Lovebirds 5 weeks update, Pancake is with egg

So we have a little escape artist. Little Darwin, our lone adventure, is always outside of the cage when we go into the bird room. We bought the cage on Craigslist for a decent price, but it's more for a bigger parrolet or a medium parrot. The bars are little spaced out, so the little babies can just squeeze through if they have enough ambition.

Darwin does not like to be caged. He is content sitting on someone's shoulder, or sitting atop Pancake & Lunchbox's cage. Of course that's only if Pancake is too tired to chase him around to bit his feet.

I've been looking for additional cages to house them in. We don't know the sexes yet, but if they are all males then we really won't have a problem. If there is a mix of sexes, we are going to be in trouble in a few months when they sexually mature. The problem is that cages are so freakin' expensive and I'm broke. :S

I'm seriously thinking about starting a GoFundMe for bird cages. LOL.

4 babies, Darwin is off by himself

So about Ms. Pancake. She laid another egg last night, and I can see that another one is about to drop. We can't have anymore babies, so we are just letting her lay them without a box. Dillon is going to have to shake the eggs and put them back in. Apparently this will keep her from trying to lay eggs for a while.

After a month or so we are going to pull out all the newspaper and the dead eggs. We'll have to come up with some other kind of bedding that will deter her from laying... and them from mating again.

Poor Lunchbox is still eating his shoulder. I think the stress of feeding all the babies and knowing that Pancake is prego again is making him crack. We are going to have to take him to an Avian to see if we can correct this behavior before he eats his wing off!

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions on how to keep the babies in the cages, how to keep Pancake from laying eggs, and stop Lunchbox from eating himself, I would appreciate it.

BAM! Where did my baby birds go??

Yesterday Icarus and Darwin turned 4 weeks. Ponyo turned 4 weeks today, Nugget tomorrow and little Smallfry will be 4 weeks on Monday.

4 weeks.... doesn't seem very long right? So where did my sweet baby birds go? We came home yesterday and it was someone replaced my fuzzy, down-haired babies with adult lovebirds.

They still don't have their peach faces. And I think they are actually really cute like that.

Snapeee!!!

I almost can't tell them apart, but they have some quirky personality traits that I've picked up on.

Darwin will immediately dart for the nearest blanket, pant leg or any opening in your clothing. Once I was laying down and he crawled down my shirt.

Icarus will lay on his belly and just slide around like he's a penguin; I was worried about him, but he was actually the first to fly yesterday, so he seems to be okay.

I have trouble with Ponyo and Nugget...even though they are slightly different colors, I get them mixed up. Out of all the birds they are quite docile and will just sit in whatever spot you put them in.  

My little Smallfry, well, it's easy to tell her apart because she's much smaller then the others. My little runt..when you put her down on the floor she walks around with her neck stretched out and she looks like a little duckling running about. She loves to cuddle against me. So sweet.

So Icarus did two things yesterday, which I think is a first. One, he took a short flight off the bed towards the cage where his parents where. And then second, he managed to get up on a perch.

I'm pretty sure he flew up there, because they haven't really learned how to climb up and down the bars of the cage. I watched him waddle around the perch; he was wobbly and I thought a few times he might fall off and hurt himself...but I guess they need to learn sometime. Besides, Pancake and I have done a decent job of shredding bedding for them. I'll need to keep an eye on Pancake, she's almost a little OCD about paper in the cage.

We are going to have to make/buy some perches for outside the cages so that the babies can get some flight lessons in. I read online that it's good to have them learn to fly before clipping their wings. The only issue I have is the birdie poo. I'll need to find a flight suit online or something.

photo via Flight Quarters