If you like to combine a love for birds with a love of art and high-quality wearable clothes, then this is a site you want to take a look at! Featuring bird-oriented 'wearable art' handmade batik clothing, this site is full of eye-candy for everybody who likes birds, nice clothes, and everything in between! Drop in and browse through, I bet you will enjoy your visit - and you just might find an article of clothing you can't continue to live without!

PS - let them know if you'd like to see more canary and finch oriented bird art on their clothes - I did! :-)

It's true! I use this method myself, and it saves the edge on my scissors for more important jobs, too.

Here's how it works; Take the bottom tray of the cage you need liners for over to your pile of papers. How many sheets you can do at once depends on the thickness of the paper - I find about 8 sheets works well for me.

Align one corner (two sides) of the papers, and plunk your tray on top of the pile, lining up the edge so it hangs over by a very little bit - no more than double the thickness of the material the tray is made of. Hold the tray firmly in the middle, and tear away the excess paper from the other two sides, using the edges of the tray as a guide.

Voila! One neat little pile of paper, suitable to be placed in the bottom of your pet's home. I put a week's worth of papers in at once, then pull off a layer a day. The weekend is when the cage gets a more thorough cleaning anyways - so it doesn't take more than a few seconds to tear a pile of liners for next week.

Does it get any easier than this? Sure - but not often!

Coccidiosis is a disease of the intestines of birds caused by a range of coccidial protozoa. Affected birds suffer severe intestinal upsets that may include diarrhea, blood in the droppings or sudden death. Budgies, finches and pigeons are the most commonly affected species. Warm wet conditions allow the organism to survive and multiply.

Coccivet is an effective treatment and preventitive in an efficient water soluble formula that is added to the drinking water for 5 - 7 days depending on the severity of the disease.

For more information visit birds2grow.com

Welcome to the Companion Birds e-zine

For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

Hello!   Welcome to the 26th issue of Flock Talk!

If you find help you need in this ezine, please consider joining our sponsors, and help keep Flock Talk and its web homes alive and well. Learn how here.

Send any ideas, tips, tricks, stories, or comments here. Thanks for reading Flock Talk!

Robirda

Feature Article

One large pet chain of pet stores alone is known to sell thousands of baby parrots every year, many to completely unprepared owners. There are many large and small stores world-wide which also sell baby birds. What happens to these birds? You guessed it - an overwhelming percentage of them are given up by their new owners. Some are donated to clubs and raffled off, others fill private and public sactuaries to overflowing, and a large percentage are advertised for sale online and in newspaper and magazine ads everywhere, day in and day out, as

by Wilhelm Kiesselbach
http://www.nd.edu./~kkiessel/

Oddly enough, although they are usually marketed that way, a second hand parrot is almost never a 'good deal'. If you are contemplating getting a parrot, and are thinking about buying a second hand parrot because it is 'cheaper' - and especially if you have no prior experience working with parrots, please think again.

You are not only asking for trouble, you are about to waste your money and join the thousands of people who thought like you did, only to wind up placing another 'for sale' ad - after much suffering by all, especially the parrot.

While there is a very real and desperate need for homes and caregivers to help neglected, abused and discarded second hand parrots, acquiring such a bird should never be prompted by expectations of a 'good deal', but rather by compassion, the commitment to help one of nature's most unusual creatures and most of all, by extensive knowledge about the specific breed and the willingness to continue learning.

In terms of money such a bird is almost never a 'good deal' - in fact, it is more often a potentially very bad deal!

Here are the reasons I say this.

In today's 'pet dedicated' society, birds are the third most popular pet, and parrots are the most popular bird. They rank right after cats and dogs, but there are vast gaps in the general public's understanding of the various species and their requirements. Yet this kind of under-standing is absolutely necessary to form a mutually satisfactory pet and caregiver relationship.

If everyone who bought a parrot knew what they were getting into, probably ninety percent would not have made the buy. Bird sanctuaries would still have plenty of room, and most importantly, there would be a lot less second hand parrots looking for a happy home and an understanding companion.

