Thursday, September 30, 2010

Our Babies Are Growing In Leaps And Bounds!

When I say that our new babies are growing each day, it's probably hard for you to imagine what exactly I mean, or to picture the same. I hope these photographs help a little because it's true! Their eyes are already open, and their wings and little tails are such a cute sight! It's hard to imagine that they're only a week old.

These are the first two that were born in Ricky and Rachel's nest. And there are four of them in the nest. At night all four of them sleep inside, including the two parents!







Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Our New Female Finchy!

Here's one of our new female finches - and we need to name them soon! I can't keep calling them Female Finch 1 and Female Finch 2!

As you can see she looks just like Phoebe ( and Monica ).





Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Our Budgies!

What with all the egg laying and the egg hatchings and our ten new baby birds, our budgies haven't been getting any coverage at all! Here are some photographs of our lovely babies!

We haven't named them yet - any suggestions for 3 male and 3 females names are welcomed and the whackier they are, the better!









Monday, September 27, 2010

Ten Today!

Today we have ten little babies! Ricky and Rachel, and Chandler and Becks have four each, and Ross and Monica have two.

Touchwood all the birdies seem to be excellent parents this time around, and by the looks of it, god willing all of the ten will survive - fingers crossed!

The babies who were born 22nd September have grown so much that you can already see their wings beginning to form, and their eyes are slowly opening. The small pouches you can see just below their neck is called the crop - that's where all the food that the parents feed them get stored. Right now they're all healthy and well fed babies so their crops are almost bulging with seeds and mashed peas. If the crop is empty, that's when you know they haven't been fed. Isn't nature is so amazing!





Sunday, September 26, 2010

Nine And Counting!

As of this morning we have nine babies!! What's good is that all the babies have been born around the same time, so they will all grow up at the same time and keeping track of them won't be so difficult, or else keeping track of the different babies and the different stages in their lives becomes quite tough!

We also went and got two new female finches - one for Joey to replace Phoebe, and another for Bafin in case he tried to pair up with Joey's to be mate. Joey seems much happier now, and Bafin seems to have taken to the other female, so alls well now!

Here are a few photographs of Ricky and Rachel's lot. You can see all the four hungry mouths!









Saturday, September 25, 2010

Count Goes Up To Eight!

Today we have seven babies! Ricky and Rachel's eggs have all hatched and they now have four beautiful healthy babies! The ones that were born earlier seem to have grown a lot in the last few days, and you can see the size difference when you see the ones born 3 days ago and the ones born today. The older ones also have far more hair like feathers now than they did when they were born.

Ross and Monica still have only one baby, and Chandler and Becks have three.

One of Ricky and Rachel's babies waiting to be fed ...



And here there are two of them waiting to be fed!



Here you can see all four of them ... but just their bodies all squashed together.



All four waiting with open beaks!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

And Now We Have Five!

Yes, one more egg hatched ( Ricky and Rachel's ) and we now have five babies! One huge worry has been taken off our shoulders this time because the parents seem to be more experienced and they've started feeding all the babies from day one itself.

Here are a few photographs of the babies on day 2 ( one though was born just today! )

Rachel with her three babies



She gently nudges one of them further inside ...



... and makes sure the other two are ok too!



Feed time ( which seems to be all the time! ) ... here you can see her regurgitating her food in readiness to feed one of the babies.



And the baby knows it's food time, and opens it's mouth!



Awww ... Rachel feeding her baby. If you look closely you can see how well fed these babies are ( the pouch in it's neck is already full of bird seed ).



A happy and contented baby and it's proud mama!



This is Chandler and Becks's little one - unfortunately the angle of the nest doesn't permit very good photographs, but you can see the baby in the left corner of the frame.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

We Have Babies Again!

We woke up this morning to a beautiful sight ... some more finchy babies! Well I will admit they're not beautiful to look at now, but see how Bafin's turned out!

Here is a glimpse of some of our new babies. We have four of them today ( Ricky and Rachel have two, Ross and Monica have one, and Chandler and Becks have one ).

These are Ricky and Rachel's two babies. You can see both of them on either side of the yet to be hatched eggs.



Sunday, September 19, 2010

Poor Joey

Poor Joey is all miserable and seems to be looking desperately for Phoebe. He was ok until midday today and then he started looking out for her, didn't go into his nest and abandoned his usual search for stuff to take and put into the nest. It's like he keeps sitting on the branch and hopping around and looking and calling for her.

Bafin seems a little lost too as Phoebe used to chase him away from her nest, so he's probably wondering where she's gone.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Phoebe Is Gone

Today was a sad start to our day and weekend. Phoebe who was the littlest of all our finchies flew out of her cage today. It happened in the blink of an eye, and we couldn't see where she went. We waited in hope for a few hours, hoping that she would come back to her eggs and Joey but no such luck.

Joey appears to be ok for now, but we'll see.

Friday, September 17, 2010

More Of Bafin!

Like I said Bafin's colors are changing daily, and if you mistake him for Ricky in these photographs, I wouldn't blame you!

There are also some more photographs of our finchie's eggs!











Thursday, September 16, 2010

We Have Eggs Again!

We'd taken out all the nests from the cages to give our birdies a rest from the whole parenting scene, as too much of it tends to make them weak ( Not that taking out the nests stopped them! Every couple of days we would find an egg laid on the floor of the cage! ).

After giving them enough of a rest we put the nests back in, and over the course of the last few days, we now have 20 eggs in total! We're hoping to get at least a few more baby finches from this round after which we're stopping or else we'll need a whole new bigger apartment to house us all!

Don't miss the flower in one of the nests ( Joey and Phoebe )! Joey picks up everything and anything he gets and puts it in his nest. Besides the flower you can also see some green stuff which are some of the boiled peas we give them to eat!







Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Our Non Confirmist Budgies!

When we bought our budgies, we bought two different colored pairs, hoping that they would mate together and we would have beautiful baby budgies! Unfortunately they don't seem to want to mate with the other of the same color ... well they do say variety is the spice of life!









Saturday, September 11, 2010

Bafin's Growing Up!

Bafin's colors are changing almost daily and he's starting to look more and more like a grown up finch. From the looks of it he's going to turn out looking like Ricky ( the ex-Rachel for those who know the whole story! ).

Have a look at the all new Bafin!

Look how orange his beak's turned! You can also see the clearly defined orange cheeks and speckled chest which are the marks of a male finch.



With Daddy Joey ...



... and here he is with both parents busy eating ( he's one hyper and hungry finch! )



Bafin says "I know it's only bird seed but I'm loving it!"