Found a Parakeet!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Or, as I just learned, it’s called a Budgerigar.

This morning, walking home from dropping off my son there was a little green bird on the sidewalk in front of my house. When he saw me, he chirped very happily and hopped over. I knelt down, a little stunned. I thought he was obviously someone’s pet, and I reached out, sort of to see what he would do. He sort of fluttered away about a foot, and then sat there looking at me. I watched him for a little bit. He hopped along eating little grass seeds and pecking the dirt. The street there is fairly busy, and I thought if he stayed he would almost certainly get hit by a car, or eaten by a cat, or something. So I reached out slowly and grabbed him. When I wrapped my hand around him I felt him sort of stiffen and his wings fluttered, but he seemed okay. I brought him home and put him in a clothes hamper, while I went up in the attic to get an old rabbit cage.

He’s in the rabbit cage now, eating bird seed and checking out the digs. I asked the neighbors if they’ve lost a bird, but no one has. The lady across the street has two already and says she’ll take him if I want. He’s pretty cute. If no one claims him I may keep him. I read they like to live in pairs, but I don’t think I want another. I’ve never had a bird before. Maybe I should just give him to the lady across the street. Or maybe I should make a sign, in case someone is looking for him? I wonder how far he’s traveled? I don’t think he can fly, it couldn’t be far.

Mundane and pointless stuff I must share. :slight_smile:

2

His inability to fly may be due to exhaustion - apparently escaped pet budgies often fly very frantically in the first few hours after escape, leaving them lost and exhausted - that’s one possible explanation for how you were able to catch him (the other is that he’s a hand-tame bird)
It’s great that you’ve rescued this one, but he may well still be in shock and have badly depleted energy reserves. If you can provide some millet sprays (in addition to loose seed), this will help him, as spray millet is easy for them to consume and digest. And a small container of fresh water, of course.

If it’s a hand-tame bird, then it will probably be over a year old (and will have been used to living on its own - birds in pairs don’t generally become so tame), but should adapt to living with other birds fairly readily if introduced carefully. I’d be trying quite hard to find the original owner though - chances are, there’s a very upset kid or adult out there, forlornly looking for the lost bird.

3

I once acquired a wild budgie when it was very young. One of the best pets I ever had. I volunteered at a bird sanctuary, it came in with an injured leg. It was very young, just past fledgling stage. He was pretty much tame from the beginning. I was given him because legally the sanctuary could not release non-native species back into the wild. He had a limp for the rest of his life, I called him Chester.

He was a cool little bird, the problem was he learned to say hello but he always chose to say it at night when I turned the lights out (he lived in my bedroom), it was a little disturbing to be drifting off to sleep and then hear a high-pitched “hello”. He also loved to play basketball with his little toy ball with a bell in it. He’d pick it up and throw it around his cage and whenever he managed to get it in the seed cup he’d dance around for a few minutes then he’d fish it out and start all over.

He lived with my sister for a while when I moved away, then when I moved back I got him again. He lived to be about 15 years old. I don’t think he ever missed having a mate. I think we tried him with one once and it beat him up. He managed to keep himself amused most of the time anyway. If you keep this one he’d probably be happy by himself as long as you give him lots of attention and toys to keep him amused when you’re not around.

4

Well, I’m certainly trying to find the owner. What, other than a few signs, do you think I should do?

I am going to go by the pet store later for him, I will get some millet sprays. He’s been eating seed and I gave him some whole wheat bread. And he has fresh water. Is there anything else I should get for him? I put some flannel in there, in case he wanted something to snuggle on. Does he need more solid bottom areas? The cage bottom is wire. Any other suggestions? He is quite a cutie, but I hope his owner finds him. If I lost a bird like that, I would feel certain that he’d been killed. I think he’s probably quite lucky to have been found.

5

I would call a few local vets as well as animal shelters to let them know you found the bird, maybe post a Craigslist ad. Someone is probably missing their little bird. Awesome that you rescued it!

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I’m not sure cloth in a bird cage is good. Their claws can get tangled in cloth weave. Put something solid on the bottom like a piece of cardboard. Get a cuttle bone. You can feed some pieces of lettuce or carrot to it if it likes it. Make sure it gets clean water and seed.