Parrots are popular because they are pretty, they look exotic and they may talk. Yet this is as superficial and and self-centered a reason to own a pet as any ever given!

Very few people who get a parrot have the slightest idea what is involved, how much of a commitment they'll have to make and how much there is to know. While cats and dogs have been bred to be human companions, parrots are still basically wild creatures whose evolved instinctive propensities as prey and flock birds endow them with a very special need to be in a social environment, a superior intelligence and an adaptability which makes them potentially suitable to be human companions.

Since all of these traits are a part of their personality, you, as caregiver, are obliged to inform yourself about the bird's requirements and what it will take to keep it happy.

Parrots have the ability to be wonderful, charming and loving pets, but it takes a lot of work, dedication and a long term commitment for this to become true. For obvious reasons this holds especially true with a second hand bird.

Your new parrot won't jump up and down, hug you, lick your nose, waggle its tail and be grateful for its new home. Everything will be up to you - how much you know, how much you want to know and how much you can learn about him/her.

Most of all you need patience - and don't forget the money! It can literally take months or years to accustom a second hand parrot to your home - and that does not mean sticking him or her into a cage and waiting for a miracle. There are no miracles, so it would never happen. There is only the slow development of mutual trust. This is possible only with great patience and personal, loving interaction.

Today there are more than eight thousand parrots in bird sanctuaries in the USA alone, each bird a living testimony to someone's inability to make the neccessary commitment. In addition to these, there are thousands languishing in dark corners, inadequate cages, garages, basements or sheds in the backyard. These birds will never have a chance for the 'good life' - to be someone's charming, entertaining and loving pet bird - UNLESS they are rescued.

But please remember - the word 'rescue' does not by any means mean the same thing as 'a good deal'.

Under normal circumstances, no one who cares for his bird will ever consider selling it. It follows that the second (or third or fourth hand) parrots offered for sale in newspaper ads, pet stores or swap meets (frequently at large discounts), are birds who have been rejected by their previous owner, who is now likely trying to get his or her money back.

Although the primary reason for these sales is that the owner does not care, any buyer attracted by the discount should know that his new acquisition cannot help but come with lots of emotional and behavioral baggage.

The bird may bite, it may pluck it's feathers, it may refuse to talk, it may hate Grandma, Grandpa, little 5 year old Ernie, or the Significant Other. It may scream for attention, chase the guests or chew on the furniture.

Whatever caused the previous owner to want to get rid of the bird, the result is never the bird's fault, but due rather to the owner's lack of understanding. This means that the new owner will have the gigantic task of modifying the bird's behavior. This includes added necessary expenses such as books to buy, magazines to subscribe to and even behaviorists at $50.00 or more a pop to consult. There is always such costs as visits to a qualified avian vet, a new cage, an abundance of toys and the proper diet, too.

Much has been said and written about keeping parrots, their needs, and how they can fit into the fabric of their new human 'flock'. Most of this material includes recognizing the causes for objectionable behavior and ideas on how it can be modified.

The older the parrot and the cloudier his or her past, the more difficult this task will be. Parrots are instinctively programmed to be able to bond to successive caregivers - but it takes time. There are many, many episodes of absolutely wonderful relationships between second hand parrots and their new companions - but in all cases the new owners were well equipped for the task. They had an understanding of the bird and his or her intrinsic nature. They had patience, respect and love. They informed them-selves before they adopted their new companion, they worked with him or her, they took the disappointments with the joys and, finally, they never saw a 'good deal' as a valid reason to get a second hand parrot.

Their own motivation for adopting these unwanted birds was love, compassion and understanding - consideration of their pocket book never entered the equation.

In other words - loving your bird is never enough - you need to know about and understand the feathered child in your care in order to be able to make a difference.

Example 1

I got a call from a very distressed owner of a Goffin Cockatoo. She loved her bird and had owned him for eight years. Her Goffin had begun to pluck. What to do?

She had previously owned an Amazon who had died at the age of five years. When she had realized that he was acting oddly, she had taken him to a vet, who gave the bird a quick check and pronounced him fine. Two weeks later he was dead. There wasn't even any blood work done!

