ISSN 1492-8132
Issue 82, © 2003
No reprints without permission

Thanks to the interest shown by visitors, there are some great deals available here to bird owners, from small and large pet cages, to breeding cages, stands, and some great flight cages!

The folks at Bird & Cage Co have made it their goal to provide birdkeepers with a great selection of quality cages for the best possible prices - and if you live in the continental US, there's an even nicer bonus - shipping is free!

See Robirda's cage reviews here.

For a full selection that includes some great wrought-iron parrot cages, visit BirdandCage.com.

It's been a year since we offered our CD of Robirda's canaries singing for sale, and it is proving to be a popular choice for many, both for themselves or as a gift. We've heard a great deal of positive feedback. Here's just a few of the comments.

"I just want to let you know, that my little bird is enjoying the CD that I bought from you. I play it every morning for him. My girlfriend says that my bird learns a new song every so often and I say it is thanks to listening to your birds!"

"Even after I had 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 so much for such a nice CD."

Learn more about our Canary Song CD.

Our new book on keeping canaries has been getting a great response from readers. This special edition is a beautiful, useful book packed with all the information and fantastic photos from the ebooks, and is made with special long-lasting colour-fast inks.

Each volume in this limited edition is hand-numbered and personally signed by Robirda. Don't miss your chance to get one of these unique books for yourself!

Here's just a few of the comments we've received;

"It looks like a really great book. The printing is of a good quality, and the pictures reproduced extremely well. I am sure I will learn a lot from this book."

"It's everything I imagined it would be and I'm thrilled with my copy! - so great to have and to hold! It's a very attractive book, and a nice size as well - one that I can easily tuck and have on hand to refer to and read whenever and wherever."

"I ordered 'Canary Tales' by Linda Hogan last year... Although I fully recommend buying her book, I find Robirda's book much more complete, easier to read with less difficulty finding information."

Learn more here.

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 one of our websites, please consider joining our sponsors.

If you're looking for something different, don't forget to check our home page at robirda.com for links to all our great products!

Welcome to Robirda's Companion Birds eZine

For breeder or pet bird owners who care.

Hello! Welcome to Flock Talk's 82nd issue! Subscribe and unsubscribe information for the email version of this ezine is at the bottom of this webpage.

Our next issue is due Nov 23rd. We hope you and your birds stay safe, well and happy in the meantime, and enjoy checking out the updates to our site; we look forward to seeing you all then!  

Robirda
Nov 9, 2003

Use of Care Sheets goes back a long way. Those of us who grew up in farming country probably picked up our first care sheet at the fall fair well before we could read. We may have just wanted to look at the pretty pictures, but the idea stuck that you could learn something from these little clumps of paper.

Years later, handing out Care Sheets in malls and at bird marts, club meetings, shows and to the occasional customer got to be a regular thing for many of us involved in the bird fancy. Many were reproduced so many times over that sometimes they could be hard to read, grainy, crooked, and blotchy - but still they were a source of ideas and inspiration, and in large part, were treasured, used, and reused. Usually, in fact, there was more demand for copies, than there were copies to be had, no matter how many were printed!

Our current Care Sheets have been developed with the same purpose in mind - to educate others in the care and keeping of birds - but with a twist.

Rather than using paper copies to make more paper copies, and losing quality with each round, our Care Sheets are created in pdf format and can be used time and time again to produce clean, clear, readable copy. Each of our 5 Care Sheets comes in two parts, allowing you to print them with or without pictures, depending on your purpose (and your printer).

Our Printable Canary Care Sheet and our Genetics Charts and Breeding Records have proved popular, but we've lost count of how many times we've been asked if something similar was available for other species of birds.

So now, besides a redesigned Canary Care Sheet and the Records/Charts package, we also offer Care Sheets with Soak Seed & Nestling Food recipes and instructions, Handfeeding Basics, Small Parrot Care, and Cockatiel Care.

These new care sheets can be used by you as a guide in caring for your own birds, or you can print out as many copies as you like to give to your friends, other club members, co-workers, or customers - it's entirely up to you. After all, why spend your valuable time explaining bird care, when you can hand out an attractive and easy-to-read Care Sheet instead?

