My wife had a pair of budgies that had been together since they were just a few months old. Yesterday, the male was found dead in the bottom of the cage. We don’t know how he died, but his head flops around when you pick him up, so maybe he broke his neck in the cage somehow?
Anyway, the female is very depressed now it seems. She doesn’t chirp at the morning light anymore, and just sits in the cage on “their” perch silently. It’s quite sad really…
Is it a good idea to introduce a new male to the cage, and if so, should he look similar to the old one?
The female is dominant in budgie pairs; something very much like this happened to us and we suspect that the female injured or killed the male. She seemed very depressed and her behaviour permanently altered - she would sit and make rythmic ‘chip, chip, chip’ sounds and would not respond to normal stimuli.
It probably isn’t advisable to replace the mate though - it is quite possible that the female will reject a new bird introduced at this stage.
That the dead male’s neck flops around is not necessarily indicative of a break; birds necks are actually much thinner and more flexible than they appear - it is the covering of feathers than makes this so.
Having said all that, it is possible that something frightened him during the night and that he flew into the side of the cage, injuring himself - budgies will not normally fly in the dark unless the situation is desperate (turning off the lights is a good way to recapture a bird that is loose in a room)
Parrots and parrakeets grieve for a while after a mate dies. And they may not be in the mood to welcome a new mate right away. (If found this out after my male cockatiel’s mate died and he shrieked for days; desperate to stop the shrieking I got him a new female cockatiel. He responded by attacking her.)
If you get a new mate for your bird you might want to keep it in a different cage but in the same room until the birds become familiar with each other and act like they’re interested in each other. Then put them together but watch carefully for any sign of aggression and be prepared to separate them if something goes wrong.
Definately get her a new man; life is too short to spend it alone, even if you are a little neon colored bird in a cage. We have personally been caught in the Budgie racket for years; started out with a pair, male dies, we replace him. Wait 6 months to year, female dies, we replace her. Switch back and forth between the two sexes for 15 years until you have owned every possible color and combinations of colors known to the species.
We had one female that outlasted four males and nicknamed her “The Merry Widow”. No, she wasn’t killing all those would be suitors; one flew into a wall, one was killed by a cat when a visiting child thought the two would be friends, one managed to hang himself on the bars of the old cage and the fourth managed to get outside in Feburary…I like to pretend he’s not dead, just flew south for the winter and hasn’t made it back yet.