44 years of Glossy Blacks in my life and 40 years since we bred the first of many here at Casuarina. I still get a real thrill out of breeding these beautiful birds, so I am buzzed to have these 2 in the house now. I hope the 2 sets of parents will breed again as it is still early days in the Glossy winter breeding season. The oldest one is 5 weeks and the little one is 2 weeks old. Interesting is the difference in the vocals of the 2. They are such sweet little birds but I need to have my wits about me to make sure I do a good job of raising them, as they can be quite difficult to rear.
Happy Easter to me with the first baby Glossy Black Cockatoo for the season. An early one hatching in March. Mum and dad are a young pair and last years eggs were infertile. This year they got it right and are doing well with their first baby.
Easter Blessings to all.
This is the loud clacking noise that hawkheads make around the breeding season. Both birds do it. That is the hen you can see and the male is in the background
Checking the nest boxes in the hawkhead aviary always provides some sort of interaction. The clacking noise the pairs make before breeding is very loud and can be heard across the property. Hopefully we will get some fertile eggs this year.
2 little fig parrots growing well in the nest. First time parents so happy to have these 2 going well. Fig parrots are great little breeders mostly, but they are a lot of work with their diet. They will breed at 1 year old and the males will often not have their identifying red cheek patches through yet. This year has been a very strange one with many species of parrots confused by the continual weather changes, meaning they have a stop/start attitude to breeding. This is a late start for fig parrots with other pairs still laying.
Here`s trouble. It is actually difficult because most of my transition from `bucket to flying` cages are wide bars. With the fig parrot being Australia`s smallest parrot, the cage bars have to be in the 1/2 inch region. I like to be able to put the bucket inside the cage so they can safely learn to leave the bucket. And keep the cage in the warmer bird room because with this crazy weather I am still wearing track pants and jumpers in the middle of November.! Now to find the right cage. You need lots of equipment to raise birds. haha
Almost 2 weeks on and things are going well. Have not been able to change room mates but `Figgy` is growing well as are the senegals. Still on 6 feeds a day [ God help me ] which I think is necessary as Fig Parrots are such voracious little eaters. For those concerned about the senegal lying flat in the previous video, it has damaged legs occurring in the small nest box it was in. With treatment you can see that it is now sitting up quite well. Figgy is very aware of its surroundings and starts that trilling noise as soon as I open the birdroom door and turn the light on. At least it is not a ghastly squarking noise. Very pretty little song I think.
I had to take over and handrear this little fig parrot due to mother issues. It was on it`s own and starting to show stress with red dry skin. So I decided to risk it and put it in with much bigger babies for company. Senegals tend to be quiet blobs at this age, so in went the little figgy. So far so good. It lost the red dry look and is doing well so far. I call fig parrots the little ADHD birds and as you can see from this short little video, I am not far from the mark !!! Not sure what the senegals are thinking about the arrangement.
Had to put a closed legring on this little glossy black today. This is a foster baby from another pair who lay fertile eggs but so far have not sat. This pair have so far laid infertile eggs, so this is the second time I have given them another pairs egg to hatch and raise. They do very well at raising the baby.
So I have been teaching Dinki Di to dance [spinning on the perch] on command. Here she is with some random talking as well and " Come and get your love " playing in the background.
Back 3 years ago when I had 6 queens together to try breeding
in a group. No success so they are back in separate pairs to see if that works.
continuing on with the pet birds. Such a good relationship they have with TULLARA
The 3 young greenwing macaws. Still wanting their baby feed twice a day......I am a bit over it.!!! One of the girls is a real sook if anyone is after a lovely pet. She has started saying `hello mate` now as well as hello which they all say. Will drop off the morning feed and put them back to one as they are eating everything well.
Moluccans....the ultimate sooks. Mum with her broken beak [from another angry male...her partner], her 2, 3 year old daughters and 1 year old son...the slow one appearing in the middle. They just love attention so much.
Koi fish
A friend with excess Koi carp decided I needed to fill my big aviary pond with them. I was shocked with the size of the fish when they turned up. Some real beauties in there. They are very enjoyable fish to keep the way they come up and take bread from you, and now I have little ones coming through as well
Just a little video follow up on the story of TULLARA and her pet birds.
Baby bird feeding....glossy and greys.
Teamwork in the birdroom. So with my broken arm it is almost impossible to feed baby birds. But I worked out I could just squeeze a 2 1/2 ml syringe with the fingers of my right hand sticking out of the cast. I could not squeeze the 10 or 20 ml syringe so Tullara continues to feed the 2 older glossies etc, while i can now do the new babies. ......slowly.....suck the food up into the 2 1/2 ml syringe with my left hand, transfer to my right hand, and slowly squeeze the syringe to feed the babies, in this case african grey bubs. The things us bird people have to do haha. The young glossy is at fledging stage so is being a bit slow and picky with feeding.