Our new Care Sheets are available for $5 each, or you can save over 20% and get all 6 for only $20. If you're not happy with them, we'll even give you your money back! Learn more about our printable Care Sheets

While we remember and honour those people who sacrificed their future for our way of life this week, let us not forget the sacrifices and love offered us by our other friends, those who wear feathers or fur instead of clothes.

It is not always considered appropo to mention these, our small and constant comrades, in the same breath as humans - but I have never been able to understand why.

True, they are not human. But the depths of their love is as strong as that of any human, and they have been known to stir depths of emotion in those who love and are loved by them, as strong if not stronger than any human bond.

Many have been the lessons taught me by one small creature or another during my life, but during this week of Remembrance, I mourn the passing of my latest, and one of my greatest, teachers.

And no, she was not human. She had heart and determination to match that of many people I have known, and bravery as great, in her own way. Her ways could be misleading to those who did not know her as I did, since she was a small chocolate-and-white society finch who was mostly known by the name of Spelunkin.

Stubborn to the point of relentlessness, and yet silly about the smallest and most unexpected things, she became a friend like few I have known. Her trust and faith in me was never measured, once given - like everything else she did, she threw her entire miniscule self into taking care of me her way.

We shared 10 1/4 years together before she died of old age while cuddled in the palm of my hand, this past week. She taught me unexpected lessons in honesty and humility every step of the way.

Although I will miss her tremendously, I know she is not really dead. She will live forever, in my loving memory.

Human-imprinted starlings are very different than the pests we know in the wild. In fact, one of the best ways to lessen their impact on our wild birds, is to adopt them as pets! If imprinted by humans when young, they will show no interest in breeding. So when you keep a pet starling, you are removing it and all of its potential offspring from the wild. They make wonderful pets, sociable, affectionate, and intelligent. Some can mimic the human voice so well that they can fool other people!

This website documents the stories behind three starlings rescued from certain death as babies - Stormy, Sunshine, and the newest baby, Shadow. Treat yourself to a unique and heartwarming experience - visit this website, and see starlings in a way you had never guessed was possible!

Feature Story

This is the continued true story, begun in the last issue, of one of the bravest and stubbornest, canary hens I've ever encountered. Against overwhelming odds, she survived with a style anyone could envy...

by R C McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © 1994-2003

The chick's air sac-balloon problem healed just in time for the next emergency. One of my older birds came down with a virus; although the diagnosis was not positive, as I'd caught it quite early, there was too many similarities with the dreaded avian disease canary pox, and I was faced with vaccinating the entire flock. Usually this would not be a problem, but my vet was worried that the vaccine would be too much for the youngest chick - you guessed it - the little cinnamon.

In the end we went ahead and vaccinated anyways. If I'd left her unvaccinated, she would be at risk of catching the real thing; and I considered it imperative to immunize the rest of the flock immediately.

The vaccination didn't kill her as I'd feared - quite. For several days she was too weak to lift her head to be fed; instead, she tipped her head sideways and opened her beak, and her parents fed her as well as they could from this odd position. Luckily, Two-Bits always made sure that she was fed, for Mrs. Bits soon became quite disgruntled with all the strange goings-on and quit feeding anyone at all.

Even with all the upheaval in her life, 'the turkey-neck', as my partner called her, was out of the nest only a week later than the usual time for a young canary to fledge.

I couldn't fault him for the discriptive name, for she did look uncannily like a tiny turkey. She'd grown in her contour and wing feathers just fine, but immediately after the vaccination, every feather on her head and neck dropped out. She was completely bald from the wishbone on up, and walked with a drunken-looking, lurching sort of gait due to her crooked leg.

Although at first she could not hold a perch with both feet and maintain her balance, she soon found that she could easily grasp the wire of the cage with her bad leg, and so I often found her; one leg on the perch, body level, her bad leg sticking out sideways holding the wire.

That's when she was sitting still, that is. She didn't seem to know that crippled and weak usually means difficulty in getting around; she just decided what she wanted to do, and figured out how to do it. And, perhaps in compensation, she flew like, as my partner put it, 'a greased banana'.

