Little bit of expansion for our Aviary

Written by George Wednesday, 18 November 2009 15:17

We have been thinking about expanding our Aviary a little bit for the longest time. The idea was to increase the number of birds little by little so that we will have babies to offer on a consistent basis. Jodie wanted to concentrate on the Macaws as they are her favorite. But being larger birds they also present a big challenge in getting a nice pair, getting them to acclimatize to our aviary, and the most important getting them to breed successfully. With that in mind we were open to what is available on the market within the budget we have for this little expansion project. We started looking for a pair of Severe's and at a pair of Turquoise Green Cheeks. In our search we came across a pair of Severe's near by. On further contact (emails and phone conversations) we gained a new friend in Traci. Went looking for birds to her house and we came back with 2 wonderful Yorkies. You can read about them here.

Without getting distracted by the wonderful Yorkies, we still looked at the birds she had and she was in a position where she wanted to reduce her work load with regard to birds due to her daughter starting to get allergic to birds. So to make the long story short, we went in to look for a proven pair of Severe Macaws and came away with a lot more in addition to the nice pair of Severes. Lets see where do we start - We took a Conure package from Traci - including pairs of Patagonians, Cherry Heads, 4 pairs of normal Green Cheek Conures, 2 Pairs of Mutation Green Cheeks (Cinnamon and YS and Normals), couple of singles (a young female Yellow Sided Green Cheek who was hand-fed one time) and a cute female Peach Front conure. We also got a Quaker Package - a flight of 14 birds with 5 visual Blues and all the rest Split to Blues. In addition we also got a pair of split to Blue Quaker. We will put more pictures of the new birds and more information about them soon on the site. They are all slowly settling in the new surroundings and getting know their neighbors in the aviary.

I think the biggest surprise of all was the single Macaw that came along with all the other birds. Her name is 'Lola' and she is an absolutely stunning female Harlequin (Green Wing and Blue & Gold heritage) with a deep reddish orange chest. I think her beauty can only be appreciated visually, so we will post a nice picture of her soon. She was a single breeder female who had lost her mate and living alone at Traci's. When we were visiting she took an obvious liking to Jodie and so she was given to us, hoping that she was going to be happy. The initial prognosis is great, instead of the aviary with other breeders she is now in our living room. She loves being outside her cage, she allows a lot of us to pet her and touch her although she is a bit not sure. We are also little skeptical of her and her nice huge beak :) but we are definitely on the path of trusting each other. She talk a little and does not act like a breeder, so we are thinking she might have been hand-fed when she was young. She knows her name and says 'Hi Lola'. The funniest thing she does is saying 'Oh-Oh' in a very surprised tone if she happened to drop something like a piece of food that we give her.

So that is my rant about what is going on around our Aviary - and till the next update, Good Bye.