Meanwhile one of our resident cockatoos (Bob) who we know is at least 40 years young, acts more like he is 4! Playing, destroying anything not packed away, and regularly throwing tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants immediately.........
So over 6 weeks ago we posted about a sweet little galah that had been found seeking out human help, clearly someone's lost pet, and had been handed into a vet. The vet had held her for a few days, and not having any luck finding owner, asked us to take her into care.
Well through the power of Facebook, we were contacted a couple of days ago by someone who had lost their galah around the same time and in the same place that this one was found. We were told that theirs was chatty and friendly, but we hadn't heard this one speak in the 6 weeks she had been here, and she was fairly aloof, so didn't think it was the same bird at first.
We decided to have them Facetime her to see if she would react. It was incredible. She got so excited at the sound of their voices and started talking non stop, laughing the same way that they were and repeating back the noises they were making to her.
It was amazing to see leaving me in no doubt these were her humans.
They wanted to come over asap to see her in person, so we arranged for them to come over the next morning.
'Georgie' rushed over to them as soon as they approached the aviary, something she hadn't been doing with us. She was very happy to go with them, and later when they sent me photos of her back at home, it was clear she was happy to be there.
They said it was the best Christmas present they could have wished for.
Thank you to Deb Kosterlitz for noticing our post and theirs and putting two and two together that we were both posting about the same galah!
We love being able to reunite families ###
They're growing! Always am blown away at how independent ducklings are as soon as they hatch. Only really need their parents for warmth. Can walk and feed themselves and start foraging within hours of breaking out of their eggs.
We have had a very cute and quite large clutch of muscovy ducklings unexpectedly arrive this week! Expressions of interest invited to anyone who would be interested in adopting to potentially give a forever home to any of them.
Send us a private message and we would love to chat to see if you could provide a suitable home.
We love that many of our resident birds here are free to come and go as they wish. Cage doors are open during the day and they fly in and out of them as they please, with everyone putting themselves in at dusk to be safely locked in overnight.
Nice afternoon for a walk in the park with Eddie.
Charlie (one of our permanent resident cockatoos) is such a character and always brings a smile to our faces with his happy outlook on life.
As with most cockatoos, due to their longevity of up to and sometimes beyond 100 years, they often have several homes. We know of two of those in Charlie's past - the last was wonderful but sadly owners could no longer keep him. His previous owner to that one had actually taken him along with his mate to their local vet to be euthanised as no longer wanted the pair. Lucky for Charlie and Lola the vet refused and had the owner surrender instead so that they could be rehomed. The pair were in terrible condition with Lola sadly passing away within a couple of weeks - was too late for her. Charlie was able to be nursed back to health by his new family with love and patience, and has now come to live with us.
Everyone should have a Charlie in their lives.
Further to my recent post about it being duckling season, we had a call this week about a home that had a little wood duck family appear about 3 weeks ago in their swimming pool. As it is quite normal for wild ducks to nest in backyards (especially those with swimming pools) then seem to magically appear one morning with their newly hatched ducklings as the residents had been oblivious to them having been sitting on a nest there the whole time, this was not unusual to hear. What was unusual about this instance, is that the duck family (mum, dad and 7 ducklings) had not left, but were still there 3 weeks later.
The parent ducks would take it in turns to look after their babies throughout the day as one parent flew off. I asked the usual questions when I got the call - was there access for the ducks to be able to leave by foot from the yard or were they trapped in it as even though parents could fly, ducklings would need to be able to walk out. Yes they could leave and would take their babies off for periods each day as were many gaps under the fence, only to return again later. There was plenty of natural food for them on the property and when looking up where the nearest creek/lake was, found it was just over 2km away.
So why not just let them stay and leave once babies could fly? There were 2 main issues. One there was a terrier dog on the property who instinctively wanted to hunt the ducks so was causing quite a bit of stress for its owners to try to keep it away from the ducks day and night.
The second issue was that the swimming pool was the duck's only water source. The owners had temporarily stopped putting salt and chlorine into the pool, but the water had turned green and with the weather warming up, they wanted to be able to use their own swimming pool, so had just put a high dose chlorine ''shock' into the pool to turn the water back to clear and also in the hope that the ducks would leave once and for all.
But they didn't. They stayed,
