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ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 127, © 2005
No reprints without permission
Sponsor's Space
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Due to an enormous response to their sale, Bird & Cage has extended their BIG Summer Blow-Out Sale until Sept 1st!
So here's your chance for big
savings on some great wrought iron
cages, made to last a lifetime for you and your birds!
The folks at Bird & Cage provide bird keepers with a great selection of good quality cages and cage accessories for great prices, along with some of the best customer service you will find anywhere.. Check out some of their cages that Robirda recommends!
Perhaps you need some cage accessories? See some items Robirda finds useful.
A recent customer says,"I recently bought the Wrought Iron Playtop Cage 360 and I wanted to say, Thank You! for such a quality cage! It was so simple to put together (I did it myself) and the design was fabulous - such smart touches."
For a full selection of cages and cage accessories, visit BirdandCage.com.
Bird Toxin Fact
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Flock reader Roger says, "I'd like to let everybody know that melaleuca oil is extremely toxic to canaries even if applied externally. Yes, I found out about this the hard way, but if you search Google for 'Melaleuca toxicity' you can find references that I wish I'd seen before trusting a friend's misguided advice. I hope no more people will make such a terrible mistake with their birds!"
Ask
Robirda
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Q"I just lost my male canary. One day he was fine, the next morning I uncovered him and he was dead on the bottom of the cage. I know I fed him properly with seed, veggies and greens, but he just suddenly died. He was six and a half. What is an average life span for a properly cared for canary?"
A: "The average lifespan for a breeding canary is less, but for a pet canary the average seems to be around 10 years or so. But, that can vary depending on genetic inheritance, the level of care, and the amount of regular exercise available to the bird, along with many other factors.
"I am sad to say that seed, veggies, and greens alone are not an adequate diet for a canary; they require vitamin and mineral supplements as well, to get all the nutrients they need.
Lifespan can also be affected by the kind and quantities of seeds fed. Some seed mixes and all treat, condition and song food mixes are very fatty, and should be fed only in limited amounts of no more than a teaspoon or so at most (of all such mixes) combined per week.
"A good standard canary seed mix should be roughly 80 to 90% canary grass seed (the oval, beige pointy seeds) and only 5% or so canola (also called rape seed - the round, reddish or black dark seeds) or other dark seeds.
"You will have noticed that treat, condition, and song food mixes are mostly dark seeds - this indicates the high amount of fats they contain. Eating a teaspoon of any one of these mixes for a canary, is like a human eating a whole double-layer fully iced 8 inch chocolate cake.
"As you can imagine, a daily diet (no matter how healthy) that includes a 'treat' such as this, is liable to produce heart problems later on in life...thus you have people who live on such diets having heart attacks at 45 or so, and canaries on such a diet having heart attacks at 5 or 6 or so."
"I am not saying this is what happened to your canary! It is one possibility; as I mentioned above, there are others, such as an inherited genetic tendancy, lack of exercise, etc."
Robirda's customers find her answers to be detailed, reliable, caring and supportive. When you need help with housing, feeding, care or behavioral questions, Robirda can help you learn to understand your birds better. See www.robirda.com/ask.html
"Hi Robirda! Thanks for your thoughts. My little one is singing as loudly as ever. He looks much better today. Your advice was most welcome; I'm particularly grateful about the recipes! I sent you the same amount the vet charged me; you have done no less than he did. You are a real blessing to all of us canary lovers the world over."
"I love your website, your information has made me a very well-informed canary friend/owner. Thank you."
Welcome to Robirda's Companion Bird
eZine
For breeder or pet bird owners who
care.
Feature Article
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There is a great variety of peoples and cultures across this planet, who have come to appreciate the special qualities a pet canary can bring into a life. In this story, the author brings to light a different kind of reality from the daily humdrum, illuminating the heart of this unique story of the life and death of a beloved pet canary...
Lessons from HeBell
by Lianne Downey
Copyright © Aug 2005
HeBell was a gift to us from the Wise Woman who taught us her spiritual science of energy, Unarius, before she flew out of this world in 1993 at the age of 93. Her Earth name was Ruth Norman but she was always known to us as Uriel, her spiritual name. Apparently names are important in this story, but only because they signify the distinctive personalities of the beings involved.
Uriel chose 'U-Bell' as the name for her first canary, who came to us as her gift when she was getting ready to leave this world. He'd been keeping her company during several trying years of bedridden existence. Our vet recommended a partner for him, so we were given 'SheBell' from the same breeder who'd provided U-Bell.