7

good on you for rescuing the little guy! much karma will come your way.

if you’re going to keep him, do not burn any scented candles in the house (i switched to unscented candles for my bath) and don’t spray furniture polish and the like near his cage. birds are highly susceptible to scents, and such stuff can kill the little guy before you even realize something is wrong.

if you have a cat, make sure that the two never meet. even a tiny nick can be fatal, which is what happened to a friend’s macaw several years ago.

no chocolate or avacados: they’re poisonous. i’d contact an exotic pets vet and get the lowdown on food dos and don’ts - or scope out some budgie websites online.

macaws can handle a varied diet which includes meat, but what to feed budgies is out of my purview; however, i do know that birds need more than a seed diet to maintain health.

good luck, and keep us posted.

8

Also, never keep the bird in the kitchen. Fumes and whatnot produced by certain types of cookware can be lethal to birds.

9

Cuttle fish! They love them. Also fresh stuff - I give my cockatiel anything that goes into my salad and she goes mad for them! She also really really loves apple seeds but someone told me that they could be poisonous to the bird so she doesn’t get them any more.

No chocolate/avocado/dairy
A good scratching pole in the cage.

Lots of toys. If you want it to be more social, don’t let it have mirrors, as they can become fixated on the mirror.

10

It needs perches to sit on. They are not particularly comfortable on the ground.

11

Budgie owner checking in here:

I hope you will do more than merely put up a few hastily hand-lettered posters here and there on your block in order to locate the little fella’s owner–somewhere, close by, there is a budgie owner who is devastated that her bird got out, and is going through agonies worried if Peter’s been eaten by a cat or a hawk or run over by a car or is starving to death somewhere and what if winter comes, he’ll freeze to death…

If he was hand-tame enough that he chirped when he saw you (i.e. he recognized “human being” as “safe”, as “familiar”, and not as “potential predator”), and allowed you to pick him up (instead of sidling and then scuttling away), that means that someone in your neighborhood spent a LONG time hand-taming him from 6-week-old chick-hood. How would you feel if you had raised a puppy almost from birth, and then it got out of the house and disappeared? You’d be anxiously scanning the “Lost & Found” ads, and out of your mind with worry.

And if he couldn’t fly, then his wings have been clipped, and that means, again, that someone in your neighborhood cares deeply about him, and is going through a very bad time right now.

I’d definitely pop for an ad in the Lost & Found of the newspaper, as well as putting up large, easy-to-read posters around your neighborhood, “FOUND A PARAKEET”. You might consider going door-to-door for about 4 to 6 blocks around, if your neighborhood isn’t totally drug-dealer-dangerous.

And I’d definitely tell the pet store where you bought the millet, and any other pet stores in town that sell “real” bird seed (as opposed to Wal-Mart), and ask permission to put up a big “Found yer bird” poster at any and all such places. Also places like Petsmart and Petco, who usually maintain big bulletin boards for Lost & Found and Free To Good Home index cards. And I’d give a call to any veterinarians in your town and give them a headsup. And leave a message at the local Animal Control and Humane Society, pound, etc. “hey, I found a parakeet, has anybody contacted you about losing one?”

I sense that you are strongly tempted to keep him. If you want a budgie, then go buy yourself a budgie–and we will be happy to give you advice about doing that–but please don’t keep this one until you have truly exhausted all avenues to find his true owner.

If you’ve put up posters and asked around, and it’s been a month and nobody has turned up, then I got no problem with you keeping him. But please don’t just shrug when nobody turns up right away and assume that nobody’s looking, because they are, same as they would be with a dog or a cat.

ETA: Sorry, I realize that sounds like a finger-wagging lecture, but that wasn’t what I intended. I’m just projecting how I would feel if my bird got out. I’d hope that whoever found him wouldn’t just shrug and keep him.

12

What Duck Duck Goose said. The owner is probably devastated. Good luck with finding him/her.

When you get your own budgerigar, you can get all kinds of advice on the boards, as you see. :slight_smile:

That little birdie is lucky you found it.

