"With Winter and its reduced household air circulation just around the corner, I would like to remind everyone that chemicals used in household cleaning and maintenance can be deadly to your birds. Above all, every bird owner needs to remember the one law of bird-keeping - toxic fumes and birds don't mix!

"I myself was recently reminded of this the hard way.

"If you are like me, your fids (that is, Feathered kIDS) fall under your care, with only occassional assistance from other family members. We tend to their daily needs and more likely than not they're on our minds as much as if they were our children.

"Often we can be found sharing our newly acquired birdie wisdom with anyone who has an ear and will stand still long enough to listen. I am here to remind you - if you share anything with the other members of your household, please remember to share this - repeat it often enough and firmly enough to ensure that it is instilled in the minds of all - "Do not use any household cleaners, paints or chemicals which could emit harmful fumes in or around the birds!"

"I learned this the way nobody wants to, by having things come too close to what could have meant the death of every one of our pet birds. My husband was home for the day, and at some point realized that the basement sink was plugged. Thinking only of the task at hand, he grabbed the harshest drain cleaner he could get his hands on to unclog it. The furnace was on, and had he actually used it, the fumes would have been spread through the house in short order.

"I arrived just in time to see the bottle start to tilt, and hollered "Stop!" Luckily, he did. But who knows, if I hadn't been there, what might have happened? I don't want to even think about it!

"So take heed, and be wary! It is up to you to make certain that the entire household knows by rote, that toxic fumes of any kind have the potential to kill birds. Tell them how important it is to take safe precautions and, should the use of a toxin be unavoidable, to make sure the birds are removed from the area well beforehand, and not returned until the entire area is well aired out.

"In my case, my husband meant well but as the birds are not his 'thing', it just didn't enter his mind what the repercussions could have been to our little friends.

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

Our next issue is due Oct 14th - until then, may you and your birds enjoy all the best of everything!

Robirda
September 30, 2001
Vancouver, BC

Welcome to the Companion Birds eZine

For bird people who care.

Hello!   Welcome to the 29th issue of Flock Talk!

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

Robirda

Bird Site Report


www.thebirdbrain.com

This site is a refreshing change from most commercial bird-supply websites. Offering a selection of pet bird products ranging from feed and toys to fine art and housing, not to mention collectibles and everything in between, this is a well laid out, easy to use, attractive site with some very useful products.

Best of all, to my mind, is that profits go to the Gabriel Bird Foundation, a non-profit society which runs nation-wide programs, local and regional outreach and educational tours, besides maintaining an emergency rescue fund for unwanted, abused, or abandoned birds.

To quote; "We believe that humanity thrives when it attends to all beings." Their motto is, "...you remain responsible, forever, for what you have tamed" - a motto we would all do well to adopt! Don't miss this heart-warming site - and don't be too surprised if you should just happen to find that bird toy you've been looking everywhere for, too!

Sources Wanted

Feature Article

For some things, there is no particular expanation - they just are. That's the way it was with ...

by R C McDonald
copyright © 1994-2001. All rights reserved.
*Originally published in BCAS bulletin 'Newsbeak', 1993

Cato seemed a sad excuse for a parrot when I first saw him. He should have looked like a magnificent specimen of 'Belisarius Amazona', a sub-species of the popular double-yellow-headed Amazon family. Instead, he looked like a plucked chicken with a parrot's head stuck on top.

He had been a wild-caught import. Bought by a young couple, apparently because he matched their decor(!), he had spent eight years in a cage too small to spread his wings, and lived on a diet of black oil sunflower seeds and water. It was almost inevitable, I suppose, that he should become a feather-plucker.

He was brought in this naked condition to a local parrot breeder. Could they trade him for a 'proper' bird who actually looked like a 'real' parrot?, they inquired.

I don't know how the deal was settled; all I know is that the breeder ended up with Cato. A battery of tests was run, and he proved to be healthier than he had any right to be. Theorizing that his problem might be rooted in frustration, the breeder tried mating him to some of his unpaired Amazon hens.

Cato ignored them all. His general health might have been fine, but his mental state left much to be desired.

Even when allowed more room, he refused to use it. He sat in a corner of his cage, or at one side of the top if brought out. He ignored all foods except sunflower seeds, and he hungrily attacked all of his feathers except the wing primaries, his tail flights, and his head feathers (which he could not reach). The hens did not interest him. All he apparently wanted was to be left alone.

At his wit's end. the breeder brought Cato to a friend of mine who has had some luck rehabilitating abused birds. She and her husband tried every trick they knew to bring him out of his shell (so to speak), and although their hearts ached for his plight, nothing they did seemed to help. The only change was that he began to eat some of her carefully prepared soft food. This is a mix of cooked grains and legumes, with the fruit and veg 'of the day' chopped and mixed in, served warm in the mornings.

There matters stayed - until the day I came to visit. I walked into the room, and Cato came alive. His head came up, his wings and tail fanned out, his eyes began to 'spin', and he began crooning like a love-struck chicken.

"What on earth did you do?" demanded my friend, entering the room from the other side.

"I don't know!" I answered in bemusement, staring in awe and pity at the excited bird. "All I did was walk in, and look!", and I gestured. "Where'd he come from, anyway?"

