ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 94, © 2004
No reprints without permission

The folks at Bird & Cage Co have made it their goal to provide birdkeepers with a great selection of good quality cages and birdcage accessories for great prices. The newest cage might just be one of the best pet canary cages you will ever see!

There are some great cage deals available, from small and large pet cages, to breeding cages, stands, and some of the best flight cages anywhere. There's even free shipping for orders over $25, if you live in the continental US! See Robirda's cage reviews for more.

For a full selection of cages and cage accessories, visit BirdandCage.com.

Alex & Dr Irene Pepperburg have been breaking the mould since 1977, when their partnership began. As stated on this website, "Once thought to be mere mimics, these affable, entertaining and often quite lovable creatures are now known to possess remarkable intellectual abilities. Dr. Irene Pepperberg's studies in Animal Behavior, and Animal-Human communications have provided insight into the capabilities of these 'animals' to talk and to understand."

If you are at all interested in how your birds' minds work, the results of these studies and the articles that they have generated make for some fascinating reading. The research field continues to widen, and current evidence suggests that someday, Alex may be able to read. Keep up with the latest on this fascinating research by checking into this site every now and then and reading through some of the excellent material posted; you are almost certain to be very glad you did!

Get an insider's look into careers and businesses involving pet birds. The Companion Bird Lover's Guide to Careers will give you insights into a selection of avian-related careers and businesses, including avian rescue founder and director, avian veterinarian, veterinarian technician, freelance writer, marketing manager, bird boarding entrepreneur, as well as selling wares to the companion bird market.

This informative booklet provides profiles of people who have careers and businesses involving pet birds; dozens of helpful resources to help put you firmly on your chosen career track; and vital information to help you make an informed decision on necessary qualifications and other considerations.

The Companion Bird Lover's Guide to Careers is a perfect tool if you have always wanted to base your work on pet birds, but don't know how or where to start. It is ideal for high school and college students, as well as anybody looking for a change in venue.

For more infomation (including how to order on or offline), and to read free articles, please visit us at P J Publications.

*** Send us your stories of how your birds confuse and puzzle, interest and amuse you, and we will share them with the rest of our readers in a future issue. Just send them here.

Welcome to Robirda's Companion Birds eZine

For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

Hello! Welcome to Flock Talk's 94th issue. Subscribe and unsubscribe information for the email version of this ezine is at the bottom of this webpage.

Table of Contents

Bird Egg Fact

Almost everybody who's ever thought about breeding birds has heard of egg-binding, that terrible spectre of agony and death whose possibility overlays each breeding season.

We do our best to prevent egg-binding ever occurring, through use of good vitamin and mineral supplements, but just in case, most of us also read of various methods of treatment to relieve this problem should it ever occur.

But do you know which advice to follow, and which to ignore?

Many older books recommend that a little oil be rubbed into the affected area. While the reasoning sounds quite good - the idea being to 'grease' the egg a little, to allow it to emerge - this practice can be quite dangerous, for several reasons.

Firstly, even the slightest bit of extra pressure could cause the bound egg to break within the hen. This would not only be extremely painful, it would be an almost certain cause of eventual death, due to internal puncture wounds from the shards of shell.

Secondly, applying oil to the skin and feathers of the vent means that the surrounding feathers will lose their ability to insulate the bird from heat and cold. This in turn means that the treated bird will be extremely susceptible to chilling. This will not only not help her condition, but most likely make it worse, as chilled muscles tend to cramp even further, making it still more difficult for her egg to be laid.

Another old-time remedy recommends holding the bird over a pot of steaming water. While it is true that heat may help the muscles to relax enough to allow the hen to lay her egg, this method entails a great amount of stress for her, along with the liklihood of a bad scald for the bird or her owner (or both) with only a little miscalculation.

Egg-binding can be caused by many things, but most often a lack of adequate mineral supplies (or the vitamins necessary to digest them) is involved. This means that generally, the best thing to do if you find you have an egg-bound hen, is to orally administer a few drops of a balanced liquid calcium-and-vitamin-D solution (such as Vetafarm's 'Calciboost') and place the hen into a warm environment, such as a heated hospital cage.

Exhaustion can play a role in egg-binding occasionally, so it's a good idea to keep an eye on her once she is in the hospital cage, and make sure she is continuing to try to lay her egg. She will rest occasionally, but should continue to resume attempting to lay her egg.

If it looks like she is considering giving up, don't let her, as this will mean certain death. In such a case, keep regularly disturbing her enough to make her move a little every now and then, not drastically, just a light 'shoo' every 10 or fifteen minutes or so... the extra effort to avoid your hand may be just enough to help her lay the egg, and save her life.

Feature Story

This issue we have decided to do things a little differently, and share a hilarious piece of bird-related internet history with you. It was actually suggested for our 'Behaviours & Personalities' section, but we enjoyed it so much we decided it had to be a feature.

Most people know of the discussion boards that were so popular in the early days of the Internet; here's a classic - and utterly hilarious! - piece from an old exotic-bird list. The phenomenon under discussion has puzzled many a bird owner under many a guise, but here was known as the 'UBE'syndrome, or in other words...

by Doug Roberts
Copyright © Apr 1996

Speaking of the phenomenon know as 'Bird UBEs', there is a related phemomenon known as Cascading UBEs, or CUBEs. Take last night, for example. All 11 birdies in the Roberts household were sitting on their eight perches, happily eating dinner, picking their noses, whatever, when Gertchie Birdie, Blue & Gold Macaw, suddenly realized that he had a UBE.

