Andi is a different budgie from the others. She joined our flock on Jan 27, 2002, after her former owner decided he didn't need another budgie to interfere with his and his other budgies relationship. This little girl is all attitude, and made this clear from the moment I picked her up where my husband works. I drove an hours drive to get her, and when I arrived with a travel cage I found her screaming in a shoe box. Slowly I proceeded to move her from the box to the cage, and while doing so she let me know that she was angry that she had been separated from her future mate, and then proceeded to take a good chomp out of my finger.

Upon arriving home I took her from the travel cage in an attempt to move her to a larger quaratine cage. Well things didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. It turned out that Andi hadn't had her wings clipped, and she managed to escape sending me on a wild budgie chase. To think I thought it was difficult to catch a finch that was fully flighted, but budgies are so much worse since they don't seem to tire as fast, and just when I thought I had her she would take flight as if she enjoyed teasing me. Needless to say that once I caught her she got what was probably her first wing clipping. Up until bringing Andi home I had never had a budgie that liked to chew on wood, but Andi showed me that she was one heck of a lumberjack and managed to chew through her first perch within hours.

After quaratine Andi took over as head bird of the budgie flock, knocking Xena off his throne. She didn't warm up to any of them at first, and often chased off male callers. Xena didn't attempt to call upon her, which makes me believe that these two will always be rivals. Herc and Romeo on the other hand tried to win her favor time and again. It wasn't until the middle of March that she let it be known that she was ready to decide which boy would be her mate. Of course the boys had to make a final attempt to ensure that they were noticed. As it turned out they ended up having their first major fight with Herc pinning Romeo to the bottom of the cage, so I had to make the final choice on this love triangle since I couldn't trust the them not to kill or maime eachother, so now they are seperated with Xena and Romeo continuing with their relationship, and we are waiting for Herc and Andi to consummate their love.

Star is the most recent to join our flock. She joined February 24, 2002, and is still in quaratine with 2 days to go. Star is the baby of all our birds, being only 5 months of age, so her sex is still undetermined at this time. We found this sweet baby while visiting the flea market. Turns out they have a pet store within the market, so we stopped in to check things out. After walking around and playing wave games with the parrot, my hubby called me over to look at the cockatiel they had. This poor girl was sitting in a cage by herself with no toys, and a half price discount sign on her cage. The lady informed us that she had been a handfed baby, but since she was lacking in attention (the store is only open 3 days a week) she had become pretty wild.

I'm glad my hubby knew what he was getting himself into when he called me over, cause I just couldn't leave her there. Cockatiels need human or other bird contact and toys to keep their minds occupied, and I couldn't see letting this poor baby go to waste cause she lacked both. Even though we already had 7 birds and weren't looking to buy another, NEB took over and this baby went home with me. We took her home and put her in a quarantine cage with toys strung all around. Like with Twinkle Toes it didn't take long before she was playing on my hand with me. Even so she was still a bit skiddish, and movements that were too sudden sent her flying. She is coming along, but has a ways to go before she craves the attention the others do.

At first Star was very quiet, and if you weren't in the room with her it was impossible to tell that she was even there. Two weeks later we brought home a puppy, and he had all sorts of toys, his favorite being a squeaky frog. All day you would hear this frog squeaking throughout the house. A few days later I was laying on the sofa reading a book and all of the sudden I heard Scooby's frog squeaking. I knew it wasn't the dog doing it since he was asleep next to me, so I got up to investigate the sound. To my surprise the sound led me to Star's room, where she was having a blast making the frog's squeaky sound. Since then I have heard other sounds coming from her, one of which was just today that had the tones of a wolf whistle, but with an extra tone added in. Really makes me wonder if Star isn't a Starbuck.