Neither the vet nor this amateur breeder knew enough about canaries to foresee that this pairing out of season in the same, wrongly-designed cage would result in U-Bell's quick demise. We also did not realize the cause of U-Bell's death until after HeBell arrived as his replacement.
But HeBell was wise and tough. SheBell soon succumbed to an air-conditioning vent draft we didn't know enough to check for, and we suspect that HeBell's frustration with her presence added to her distress. But HeBell hung in there until we found his 'Canary Godmother' - Robirda.
Thanks to Robirda's coaching, HeBell stayed with us for twelve years, even after his poor breeding relegated him to a life without the ability to fly during his last few years. He never gave up trying to teach us to live smarter.
What did I learn from my canary? To respect the boundaries of others, and to recognize their innate Intelligence.
I knew about every living thing's link to Infinite Intelligence, thanks to Uriel's persistent and patient teaching, but HeBell showed us what that meant. For instance, he taught us to eat only the freshest vegetables and fruits.
After only a few days (even kept carefully in the refrigerator), the original nutritional content had been destroyed, and HeBell knew it. He wouldn't touch them, not even his favorites..
Sometimes he'd point out to us (by refusing to eat) that the store from which his vegetables had been purchased had sold them to us already unfit for eating! They were already 'dead vegetables' by the time they arrived in his cage. Not worthy of a second look.
He taught us to eat kale, collards, and dandelions - highly nutritious greens we'd previously completely ignored - but he taught us how to eschew all 'dead vegetables.' He encouraged our food snobbery to the utmost, but reminded us that it really wasn't so snobbish to care for our own well-being, and his too!
How did he know the nutritional content of everything we put in his cage? It's as if he got a readout: good, bad, indifferent, risky, spoiled. In the last years of his life with us, we, too, learned new techniques for testing the energy readouts of our food, through the Energy Medicine taught by Donna Eden.
I'm sure HeBell was greatly satisfied by our slow progress in this field, although he probably sniffed at our need for special tactics and methods, our need to hold the food in our hands and use muscle testing to weigh its impact on our unique energy body. Why didn't we simply use our inner senses, as he did, sensing a food's energetic properties purely through mental analysis?
"Ah well", he probably thought, "at least they've started giving me only the freshest, organically grown greens and fruits!"
Back to how HeBell taught me about boundaries. When I was younger and more eager to impress others with my ideas, I tended to ignore the fact that their own ideas were perfectly designed for their own needs, unless and until they made the decision to discard, replace, or expand those ideas.
In other words, I had less respect for the Intelligence of others, despite a lot of lip service to the contrary. In practice, I was disrespectful. If I wanted to put something across - whether a concept or a carrot - I tended to be pushy. HeBell helped to cure me.
By this time, Uriel was continuing my spiritual lessons from her position in Higher Worlds and I swear she used HeBell as one of her favorite teaching tools. In fact, I believe she set it up that way when she left her canaries in our care!
Shove my hand into HeBell's cage without paying attention and in his 'cranky' later years, that meant an immediate beak-baring attack! Never mind that my hand held his favorite broccoli!
I'd invaded his territory without so much as a "How do you do?" And that was totally unacceptable. It took the wisdom of HeBell's Canary Godmother to help us break through. She explained to us about canary territories and his view of us as flock members who needed to learn respect. He'd been disciplining us to respect him.
This made perfect sense. My husband and I learned to take the time to acknowledge his presence and show the proper respect before entering his space. It wasn't so much a matter of speaking to him - we'd always done that. But it was our state of mind and attitude toward him that he sensed and responded to.
He'd put up with our ignorance for years, but as the time grew closer for his departure from this world, he stepped up our lessons with the only tool he could think of to get our attention: a sharp beak to the fingers! He took a readout on us every time we got near and acted accordingly.
When we showed love and affection, he did likewise. Inattention? Rude carelessness? A quick angry peck and sometimes a squawk. For that matter, he made a keen appraisal of anyone else who entered the room, too!
That was another lesson he taught us: some people are worse than 'dead vegetables.' They're worthy of loud, raucous warning songs. They should not be allowed in your house. Others are sweet, kind, and deserve to be recognized and appreciated as such. Serenade them with sweet singing, accept their gifts, and welcome them with your best hospitality.
