G’Day Birdie Sanctuary

25/03/2025

By now, many of you will have seen news reporting some serious allegations of animal neglect against a person associated with a local rescue. We normally wouldn’t comment on such things, except that we recently publicly recommended their organisation, and want to clarify that we had no knowledge of any animal neglect. We don’t believe that this person had any birds in their care, and as a bird rescue we have never dealt with them personally. Based on the evidence however, we do not condone the conditions their animals were kept in.

All we can do is comment on our own organisational practices, and reiterate that here at the sanctuary we are committed to providing high quality care to all our birds 🐤

Our birds enjoy fresh food and water twice a day, their rooms are cleaned daily, and they have plenty of opportunity to fly, play, and engage in natural behaviours. This includes all birds in quarantine. Once the aviary outbuilding is completed, this will also be cleaned daily (and will likely actually mean less cleaning work for us overall!). We work with local authorities and welcome transparency around both our animal husbandry practices and charity finances.

We believe that the vast majority of people go into animal rescue with good intentions. Unfortunately it’s very easy to fall into the trap of trying to “save them all” and ending up quickly overwhelmed. We limit our intake numbers for this reason - it might seem picky, but in reality it’s just us trying to prioritise the welfare of the animals we’re already responsible for.

We hope that this news reporting doesn’t tarnish public perceptions of rescues and sanctuaries in general. What this does highlight is the need for more support for rescuers, who are doing their best to deal with the thousands of requests to help animals every single day.

25/03/2025

Big yawn 🥱

Throwback to the other week when I snapped this pic of Mango the canary mid-yawn, as she woke up from her lunchtime nap.

Mango Banana is a disabled canary who was surrendered to us last year. You can see she has a deformed foot and is missing an eye after an animal attack, but her other eye thankfully works just fine, and she has more than enough feistiness to make up for her disability! She loves her food and will scream at the others if they dare get in the way of the breakfast plate.

We do monitor the quality of life of all our disabled birds closely, but we love caring for them and seeing them thrive at the sanctuary 💛

Mango and the other canaries hope you all have a wonderful Tuesday 🐤

22/03/2025

21/03/2025

And a Happy World Budgie Day to you all!

It seems only fitting to post a throwback photo today of one of the budgies who “started it all” for us.

In memory of Pluto, and the hundreds of incredible budgies we’ve had the pleasure of caring for since. We do it all for you 💚

21/03/2025

Next up on the list of good news: We will be holding a stall at this year’s Baw Baw Pet Expo!

Come down to Burke Street Park on the 6th April and chat to us about all things birds for FREE! As your local bird rescue and sanctuary (located in Warragul), we excited to meet lots of you and spread the word about how wonderful feathery friends can be 🦜

We will also have plenty of info about bird adoptions which are run through our friends at Kiwi's New Life Bird Rescue, and how you can support them as well.

On this note - if you are in Melbourne on the day and want something a bit closer, Kiwi's New Life Bird Rescue will be at Knox Pets in the Park at the same time, which is being held at Knoxfield Dog Park. So no matter where you are, save the date and come say hi to a bird rescue 🐤

21/03/2025

Apologies for being very quiet on socials this week - there’s been lots happening behind the scenes and we can’t wait to update you all.

In the first round of good news, our four new budgies which we took in the other week have been given a clean bill of health at the vets!

Coco and Ocean on the right are both 9-10 years old and have never been to a vet, so we really wanted to make sure they’re in good shape. Coco is a little chubby at 53 grams, and Ocean is definitely showing her older age (it’s funny how older budgies often have a certain ‘look’ to them), but their faecal exam was perfect and Dr Pat was otherwise really happy with how they’re going.

They have now had two weeks of quarantine here with us, so we are slowly introducing them to our resident budgie flock!

