Post by Bebi on Apr 19, 2019 10:41:40 GMT
Hello all
I've lurked as a non-registered member on and off for a couple of months now and finally took the plunge and registered yesterday.
We had a family budgie way back in the mists of time when I was a child (from memory he was a standard green and was called Peter), and I had a brief time of caring for an elderly cockatiel I inherited from my late mother in law back in the early 2000's, but further than that I'm a newbie to owning a bird.
We brought home two lovely female budgies in early December, and for the last few months it's been a very steep learning curve! I'm still learning new things about them daily, it's such a rewarding journey I've found myself on even if I do threaten to buy ear plugs at times. I've read some real horror stories about female budgies kept together (we didn't realise Blue was also female at first, the pet shop said she was male) and so far it seems we've been lucky that the worst they do is yell at each other on occasion - they yell at lots of other things too, and if one starts the other joins in. We're constantly monitoring the situation and if it changes we'll switch to two separate cages but at the moment they're happy to groom each other and do other activities together for the majority of the time and neither has tried to get physical further than a brief head-shove and verbal warning when they're not interested in being groomed by the other so I'm reluctant to separate them unless it becomes necessary. We did watch the flock interacting in the pet shop for a while and try to choose two budgies who seemed to want to spend time together so perhaps that's helped.
When we first got them we were waiting to see what their personalities were like before we named them properly, and when discussing them "the blue one" and "the green one" got shortened to blue and green - before we realised it within a few days the names had stuck, so we now have budgies named Blue and Green
They love watching tv, especially the music channels and definitely have their favourite songs/artists. Green is a George Ezra fan (watching her head-bob along to Shotgun is so adorable), and Blue likes Calvin Harris (especially Giant). I'm quite relieved they've grown out of their Chitty Chitty Bang Bang phase, although it was rather cute to hear them yelling what sounded like "bang bang" whenever they wanted it on again. They also seem to enjoy quiz shows, they chirp and chatter exactly at the point the host finishes asking the question as if they're answering it, it's so funny. I'm guessing they've picked it up from us when we play along with the quiz shows. They hate adverts though! If I'm elsewhere in the house I always know when the adverts come on because they both start complaining - loudly. When we're in here with them we can normally divert them from getting too annoyed at adverts by distracting them before they get into too much of a grump over it. They're also fascinated with watching the dog eating, their favourite time of day is dog feeding time and if I'm late feeding him by as much as 15 minutes they'll let me know about it by sitting in the corner of the cage nearest his dish and using their heads to "point" while quacking and looking at me then the dish then the dog in turn.
I'm not expecting them to form proper words like the males are known for, but they try! We have a game where they'll say something and I'll repeat what I think they're saying - if I get it right I'll be rewarded with a very excited head-bob and if I get it wrong I'll get a single quack and they'll repeat it for me to guess again. "Dancing" is one of their most recognisable ones, along with Green, Blue, hello, clever, pretty, advert (always said in a disgusted tone), food and toy. It's all in chirp-form and not "proper" words but they're clearly giving it their best go.
Sorry for the long ramble, that tends to happen every time I start talking about the buds lol
I've lurked as a non-registered member on and off for a couple of months now and finally took the plunge and registered yesterday.
We had a family budgie way back in the mists of time when I was a child (from memory he was a standard green and was called Peter), and I had a brief time of caring for an elderly cockatiel I inherited from my late mother in law back in the early 2000's, but further than that I'm a newbie to owning a bird.
We brought home two lovely female budgies in early December, and for the last few months it's been a very steep learning curve! I'm still learning new things about them daily, it's such a rewarding journey I've found myself on even if I do threaten to buy ear plugs at times. I've read some real horror stories about female budgies kept together (we didn't realise Blue was also female at first, the pet shop said she was male) and so far it seems we've been lucky that the worst they do is yell at each other on occasion - they yell at lots of other things too, and if one starts the other joins in. We're constantly monitoring the situation and if it changes we'll switch to two separate cages but at the moment they're happy to groom each other and do other activities together for the majority of the time and neither has tried to get physical further than a brief head-shove and verbal warning when they're not interested in being groomed by the other so I'm reluctant to separate them unless it becomes necessary. We did watch the flock interacting in the pet shop for a while and try to choose two budgies who seemed to want to spend time together so perhaps that's helped.
When we first got them we were waiting to see what their personalities were like before we named them properly, and when discussing them "the blue one" and "the green one" got shortened to blue and green - before we realised it within a few days the names had stuck, so we now have budgies named Blue and Green
They love watching tv, especially the music channels and definitely have their favourite songs/artists. Green is a George Ezra fan (watching her head-bob along to Shotgun is so adorable), and Blue likes Calvin Harris (especially Giant). I'm quite relieved they've grown out of their Chitty Chitty Bang Bang phase, although it was rather cute to hear them yelling what sounded like "bang bang" whenever they wanted it on again. They also seem to enjoy quiz shows, they chirp and chatter exactly at the point the host finishes asking the question as if they're answering it, it's so funny. I'm guessing they've picked it up from us when we play along with the quiz shows. They hate adverts though! If I'm elsewhere in the house I always know when the adverts come on because they both start complaining - loudly. When we're in here with them we can normally divert them from getting too annoyed at adverts by distracting them before they get into too much of a grump over it. They're also fascinated with watching the dog eating, their favourite time of day is dog feeding time and if I'm late feeding him by as much as 15 minutes they'll let me know about it by sitting in the corner of the cage nearest his dish and using their heads to "point" while quacking and looking at me then the dish then the dog in turn.
I'm not expecting them to form proper words like the males are known for, but they try! We have a game where they'll say something and I'll repeat what I think they're saying - if I get it right I'll be rewarded with a very excited head-bob and if I get it wrong I'll get a single quack and they'll repeat it for me to guess again. "Dancing" is one of their most recognisable ones, along with Green, Blue, hello, clever, pretty, advert (always said in a disgusted tone), food and toy. It's all in chirp-form and not "proper" words but they're clearly giving it their best go.
Sorry for the long ramble, that tends to happen every time I start talking about the buds lol