At first she had quite a few crash landings until she figured out how to deal with her duo-level landing gear, but figure it out she did. She was still weak enough to need to rest between spurts of activity, and her neck muscles would not support the weight of her head for any length of time, so she would let her head hang between her feet as she rested.

She looked a strange, rather pitiful sight at these times; one foot on the perch, the other on the wire, naked head hanging limply between her feet. I often feared that I had prolonged her life only to prolong her suffering.

But then I would notice, all over again, how she struggled to survive, throwing herself into the fray with all she possessed, and how she extricated every last scrap of possible enjoyment out of every situation. She met life head on, and in the face of such determination, who was I to tell her she couldn't do it?

She had picked the right daddy, too. Long after the rest of his chicks were weaned, right into midsummer when the other canaries were moulting, he was patiently feeding and educating his crippled youngest daughter. He seemed to feel responsible for her, and spent all his time dancing attendance on the Turk.

Once she was not sleeping in the nest at night anymore, I moved the two of them into the livingroom, to be able to keep a close eye on any potential problems. Two-Bits was familiar with this environment and made no bones about airing his demand that things return to the routine he'd been used to previously; any time I was around, he was to be allowed out to 'snoopervise'.

To my surprise, he insisted that Turker be accorded the same privileges, and once his goal was accomplished, he set about teaching the Turk everything he knew.

Turker soaked up his tutelege like the curious thing she was, and added a few twists of her own. Like her daddy, she liked to snoop into holes, crannies, nooks and other such interesting places. She figured out how to get into the dish cupboard on her own, and decided that teacups were the perfect place to have a quiet afternoon nap. Anybody going into or out of the cupboard had to be extra cautious, just in case Turker had managed to avoid (again) the 'Great Canary Roundup'.

I spent more time searching for her, convinced that something had gone wrong and she'd gotten stuck somewhere, than I've ever spent on a bird, before or since.

At about six months of age, her head and neck feathers finally began to grow in. She had started sleeping more normally at about five months, tucking her beak into her shoulders rather than letting her head hang. I had never been able to get used to the sight of her sleeping with her head between her feet, and this sign of improving health relieved me no end.

Once her feathers started to fill in she looked almost normal. You had to watch her closely to realize that she didn't stand or walk quite on the level.

She was filled with curiosity and a need to explore everything. She loved teasing the youngsters in the livingroom flight cage from her privileged position of 'house canary', and would spend hours at a time proving to them that they were never going to get a chance to nip her in the toes!

Another game involved an open paper bag. This particular trick of hers managed to scare the heebie-jeebies out of my partner and I one night, though.

We had stayed up later than usual watching a thriller. Two-Bits and the Turk had gone back to their cages hours before at their usual time, sunset. I distinctly remembered that I'd shut their cage doors, and felt that all were safe for the night. What I didn't know was that Turker had found a spot in her cage, where if she prodded just so, the wire would bend just enough to let her slip out, and then spring back behind her, looking for all the world like a properly joined weld.

Apparently she let herself out for an after dinner stroll, and happily foraged about on the floor while we were engrossed in the movie. Then, spotting the final remains of the afternoon’s birthday party, a paper bag half full of crumpled up wrapping paper lying on its side nearby, she crawled in between a couple of wads and curled up for a little snooze.

I guess we woke her up when we turned off the T.V. All we knew was that we were sitting there quietly, when suddenly the paper bag began emitting tiny scratchings, and began to shudder and rustle. The hair on our necks crawled as we stared at the strange antics of our discarded wrapping paper.

Then there came a louder rustling and a triumphant 'Chee-eep!', and there sat the Turk, looking around as if saying, 'All right, where's the party!?' She looked quite annoyed when we burst into slightly hysterical but greatly relieved laughter.

She never did learn to like being laughed at.

by R C 'Robirda' McDonald
www.robirda.com
Copyright © 1994-2003

*** Watch for the end of the real-life story of our little feathered heroine, coming to the next issue of Flock Talk!