Naturally, he launched himself off his perch, but the non-specific nature of his UBE didn't indicate which direction he needed to fly off to. He therefore circled his perch. (Tower, I'm going round again). On the third circuit he was maybe getting a little dizzy, because he suddenly veered south, all the while maintaining altitude at three feet (tower-circling altitude).

The problem is that the big picture windows are due south of the Tower (perch). Two feet due south.

About then is when I heard the distinctive "bonk" of macaw beak against glass. It wasn't a loud "bonk". It was about the volume of "bonk" one might expect from a large blue-and-gold flying turkey cruising at Tower-circling speed whose forward momentum was suddenly impeded by a double-paned window.

However, it was a "bonk" that was just loud enough to cause this UBE to cascade into a CUBE.

The resonant sound of the "bonk" was still echoing in my ears as Opus, Congo African Grey, launched himself off his own perch and rocketed due north. He ended up in the bird room at the other end of the house.

Meanwhile, the Blue & Gold turkey had finished flying vertically (down), his big honker pressed against the glass the whole way. Time to try helicopter mode. Yep. In a flurry of feathers and discarded dinner remnants (pasta) the large thrashing macaw managed to initiate a reverse vertical flight back up the window, big honker still firmly implanted against the glass.

This, naturally enough, caused Sancho, Jezebel, and Maynard, cockatiels, to declare their own UBEs. Airborne.

The Caique, Bandit, went into Caique UBE-alarm mode, but luckily none of the windows shattered. Pink Floyd, of course, added his "MullucanNuclearAttackWarning" notes to the melee. Lilly, Umbrella 'too, simply observed, "These guys are bozos."

When the dust settled, and the panic-poop-streaks had all been cleaned up from the floor, we resumed our (normal, for us) evening.

Until, that is, the next CUBE. (perhaps our gene pool could use a little chlorine?...)

by Doug Roberts
Copyright © Apr 1996

Tips 'N Tricks

Help! Your canary has escaped from its cage and managed to find an open window into the great out-of-doors. Can anything be done to trap, lure, or encourage him to return?

Catching an escaped small bird is always a bit of a long shot, but with persistance and a little luck, it can sometimes be done.

The first thing to try is to set out items that he is familiar with, and make it as easy as possible for him to return. For example, most birds will soon be getting rather hungry for their usual seed or pellets - so try to put his cage outside where it will be visible and easily accessible, in an open location without any shrubbery or what-have-you nearby (that might make him nervous to approach it).

Make sure that there's lots of his favourite foods inside, easily visible. Prop the door open with something, say, a clothespin or some such, and place a perch on the outside of the cage near the door, (one of the twist-on perches will work nicely) so it will be easy to find the way into the cage. Make sure the perch does not block the door from closing, as you will want to be able to close it easily once he is in the cage.

As for luring him down to the cage - probably one of the easiest ways to attract his attention is to play the sound of other canaries singing. Alternatively, if you have other canaries, try to arrange it so that he can hear them singing - if he flew out an open window from a birdroom, he just might fly back in through the same window, looking for familiar sights and sounds. The trick is, to make it easy for him to find it.

Once he's found the cage and decided to go for the food in it, the second (and most important part), is getting him to stay inside the cage while you close the door. This can be a little tricky, but with a little patience is easier to do than you might think.

Due to their fast metabolism, canaries see at a faster rate than humans. This is a major factor in why small birds are so hard to catch - to them, you seem to be moving quite slowly, and so they have plenty of time to avoid your hand. On the other hand, if you are moving slowly enough, they don't tend to notice that you are moving at all!

So once he's in his cage and is occupied with eating, just amble slowly over, talking to yourself (the fact that you are making sounds will tell him that you are not a predator) - and make sure to be looking elsewhere so your gaze does not provoke his attention. Ever so s-l-o-w-l-y, lift your hand and ease the door of the cage shut, and there you are!

If you move too fast there's a good chance that he will notice what you are doing, and you may find that he is quite capable of leaping in, grabbing a beakful of food, and soaring back out again before you can ever get near the cage - in which case you will have to wait for him to return, and then try it all over again. But if you remember to move very slowly, usually this little trick will work quite well.

Of course, there's always the 'pull the door shut from a distance with a string' trick - you may want to try some such arrangement too, but remember that he is not used to seeing a string attached to his cage, and that to some birds, it might look dangerous - birds have very strong instincts to avoid anything that looks even remotely like a snake, for example.

This could possibly cause him to be wary of approaching the cage at all, so I would try the other approach first - it generally tends to work quite well, once you manage to get the bird's attention in the first place, assuming he is in the vicinity.

New Canary Song CD

Our CD of Robirda's canaries singing consists of 12 16-bit true-stereo tracks, each averaging almost 5 minutes long, for a total of 58 minutes and 48 seconds of canary songs. You can hear a 10 second mp3 sample here. Listen carefully, and you will be able to hear the different positions of each bird!

We are now offering New Songs From The Birdroom for only $12.00, plus $2.99 shipping and handling. Order yours today!

For You & Your Birds, With Love

Remember, we rely on you to help keep this publication and its associated websites alive. If you find help you need in this ezine or on our websites, please consider joining our sponsors. For all those who continue to help out in so many ways, thank you for your warmth and caring.

Our next issue is due May 9th. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy, and we look forward to seeing you all then! 

Robirda
Apr 25, 2004