Bafin's First Footsteps ( Err ... Flysteps?! )

It's been an exciting morning! Bafin's made his first venture out of the nest, and it's so cute! Joey and Phoebe are hovering around like anxious parents, and trying to teach him how to fly. Here's a video of lil Bafin on his "baby's day out"!!



Bafin will still need to be fed by his parents for another week before he can start eating on his own, and boy does he demand his food! Have a look at him yelling out to Daddy for food!

Our Baby Finch - Bafin!

Bafin just doesn't cease to amaze us with the pace at which he's growing ... and his antics were enough to keep us entertained for a major part of the day! He slowly seems to be growing a little used to us though, and doesn't run away and hide as frantically as he used to until a couple of days ago.

Here are some photographs of him.

In this one you can see how large he's become.



He might be a big baby now, but he still needs to be fed! Here's he ( or she! ) calling out to Daddy Finch Joey demanding food!



See what big feet I now have!



And here you can see what a big finch he's become complete with well defined feathers and a tail!



Ricky and Rachel were in a state of great excitement today, and we were convinced their four eggs were going to hatch today. However that hasn't happened yet, but we'll see tomorrow.

Bafin Is Growing!

We've finally decided on a name for our lil one - Bafin!

Bafin is now bold enough, and big enough to come right to the edge of the nest and peer out. He's 18 days old today, and as they normally start trying to leave the nest at 3 weeks, I'd say he's well on track. He comes right to the opening of the nest and looks out with wide beady eyes. However if one of us goes close, he scuttles back inside and hides his head!

Bafin is awesomely cute, and it's hard to imagine he was a one inch long baby not too long ago!

Here is a photograph of Bafin just before he hid his face.

Joey In Portrait

Here's Joey - wondering why on earth I'm pointing this big black round lens right at him!

Our Baby's Growing Up!

Our last ( and only ) remaining baby finch is growing up ... and at an alarming pace! I kid you not - he/she seems to grow by the hour!

The baby now has feathers and a well defined tail, not a stump that it looked like a few days back. It's eyes have also opened, and it's actually tentatively starting to respond to us if we make a chirping sound by turning and looking. It's all of 16 days old now, and if all goes well, in another 5 days or so it should start trying to leave the nest.

Here are some photographs of Baby Finch - not very great ones because the camera battery died on me after I took just a few.

Here you can see the baby's eyes open.



And here's it's tail!



And it's feathers



On a separate note, if Chandler and Becks's eggs are fertilized, then they should hatch any day now. They currently have 5 eggs. Ricky and Rachel's eggs were laid a day later, so their 4 eggs should be ready to hatch too.

Ross and Monica have 2 eggs but their's were laid just 3 days ago.

Ricky In Portrait

Here's the next of my series of portraits. This one is of our lil Ricky ( ex Rachel! ) deep in thought.

Little Ricky is the next best looking of the lot after Joey!

Ross In Portrait

Our birdies all seem to have settled well into their new homes. In fact Ross and Monica seemed particularly happy, and they expressed their joy by laying an egg!

Here's a portrait of little Ross!



The one peeking out from behind him is Ricky ( who was once Rachel - for those who've been following our finch stories will know what this means! )

Our Finchies Get Yet Another New Home!

Sunday morning ... rain, floods, gloomy dull weather ... nothing deterred us from the mission at hand - which was going back to Galiff Street to get another cage for our babies! The reason we decided to get another cage was that with four couples in the same cage, even though it was a large one, it wasn't large enough to stop them trying to steal grass and twigs from each other's cages which was causing a fair amount of feather pecking and chaos among them.

We managed to get a new cage which was as large as the first one, about 3 feet in length. However it also came with a removable divider, which meant that when required, it could be converted into two seperate cages which suited our purpose exactly!

Once we brought the cage home we transferred two of the nests into the new cage, and then it took a fair amount of careful trying before we could catch four of them and put them into their new homes ( Ross and Monica went into one part, and Chandler and Becks went into the other ).

Our birdies seemed a little unsettled with their new surroundings,with the four in the old cage not knowing what to do with so much space and wondering where their birdy buddies had gone, and the other two couples wondering where in the world they were, but within a matter of minutes they were flying around and settling into their nests!

Here are a few photographs of the new cage, and the old one above it.

The Eggs Don't Stop Coming!

Today we had to remove yet another egg from Joey and Phoebe's nest, because they were again focussing more on sitting on the egg, rather than feeding the poor baby.

Our baby is now all of eleven days old, and touchwood seems to be thriving!

Here are a couple of pics of him / her fluttering about.




And I also got a photograph of Rachel sitting patiently on her three eggs. Two of them are visible in this photograph.

Our Baby Finch in Trouble

We woke up this morning, and found our baby finch was in trouble. The parents had laid another egg in the same nest, and while engrossed in looking after the new egg, they were ignoring the needs of the poor baby.

We removed the egg so that the baby did not die due to not getting fed by the parents.

Here are a couple of photographs of the baby and the new egg.