Avian

[farla]

My cat successfully begged entrance on strength of wanting cuddles more than she wants to eat a bird.

Got to get rid of the bird, though, it's driving me mad. Sometimes it flies at my face. Why does it do that? Is it hungry? Because it's still got food. But I give it more food and then it's happy? It makes noise at times. It won't leave its cage except for the face-flying excursions. Or sudden flights in the dark, where it smacks into the walls and ends up behind the printer. Done that twice now. It seems to be scared of me. It enjoys eating out of my hand. Its beak is chipping away in what I hope is a positive sign. It keeps stretching its wings instead of flying. It won't eat anything but millet.

Cats are so much easier.

Comments

[farla.livejournal.com]

...OH.
But the food mix we got was full of millet! And I can't not feed it and hope it eats the other stuff because it's shivering all the time and I'm not sure that's just nervousness so I don't want it to burn through all its fat and die. (It's pretty fat right now...)

And no, we never found anyone reporting a lost bird but it seems that's actually a good thing, because it's looking like it actually had crappy owners. Its beak and claws were way too long. So we're giving it to someone who has a parrot.

[negrek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean, millet isn't like ~bad~ gonna kill you or anything, but I'm preeetty sure it's primarily a treat food. Like the potato chip of the cereal grains, idk. Parakeets really like it, so I'm not surprised they would put it in a seed mix, but you would be kind of hoping that the bird would eat... the rest of the mix. I don't think you'd want it eating millet exclusively; I don't think it's the healthiest kind of seed. Also, I would actually be kinda worried about the fatness thing. It's not really good for a bird to get like that, and if it's kept warm enough you shouldn't have to worry about it needing the insulation or anything. That might explain why it's weird about flying; if it's overweight it probably has trouble, and it probably got that way by sitting around and not doing much, so it might not have a lot of experience.

Shivering all the time isn't good, and I would guess not nervousness if it's constant. D: Do you keep your house pretty warm? If it's fluffing itself up all the time or shivering, I would guess it's either cold or sick. Maybe you could ask the parrot-person their opinion?

[farla.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I'll just stop giving it new food until it eats more. I'm not sure how well they're supposed to fly. It's good at flying at my face and banking back to the cage or landing on my head and it can circle the room a few times, and it seems to know what windows are. But it definitely isn't a good flier. It flew well enough to escape, though.

I'm not sure how much fat it has, my point of comparison is some wild birds I saw so I just know it's got a fat pack above the breastbone and that really pissed it off so I can't check again.

It was badly chilled when it was found, and then our house is pretty cold so it wasn't warm enough the first few days until I got a heater, so I'm worried it got sick. It was still shivering even when I get the temperature up to 90, but not obvious shivering, I have to touch it to tell and it's scared of me, so I don't know. Right now it's 74, just turned the heater on again because it's all fluffed up. I've been keeping it in the seventy-eighty range for the past few days.

Hopefully we can give it to the parrot person this weekend. We were supposed to hand it over Sunday.