Vet invoice is attached here, which has been paid in full, but do note that the total amount also includes a large bag of premium seed 🙂

If you would like to donate to help with sanctuary vet expenses (which are always ongoing), we have an account at Melbourne Bird Veterinary Clinic which you can call and credit on (03) 9764 9000

Or you can donate to us via PayPal.me/gdaybirdie

Or direct deposit:
G’Day Birdie Sanctuary
BSB: 633 000
Acct: 213 300 676

As always, thank you for supporting us to help small birds lead big lives 🩵

15/03/2025

Regina and Bella 💛🤍

If you remember Reggie from our posts when she was found dumped last year, she was unable to fly at all due to metabolic bone disease. She has made some great progress - while she’ll never be a confident flyer, she’s happily gliding short distances, which allows her to move between the cages and tree stands. She’s much quicker on her feet and also no longer favours one side of her body, even when resting. Regina is loving the freedom in the flock, and the ability to get away from humans more easily (she’s got a very anxious personality and still isn’t too fond of us, which is okay!)

Bella is also doing really well. She also has an old wing injury, but it doesn’t seem to stop her from zooming around. She’s been busy destroying these now-bare gum tree branches, which have been in the room for a few days and you can see the bark being stripped away.

Busy beaks make for happy birds!

14/03/2025

How cute is this little one!

The caption also has a great reminder that captive birds lack survival skills in the wild - releasing them is unfortunately often a death sentence. Microchipping your parrots can help them get back home, should they ever find themselves lost in the wild.

14/03/2025

A very good reason to keep your birds secured!

This is a gorgeous young brown goshawk, who decided today that our budgies would make for a very tasty lunch. Only it wasn’t to be, for our budgies live safely indoors right now, and will be in a fully predator-proof outdoor aviary soon enough.

Protecting your pet birds from raptors means making sure your aviary is covered on top and on several sides, plus having a double layer of wire mesh to prevent any talons from piercing through. If you are taking your bird outside in a cage or harness for some vitamin D, never leave them unattended for any length of time.

Brown goshawks are common to Australia and surrounding islands, but their populations are sadly declining, so it is truly wonderful to see a juvenile doing so well here. They eat small birds but also mammals and reptiles, and they are particularly good at keep numbers of ‘pest’ species in check. One of the best ways you can help them is to stop using rodent baits, particularly ‘second generation’ rodenticides, as these also poison the goshawks when they eat poisoned rats. These products are sadly still legally sold in places like Bunnings.

Better luck next time, young goshawk! The budgies may not have been happy to see you, but we are otherwise thankful you’re around to play a big part in our local ecosystem.

(The budgies have since recovered from their scary ordeal and are back to chirruping away 🤎)

12/03/2025

Here’s a super chill Mali to start your Thursdays 💚

Mali is one of our ‘original’ birds and came to us many years ago now - way before we’d even thought of becoming a sanctuary, we adopted her from Kiwi's New Life Bird Rescue. She is such a gentle giant and loves teaching any new budgies how to eat their chop. These days she is paired up with Beaker, who arrived at our sanctuary a few years ago as a stray.

If you’re looking to adopt a bird, Kiwi’s have hundreds of birds just like Mali in need of loving forever homes. We highly recommend getting in touch with them to find a match. If you can’t get up to the Yarra Valley where they’re based, other great local options for budgie adoptions are Lazzi's Legacy Bird Rescue & Sanctuary and Strong Hearts Farm Sanctuary 🦜

11/03/2025

Good morning from Biscuit, who’s ready to pounce with her messy capsicum beak 💛

11/03/2025

We are aware of an individual who is currently attempting to claim a budgie at another rescue, incorrectly believing it is their lost bird. This is despite the person previously admitting on social media that it is not their bird.

They have been repeatedly attempting to contact us in order to try and gain access to the bird, who is not in our care, but in the care of another rescue we work closely with and deeply respect.

We have reason to believe that their erratic behaviour is escalating.

This is a general reminder that our sanctuary operates out of a private residence, and visits are only welcome via prior arrangement. Unsolicited visits will be considered trespassing.

If you see/hear of anyone making plans to come here in order to harass us or our birds, please let us know immediately so that police can be notified. Thank you 🧡

10/03/2025

We had some “helpers” with chop making this morning.

Fennel stalks and almonds are apparently the hot commodities of the day 😂🧡

09/03/2025

It’s been a busy 2025 here so far and we can’t believe it’s already March!

After six months of raising baby birds of various species, we are grateful for the arrival of autumn meaning that “silly season” is now over. This means we can now spend more quality time with our resident birds, and focus our attention on helping pet birds instead of endless wildlife requests.