I suppose many of HeBell's lessons were not only about learning to respect the qualities of others - both good and bad - but about respecting ourselves.
When we traveled with him in the car on a road trip, it was HeBell who insisted-with loud, persistent vocal inflections he'd learned to use to get our attention, a particular frequency of sound we could not ignore - that any fool should stop driving at sunset and get some rest!
We gave in, found a motel, and thanked him later for his wisdom. To this day, we travel more slowly and don't push ourselves on the road. HeBell taught us to care for him properly, but also to take better care of ourselves than we had been.
Not long after we'd finally deciphered and practiced his lessons in respect, HeBell rewarded us with the opportunity to hold him on the palm of our hands.
Since he could no longer fly, this gave us both a thrill: he got to see more of his surroundings as we carried him to places he'd once been able to wing through, and we were touched, after so many years, by his trust.
Now we understood that his trust was not a right we deserved as human owners, but something earned through mutual trial and effort. His place in the universe is no less important than our own, and he never stopped communicating this to us. And what is true of a canary is true of every living thing in the vibrating universe.
As a musician, of course, his arias topped Andrea Bocelli's, and his jazz riffs could keep up with any pop musician or country balladeer we produced. But he acquiesced to sing with them, probably his attempt to teach them about all the notes between the notes that their clumsy ears were missing. He filled our home and our lives with song and companionship, but so much more.
For all he taught us, we should probably refer to HeBell as our Canary Guru!
His final lesson still brings us to tears. He hopped on my hand one morning for a tour outside the cage doors and then, with one final look of impatience, flew off into Infinity, taking up his new residence in Uriel's celestial garden. How do we know that? Because he still communicates with us, as does Uriel.
They're both still trying to impress upon us how much we have yet to learn about life, so-called 'death,' and the continuity of consciousness from one dimension to another! That message comes in many ways, radiating both from us and to us at all times.
They're now trying to tell me that when my grief finally turns to gratitude, I will have turned the spiral on the soulic vortex that leads upward into peace of mind. And neither of them has run out of tricks to get my attention! Including calling upon HeBell's Canary Godmother to translate, one last time, his canary urgings into human language.
Thank you Uriel, HeBell, and Robirda for your patience and persistence! One day we'll all enjoy a cup of tea in Uriel's celestial garden, and laugh over how silly we were to think that human creatures and feathered creatures - or furry or chlorophylled or scaled or transparent - could ever be separated from one another in the Infinite Sea of energy of which we all are a part!
by Lianne Downey
Copyright © Aug 2005
Check out some of our more popular bird-lover's products!
For a full list of all our products and services, visit the webpage at www.robirda.com/products.html
"Everyone always asks me why my birds are such beautiful singers and breed such magnificent babies...I tell them that I learned from Robirda! While they give their birds all kinds of 'magical' formulas, I just follow your guide to 'keep it simple.' My birds are now very healthy, and there has been no recurrence of the infection. Thank Goodness!" R.C., Florida
"Even after I made all sorts of changes, my canary still hardly sang. But after I ordered your CD, he sings and sings - I guess he just needed someone to show him how he was supposed to be spending his time! Thanks for such a nice CD."
Song
CD
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Summer
Sale extended! Until Aug 31st SAVE over 20% ! Our CD of Robirda's canaries singing consists of 12 16-bit true-stereo
tracks, for a total of almost 59 minutes of canary songs. There's no
distracting background, and because the birds were recorded in true stereo, you
will be able to hear the different positions of each bird!
Hear a 10 second sample in mp3 format, Note too that the CD quality is much better than this sample.
A recent customer told us, "Just a quick message to thank you for your prompt delivery of my CD. Your CD has done wonders for my canary, he hasn't sang for months and now he tries to out sing the CD, very fulfilling for me to watch! Thank you for a great product!"
Many canaries are moulting their feathers just now, which makes this the best time to teach your birds new songs. The songs of other birds will receive the most attention from a moulting pet, so you can use our sale to help to improve and expand your bird's reperatoire of songs at the same time he is renewing his feathers!
Find our more details on our Canary Song CD sale now!
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Please note that we're taking a break over the next few weeks; our next issue will be out Sunday, Sept 11th. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy in the meantime, and we look forward to seeing you all then!
"I ordered 'Canary Tales' by Linda Hogan last year...Although I fully recommend buying the book, I find Robirda's book much more complete, easier to read with less difficulty finding information."
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