Pictures of my litle birds' room added

**madhen** · 12-26-2008, 02:03 PM

Finally got around to taking pics of the finches/parakeets' room and their individual homes.

Added them to my "ranch" album.

**Katybird** · 12-26-2008, 02:38 PM

Awww, they are so cute. Those are some awesome living quarters that they are living in.

**ri*smom** · 12-26-2008, 02:48 PM

Good gravy your house is huge! And those Gouldians are beautiful birds--so colorful. What are those little speckled things on each side of their beaks?

**madhen** · 12-26-2008, 05:49 PM

Not huge, just really tall.

The flight cage takes up pretty much half the room! The house is three stories, each story is only about 700 sf, and the bottom story is all devoted to animals.

(And the laundry room, but I'm working on getting that moved upstairs.)

The little speckled triangles on the sides of the babies' beaks are glow-in-the-dark nodules. They help the parents find the babies' mouths in the dark of the nest box. The nodules disappear after the babies wean.

**fixer** · 12-26-2008, 06:05 PM

Awesome!! My dad feeds birds for a neighbor of his. I try to help just to see them. He constructed a building for them and the cages look like yours. I always thought the birds were more active and happier than ones I had seen in smaller quarters.

**Missy** · 12-26-2008, 06:06 PM

wow, i love your set up!

**madhen** · 12-26-2008, 06:11 PM

Unless a bird is allowed to come out of its cage and play for several hours a day, I don't believe in keeping them in small boxes. I would build an even bigger flight for them, if I had the room, but this was the best I could do. My two hand-raised babies are in a smaller cage, but they are out of their cage for several hours twice a day, and longer on weekends. It kills me to see people keeping finches in dinky little cages and thinking the birds are happy. If you've ever seen a finch learning how to explore a larger surrounding, after spending lifetime in an 18" x 18" box, you've seen pure joy.

**ri*smom** · 12-26-2008, 11:31 PM

Originally Posted by madhen

The little speckled triangles on the sides of the babies' beaks are glow-in-the-dark nodules. They help the parents find the babies' mouths in the dark of the nest box. The nodules disappear after the babies wean.

Okay, that is seriously fascinating. If you don't mind further questioning . . . why? Are they primarily nocturnal? I mean other birds (or at least I have never noticed) don't have those when they are young, correct? Nature is freakily amazing.

**madhen** · 12-26-2008, 11:38 PM

Nature *is* freaky sometimes. Many birds raise their young in open nests, so it would not be necessary for them. However, a number of birds who raise their birds in cavities do somehow manage to find their babies without the "landing strips."

Gouldians, however, are also not the only birds who have these luminescent nodules. I know there are at least a couple of other finch varieties who have them. Don't know if they are all Australian finches (which is what Lady Gouldians are), though.