So she told me. I listened in horror and pity, my eyes often straying back to the still-crooning bird. Before I left, he had taken a peanut from my hand, and I had lost my heart.

Needless to say, Cato came to live with me. Due to a busy schedule, the only time I could pick him up was quite late at night. He went crazy when we covered his cage, and it was impossible to get him into any kind of closed carrier, so we loaded him into the car in his wire cage, uncovered.

He tolerated all the shoving and banging as we squeezed his cage into the back seat, the only place it came close to fitting. Another 1/32nd of an inch and we'd have lost!

Rather than seeming upset, he was, in fact, crooning a quiet little tune to himself. He 'sang' happily all the way home, watching closely everything we passed. I watched him in the rear-view mirror, impressed by his air of knowing what was going on and his obvious happiness with it. It was hard not to laugh out loud at the thought that those cheerful little rasps and croaks issuing from the back seat were coming from the throat of a bird. I'd more often heard a bull-frog sound as tuneful!

The house was dark when we got home. The canaries were sleeping soundly as I lugged the bulky cage up the steps and through the door into the livingroom. Until I had time to re-arrange things, Cato was going to have to live on the coffee table in his cage. I turned on a nearby lamp, not overly bright, but enough for him to be able to see where he was, and find his food and water if he wanted it.

I suppose one of the canaries must've lifted its head out of its feathers to see what the light was on for. All I know is that one second things were quiet, and the next, the flight cage was filled with terrified little bodies whirling madly against the wire.

Then through the crazed cries of the frightened canaries, I heard an odd note. The canaries heard it too, and their panicked flight slowed a little as they strained to hear. Where was this low soothing sound coming from?

It was Cato. Standing proudly, his gaze fixed on the cage full of terrified canaries, his eyes soft as a doe's, he was crooning a raspy little song, rather like the soft notes a chicken sings as she fluffs her feathers over her babies at night. And the canaries responded! Within a few seconds, the thrashing had stopped, and they all settled back on their perches, shortly to resume their interrupted sleep.

For over two years Cato lived with me. He appeared to derive much solace from the canaries' presence, and would spend hours gazing dreamily at them as they played in the flight cage near him. I made him a playpen from the entire top of a small alder tree, which he loved. Finally, he was beginning to learn all over again how to play! Slowly, his feathers began to grow back, and his diet expanded to include everything a healthy, happy parrot should enjoy eating; a varied diet of fresh and/or cooked fruits, vegetables, and grains. Once his health improved enough, he began actively demanding to do what the canaries did every spring; make babies!

As his ardour grew, so did the volume of his vocalizations, right along with my neighbors' complaints. I tried everything I could think of, but finally it became clear that Cato and his newly-acquired mate, Lulu, had to go. I managed to find a breeder with neighbors distant enough to not mind the birds' habit of 'calling China - direct, forget the phone'.

It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, letting that bird get on with his life. There are still many days, years later, when I miss him and his 'Loony Lulu'. Although they promised to keep in touch at the time, his new owners have not kept their word, and when they moved, I lost all ways of contacting them. So while I have no way of knowing how they are, still, I hope one day to hear of a happy bird family, Cato presiding. God knows he has earned it!

by R C McDonald
copyright © 1994-2002. All rights reserved.

A vivid, active, entertaining bird, Lories are favourites with many who get to know them. Indeed, many a Lori owner has been heard to declare, in all sincerity, that their birds have the best sense of humour they know of! And they should know - it takes living with a lori to believe the antics one of these little clowns is capable of.

Occasionally you will run into somebody who declares that they would love to live with a Lori, but that they are too messy, citing their notoriously liquid droppings as proof. With the nectar-based diet historically recommended for these birds, this was very true. But this no longer needs to be the case - with today's diets, formulated to mimic the kind and content of a lorie's diet in the wild, those high-powered liquidy jets can be easily avoided.

Wild lories eat more dry materials, especially proteins, than was at first realized. It turns out that their long tongue, covered in tiny barbules, is especially adapted to catch and trap the high-protein pollens in a flower with one quick lick. This gives them the ability to winkle a tasty and nutritious treat out of every flower they visit. Far from living on a mostly liquid diet as formerly thought, wild lories in actuality eat a relatively dry diet.

There are powdered foods made specifically for a lorie's needs these days, and you will note that he has no trouble eating it - that specially designed tongue makes it as easy for him to lick up a powder, as it is for you and I to breathe. Offer him one of these diets along with his fruits, veggies, and nectar, and you should see nothing more than the same sort of droppings any other bird has.

"Is there a treatment for tassle foot?"

My answer;

"Yes, there is.

"True 'tasslefoot' is caused by the same mite known as the 'scaley face mite' in budgies.

"Sometimes people mistake scaley legs caused by a poor diet or age for the symptoms this pest causes. Tasslefoot can cause much thicker scaling than either of the first two problems, though - as the name implies, the scaling can get thick enough and heavy enough to form 'tassles' on the legs and feet.

"It can sometimes show up on a canary's face, but finding it on the feet is far more common.

"There are all sorts of remedies, all fairly dangerous, as is often the case when treating the so-chemically-sensitive canary with any drug. The newest and safest way to treat these mites is to use a product called 'Scatt'. Unlike other, older remedies, this is a product made for and tested on birds.

"See this web page for more.