Indian Ringneck - Third Chick

I love this time of year so much excitement and anticipation. My third Indian Ringneck chick was either hatched yesterday or this morning with one more egg that has yet to be pushed to the side.

My Bourke Parrots three eggs are pushed to the center of the box and partially covered by nesting material. The hen spends most of the time out of the box including night, I would say she has abandoned her eggs but she still goes in the box and the eggs are now grouped together.

For the first time a few day ago I witnessed for time my Gouldian finch hen in the nesting box. She seems to have worked the dry grass at the back of the box but no eggs yet.

Surprise!! New chicks

I received a pleasant surprise today with the discovery of two new Indian Ringneck chicks upon a nest inspection. I was expecting to be waiting another couple of weeks. One is clearly larger than the other and I'm hoping that the other two egg will equal two more chicks over the next few days. 

Nesting Update

I returned from my holiday at which time I had my sister looking after my birds (when I'm away I have worry that people looking after my birds will keep up my standards but she did an excellent job), to find my Indian Ringnecks now have four eggs and my Bourke Parrots now have three. My female Indian Ringneck spends the night in the breeding box but is rarely in there at other times and my Bourke female that seemed to be mostly in her box sitting has been spending a lot of time out of it recently including of a night, it is her first clutch of eggs since I have had her hopefully she has not abandoned them.

I also completed a full clean of the aviary on my return including new branches which I placed to obscure the entrance of the Green Cheeked Conures box.

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

A holiday to the Gold Coast has afforded our family to visit the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.

I has hoping to see more parrots but there was a good cross section of birds. The free flight show I found excellent and included a Blue and Gold Macaw, Green Winged Macaw and a Black Cockatoo.

I was really hoping for a bigger and better walk in aviary than Symbio and although it had bigger aviaries it didn't necessarily have the amount or variety of birds.

The Fig Parrots were very cool and definitely something I had not seen before. 

Breeding Boxes / Nesting Boxes

I have decided to put in the nesting boxes much the same time as last year. 

Due to the loss of my female Princess Parrot I shifted the male Princess Parrot into the grass bird aviary, this has afforded me the room to shift "Turk" my spare Indian Ringneck male to a separate section of the aviary to insure he is not related to the offspring of "Nippet" and "Nelly". This will allow me to pare him a young female.

I have used the same box as last year with non toxic wood shavings. They have already emptied some of the shaving onto the ground.

I placed two medium boxes in the grass bird aviary with parrot nesting material although I only have the one pair of Bourke Parrots in the aviary I believe it is beneficial to provide a choice of nesting place. I will introduce the finch box for the Gouldian Finches soon as well.

As usual the nesting box remains in the Green Cheeked Conures cage as it a roosting spot. I will provide a fresh branch in the coming weeks to provide cover for the entrance as I believe this was my good luck charm last year.

Cat Trap

After the upsetting loss of couple more of my birds including my female Princess Parrot which got sick and died a few day latter (also I believe as a result of cat attack). I have deiced to invest in a trap.

I have been using sardines to bait the trap, well just putting them in the trap to get the cat used to entering the trap without fear. The trap has had the sardines removed every second night and have set it only once which ended up catching my dog Leroy the following morning.

Roosters!!!

My bantam Rhode Island Red chicks both turned out to be roosters, they seemed to both change over night with development in crest and of course crowing. My first rooster started crowing and after looking at him I was pretty sure that the other was a hen but after getting rid of him within a few days the next one had started crowing as well.

I got rid of both roosters to keep the neighbours from getting upset, I have a fairly noisy hobby and I don't want to push the boundaries. The hens have started laying eggs and the chooks have provided good management of dropped seed and vegetable matter from the parrots as I alternate from section to section. They have also become an alarm sometimes for the cat...

Killer Revealed

I believe I have found what has been killing my birds. Last night I let the dogs outside to go to the toilet and they went flying down to aviary to chase away a cat. While down there I could pat one of my Scarlet Chested females on the chest as she was perched up against the wire, the cat could have easily killed it if it had good access.

It makes sense as the cat would have poor access to my other aviary. The Green Cheeked Conures sleep in there breeding box and there is no real way for a cat to get at the Princess and Indian Ring Neck Parrots.

My suspicions have been confirmed. I will be lodging a complain to council.

Bird Temperament

Most of the birds are getting more and more used to my presence in the aviary and are generally allowing me to get much closer. In the case of the Princess Parrots I can now feed them by hand if they are due for seed, I look forward to building this relationship with them and perhaps even getting them to start sitting on my hand.

Scarlet Chested Parrot Mortality

My trouble continues losing both my male Scarlet Chested parrots within a week of each other!!

I'm at a loss to explain the deaths so I have decided to removed all birds from the aviary and fully strip out and clean the cage.

My top theory was a local cat that is hanging around the house is killing the birds. It has poor access to the yard during the day with the dogs patrolling but easy could get close access during the night when then birds are easily sneaked up on and sleep very close to the edge of the cage.

After cleaning out the cage I found a large spider with a white tip on it abdomen living behind there feeder. I'm unsure if a spider will bite or could kill a bird but it would explain a lot if it could. I would suspect that most birds would have a natural immunity to spider bites due to the fact that most places they choose to nest in the wild are frequented by spiders but I'm unsure and finding hard to find information on it. 

These are healthy birds, it is very frustrating.