13

Budies are granivores so a seed diet is fine for them. I’ve heard a lot of owners give their budgies fruit or leafy greens as treats, but I’ve never been able to interest my two guys in anything other than a budgie seed mix (at my local bird store, it is sold as “Australian Mix”) and millet (which they adore). They also don’t seem to drink much, and being an arid-habitat bird, I’d guess they create a fair amount of metabolic water.

This page has a lot of resources for posts of lost/found birds. I scoured these when I first caught my budgies but I never found an ad. (I suspect they were released, but who knows?)

14

Another way to tell if a bird has been hand-tamed is to put your face near the cage. A tame bird will come towards you (perhaps even jumping up to cling onto the bars in front of you).

15

I beg to differ. All my budiges have had mirrors. And as I can’t be the 24/7…and when I came home and let them out of the cage they were hanging off my hair and being about a social as one could stand.

Is he finger trained? Sounds like he should be. And good for you taking care of him and trying to find his owners to lat least leat them know he’s alright.

16

I think you must be a bit of a special case, betenoir (and I mean that in a nice way) - in my experience (and I’m sure that of most other bird keepers), a mirror will become the focus of attention for a caged bird, in preference to interaction with the human keeper.

Also, it sounds like you’re talking about multiple tame birds at a time - another thing that most amateur bird keepers will find difficult to achieve as again, the other bird becomes the focus of attention in preference to the human.
I think there must be something about your training and interaction methods that’s making it happen - it sounds like you have a special knack for bird taming - I’d love to know how you do it, because I’ve always found it very hard work even for a single bird with no mirror.

17

Our budgies always wanted and ate seed. Some wouldn’t touch anything but seed. The mirror was ok or not depending on the bird. One was vicious with a mirror. He tried to rip it apart. He took it to be a rival. The birds were fed budgie seed, and they loved to get treat seed for budgies, which had an anise scent.

18

Mine loves treat seed - I think it contains fennel seeds, giving it the scent. It also contains groats, which my bird will eat in preference to everything else - he splits them open and nibbles the floury kernel away from the husk, deftly turning it around and around with the tip of his beak as he goes

19

I’m kind of interested in the mirror debate. I used to have a parakeet, and he had several mirrors (btw, you can tell the gender by the color of the cere–or nostril spot above the beak–if it’s pink/lavendar/blue, you’ve got a male; if it’s cream or tan, you’ve got a female). He was very social with me, but loved his mirrors, too.

He also loved lettuce, as well as the seed mixes. He also would eat apples and a few other fresh fruits and vegetables.

Someone mentioned wing-clipping, which I was going to suggest. It’s possible that someone did clip enough of his flight feathers to keep him from flying…in which case, he needs to be kept indoors and protected, because he can’t really escape from anything.

NO!!! Cuttle BONE!

Google Images on Cuttle Fish. Wikipedia on cuttle bone (although they don’t mention parakeets). You can also get mineral blocks that function the same way as a sufficient mineral suppliment.

Don’t put cuttle fish in your parakeet cage, because their tentacles will suck off your bird’s feathers, and then they will die and stink a lot.

Both of them. :smiley:

20

If you want to try a treat, offer boiled, and cooled to almost-room-temperature, pasta, peas, and sweet corn. It’s important it not be hot or it’ll burn the crop – microwaving is iffy because some spots get hotter than others, but okay if you thoroughly check the temp after (I use my washed hands).

I echo the concerns of other bird lovers – I’d be grieving if any of mine flew off, and very grateful for your kindly rescue. Budgies can bond very well with humans and have distinct personalities.

They can go (or be blown) pretty far; it’s up to you how many posters to place, but don’t expect him or her to have come from next door. Vet offices have bulletin boards for this sort of thing; you could ask around for an avian-specialist vet too.

Here’s an online resource for finding/rehoming lost birds – Bird hotline

Speaking of the him/her issue…if this is an adult, look at the bump of flesh above the beak, where the nostrils (nares) are – this is the “cere”. On a male this is blueish or purple. On a female this is brownish or tan.

Aside from the (very real) safety hazards mentioned already, I would add that if you allow him/her out of the cage any time soon (eventually you really ought to allow out-of-cage play if you keep this budgie, but right now you might be safer keeping him/her caged) beware open windows and ceiling fans (ugh!) in this weather. And always, the floor is not safe for small fragile birds.

Thanks and best of luck!

Sailboat