When I told her that the Goffin needed to be checked by a qualified avian vet, she told me that she had been to this same 'vet', and had been told the Goffin was fine. The vet looked into her eyes, at the vent and gazed down the throat - again, no blood work was done. Since the bird was only plucking her chest feathers, I assumed that the cause may be behavioral, and questioned the owner about the bird's environment, asking if it had plenty of toys.

Her response was that she used to buy them, but since they were always destroyed so quickly, she stopped getting them. She also unintentionally disclosed that she paid extra attention to her bird when it was found plucking, to the extent of fawning over her.

Conclusion Loving is not enough. If during those eight years she had taken the time to read about her charge she would have known that the first pre-requisite of an avian exam is blood work. She would also have known that toys NEED to be destroyed and that she should never react to any bad behavior. There may be other reasons for this bird's habit of plucking its feathers, but I hope this story can help illustrate that we must take the time to inform ourselves. Awareness of the history helps immensely.

Example 2

I have a Timneh African Grey rescue bird. When I got him a year ago he was extremely anxious, to a degree approaching phobia. He bounced off the cage walls, never sat on his perch, and hung on the side of his cage. He was absolutely petrified of my hands, and acted like a wild bird who had just been caught.

Yet he had been in captivity for twelve years! I did not push him, but would sit and talk to him, letting him see me with the other birds. He is not anxious anymore, now he is just cautious. He takes food from my hands and when I come to feed everyone in the morning, he rings his toy bell. He still has a lo-o-o-ong way to go.

Conclusion We must take as much time as it takes. We cannot ever get 'in their face', and the more anxious the bird is, the more calm and reassuring we must be. We cannot try to dictate the tempo of an evolving relationship.

So please, if you are thinking of getting a 'second hand' bird, don't do it just for the 'discount', and make sure to find out all the details possible about what you are doing, and what it will take for the two of you to 'make the grade'.

Your love and sunny disposition may help - but unless they are supplemented by knowledge and understanding, can never be nearly enough.

by Wilhelm Kiesselbach
Copyright © August 2001
http://www.nd.edu./~kkiessel/

"My mother's young male canary sang very sweetly for about three months in the fall, then stopped singing and started losing feathers and looking poorly. He is fed according to instructions, and there isn't a draft, although my mom does put the bird in an air conditioned room. Is there any way to get this bird looking good again, and singing?"

My answer;

"Actually, air conditioning works by creating a draft! If the bird has no shelter from it, it can make him very sick. Being in air conditioning is the same as being in a draft! Another common problem which can trigger feather loss is changing environments - like being moved from a hot room to a cooler room, and later back again.

"Birds are not adapted to be able to easily handle such changes - any change of temperature greater than ten or so degrees can trigger feather loss - and unless the bird is on an exceptionally nutritious diet, it most likely will not sing while re-growing its feathers and for a short time after.

"Drafts are generally not noticed by people, but that does not mean they aren't there. For every ten people who tell me they are certain their bird is not in a draft, I can tell you that at least nine will be wrong. Drafts are easy to miss, which is why they are so insidious. They can go up or down, or sideways. That is why the 'lit candle' trick I recommend in the article Why Won't My Canary Sing?!?, works so well to detect them. If the flame smokes and flickers, then there is a draft present, or the flame wouldn't do that, plain and simple.

"Don't just test near the cage - remove the cage and test where it sits. Make sure that a vent above or below him is not contributing, too - heat from vents has been known to rise up and get caught under a cage cover, and half-cook the poor bird contained within, for example.

"Something like that may actually have started his problem, and then the summer air conditioning continued it, without him ever getting a chance to recover fully. Growing feathers takes a LOT of energy, too - to put it in relative terms, it would be like one of us growing from fifty to pounds to one hundred-fifty pounds in a couple of months! Can you imagine the food and intensity of nutrients we would require to support that kind of growth? The same is true of the canary.

"Good luck, eh? I hope this helps!"  

Our next issue is due out Sept 2nd - until then, may you and your birds enjoy all the best of everything!

Robirda
August 19, 2001
Vancouver, BC