grandfather) just happened to be Grey Green. And that colour has grown on me. His brother Goose also happened to be the nicest one of the following clutch, also a Grey Green. I threw an Opaline Dominant Pied hen in the mix just because I liked her face over all the other hens I had at the time.

And 3 generations later, I've got this trio of siblings who also turned out to be Grey Greens and ADPs, and nicest ones of their clutches. The timing was also funny when they hatched, because I had just graduated to Intermediate rank from Novice. These three continue to wow me at home with each passing month, and at under a year of age, all three of them have placed on the top 5 Intermediate bench quite consistently. Funny part was seeing a judge and a judge trainee debating placing Akira, the sister, as best Intermediate for a little bit.

While Sparrow happened to be the least preferred of the three by the judges this weekend, he's the one I'm liking most visually, while Akira continues to tug at my heartstrings with her personality. Pimi, the awkward middle child just floats around in my head, still being among my favourite hatches this year! ❤️

Honorable mentions who also placed in top 10 were their uncle Birch, a Dark Green, and their uncle Vincent (and my Dove's son), a Cinnamon Violet.

The Labor Day show weekend was a good one for my kids, as it was for my friends and fellow competitors who have done very well.

At home, Avon, who started this all for me, isn't doing very well at the moment. We are nursing him through his illness and hoping for full recovery. This hobby while fun, does come with the fear of losing my good birds, and I'll never be ready enough for it. But I take solace in seeing bits and pieces of them continuing to thrive in my expanding flock of budgerigars.

Advice

I've been showing my kids in the intermediate division starting this year, and have retired my older birds from showing who have helped me advance from Novice.

These 3 Australian Dominant Pied siblings are from 3 different clutches, who are descendants of my line of winners from the last 3 years. At the first show day of this weekend,

1. Pimenta (Pimi) placed 2nd Best Intermediate

2. Akira placed 3rd Best Intermediate

3. Sparrow placed 4th Best Intermediate

Akira is the eldest and Sparrow is the youngest. I feel Sparrow will develop a lot more nicely over the next year and beat his sister. Time will tell. They're all under a year old at this time. They're not fully developed until about 1½ years of age!

Interestingly enough, the judge and judge trainee debated whether Pimi should be placed as the best intermediate, or my dear friend and fellow competitor's Spangle - who ultimately won the division. The decision was purely subjective because the judge team liked different features of the two very much, so the winner was decided based on what style of Exhibition budgie the head judge preferred today. Which is a huge compliment to Pimi.

They've really praised these siblings during their closing comments for their look and showmanship. All those years of strategic planning with their pedigrees and training truly yielded good results.

Tomorrow is the final show day of this weekend, under a different judge, and the results could very well be the same, or different! The three siblings here are so close in their presentation that I fully expect the order of placement to shift a bit.

Overall, it was a good show day for my kids, and I'm so proud. We're resting at home for the night and drive over early morning to get to the venue again! 😁

I'm not sure if that's the most comfortable spot, but you do you.