If you’ve been following our page, you’ll know that we’ve had a few intakes of pet birds over the last couple of weeks. We now have 160 birds (12 different species) at the sanctuary, including those in quarantine. This puts us back at full capacity, meaning we will be referring out most cases for the next little while.

We pride ourselves on providing the best quality care to our birds, and we have to be realistic about how many birds we can care for without compromising our high standards. While we would love to help every bird in need, our time, space, and money are finite resources. When we first started, we never imagined we would grow to become one of Australia’s largest bird rescues/sanctuaries!

We are now in our sixth year of operation, and we have birds whom we took in right at the start which are still with us. This is a great thing, as it means our birds are living long and happy lives, but it means that space in the sanctuary only opens up slowly as the occasional bird passes away. We do have some memorial posts which are yet to be posted - we may have a lot of birds, but the grief is always felt deeply. We’re also mindful of the amount of ‘bad’ news in the world right now, and so try to space out the memorial posts with lots of happy ones too.

Our main priority for the next few months is to finally get our aviary outbuilding constructed. The gears are turning behind the scenes; it’s just a slow process, and we need to make sure we do everything ‘by the book’ to remain on good terms with our local council. We are so excited though - it really feels like a dream starting to come true.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much. On behalf of the 160 little ones currently with us, we want to say thank you for your constant ongoing support. We couldn’t do what we do otherwise ❤️

09/03/2025

Hello from four new friends - Ocean, Blue, Coco, and Atara!

These four have been surrendered to us from a local family, who contacted us as they felt they weren’t giving the budgies enough care. We agreed to take them in as Coco and Ocean are both older budgies at 9-10 years old, so we will give them an opportunity to live out their retirement days here at the sanctuary ❤️

They are being quarantined in our living room until we can take them in for a vet visit, and are quite enjoying the attention in the meantime. They are on a diet of mostly seed, but do love apples as a treat, so we are hoping to introduce them to some more delicious fresh produce as well.

With a handful of intakes in recent weeks we are now back to operating at full capacity. There will be another post shortly which gives an update on how things are going at the sanctuary, reflecting on the year so far, and outlining what’s happening in the near future.

In the meantime, a big welcome to these four little ones. We love you lots and lots already! 🐤

08/03/2025

Messy faces ✅
Full crops ✅

Time for post-dinner snoozes for Rio, Mitzi, and Haumea the budgie hens 🤍

06/03/2025

A final update on Ben the zebra finch, and not the outcome we were hoping for 😞

Sometime during the late morning yesterday, Ben passed away. He had been weighed and given his morning medication at about 10am, and was stable then - but when I went to check on him at midday, he had another stroke and was gone. At 7-8 years old, he was already elderly and unfortunately a second stroke was likely just too much for his already fragile body.

Ben passed with his partner Bill literally right by his side. Bill took the loss pretty hard - he was pecking at Ben’s body and singing at him, desperately trying to revive him 😭 We gave them about 45 minutes together for Bill to say ‘goodbye’, while we had a discussion about what to do next.

Zebra finches have evolved to be intensely social birds, and it puts an incredible stress on their bodies when they are suddenly left alone. Given this, the fact that Bill has already had a week of quarantine, that he had not been around any other birds at his old residence, and that his faecal sample was clear at the vets (and that the vets held no other concerns about his health), we decided to introduce him to our resident finch flock a bit early. This isn’t something we ever do lightly, but it comes down to risk assessment - and the risk of any contagious illness here is low compared to the risk that Bill would continue fretting, pacing around and refusing to eat any food alone in quarantine.

When we brought their cage into the finch room, the other zebbies spent a few minutes beeping back and forth to Bill, perhaps exchanging their life stories, and that was that: Bill has now been accepted into the finch flock. Today he is eating with them, splashing in the baths with them, and is back to singing his gorgeous song. It’s a bittersweet relief.

To Ben; we are so sorry that we couldn’t do more for you, but thank you for blessing us with the opportunity to care for you during your final days. Rest easy, sweetheart - you were loved by so many and will be missed 🖤

Arrived 26/2/25 - Departed 5/3/25

05/03/2025

Can you see a camouflaged Cleo? 💚