All our Feathered Friends! Sparrows, Pigeons, Doves, Chickens.. Oh My!

Hello Birdie Blog followers, if you are still out there following!

So many pictures, so many stories, so little time, so much poop! 

But here's a little sample of our feathered adventures:

First Birdie flitting around the house.
She is so healthy and so beautiful and so happy!
"First Birdie" is 3 years old this Spring!

She's always helping me home-office!
She loves to peck at the blinking status lights on the computer.

Here's First Birdie taking a birdie bath. She knows the term when I mention it, and she has a sweet, high pitched tweet tweet when I bring out the water bowl. It's just so amazing to see her wild instincts adapted to human interactions. She truly is imprinted totally on me as her momma. She flits around the bowl in the water, then flys off, then repeat and repeat. Then she grooms and preens her wings, while perched on me or her cage. Amazing how she knows the term "birdie bath, birdie bath", when I say it!

Funny how she developed a liking to CostCo Biscotti. 

She just loves this treat and when we let her out for her fly-abouts, 

she always comes to us, sits on the table
and waits expectantly for her Biscotti treat.

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2 of the Triplets

Girl above, Boy in front
They're 2 years old now!

 Boy, Girl, Girl
It's not easy to get pics of the Triplets!
They're so busy flitting around all the time!

It's interesting now, how Boy leaves 2nd Girl alone, but goes after Girl 1. Originally Girl 1 fell from the nest individually, and next Boy and Girl 2 were "rescued" from the falling nest. We're not sure if Boy sees Girl 2 as "sister" and leaves her alone, or if he sees Girl 1 as "girlfriend" or invader? Most of the time, all is calm and everyone gets along great. But periodically, Boy is relentless with Girl 1. I've put a box at the bottom of the aviary for her "hide" in, from him. She's a tough lil gal, and definitely "fights" back and doesn't let him dominate her. We're not sure if he's trying to mate with her, of if "3's a crowd" in there? There's no "fighting", just a lot of flying, flitting and chasing periodically. 

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The pigeon that fell down our chimney!
Only at our house lol!

So back a few months ago, we heard some unusual noises in our fireplace. No fire on, everything was off and cold! When investigating, we discovered one of our many wild pigeons had slipped from the rooftop chimney opening, into our fireplace. We just couldn't believe what we were seeing, and wondered how we would get this guy back out. We left him there overnight, hoping he would figure out a way to fly back up and out by himself, but no such luck. I happened to not be well at the time, with a high fever, so this made it even more challenging. But I put on some ranch gloves and quickly, but calmly grabbed the pigeon before he knew what was happening, and whew! I caught him and was able to set him outside on the porch, near where all his buddies were roosting on the cable, phone wires. Soon he flew up up and away, and seemed to be just fine. When the flock flies in for their daily grain, I often wonder which one he is... 

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Love these beauties that come to visit us

and steal the Hummer's syrup.
Mr and Mrs have only visited a few times this year,
but what a treat it is seeing them!

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So of course when a teacher friend of mine wanted to do a science incubation project in her classroom, I said YES, to adopting any chicks that hatched. 

Little Blondie here, from a green egg, is an Araucana 

Born Sunday June 5, 2016

Next baby..

Born Monday June 6, 2016
Little Charcoal here, from the Brown egg is a ??, we'll see..

Sadly, the 3rd egg did not hatch. Most likely not fertilized.

Aren't they just so adorable!

Here they are snuggled into their surrogate "Swifter" momma hen! Novel idea I came up with, as I felt so bad they didn't have a real momma hen to snuggle into. They just loved it, but eventually I had to change it too often from all the poop, so I gave up on that as they grew their adolescent feathers! 

Amazing how fast they grow and begin to "act like real chickens"!

When I lift the screen to clean the pen, 

they learned to look forward to that, and practice flying and roosting. 

Learning to roost!

How quickly their fluff is disappearing

and their juvenile feathers are coming in!

Soon they no longer needed the heat lamp at night,

and it is was time to introduce them to the warm sun

First time outside and loving it!

 And just days later, even more adolescent feathers
Growing, growing, growing!!

 Look who is so fascinated with them.
Not sure if Pawsy is thinking "chicken dinner"
or is just fascinated with them.
They're totally safe, not to worry! 

Just look at the beautiful feathers coming in!

They're growing so fast now, and truly look like chickens! I know that sounds silly, but they look like miniature chickens, not fluffy little chicks anymore. We are currently getting their outside hutch and coop ready, but we'll keep them inside at night for quite some time. Just like the sparrows, it's so fascinating to watch their natural instincts come through, immediately and naturally. They instinctively want to roost, peck and scratch the ground or whatever substrate they are on, groom, preen and well... just act like chickens! I am always so fascinated with creatures raised by humans that just "know" how to be their species without their natural parents introducing life skills to them. Nature is so perfect and fascinating! We think the beige blondie is a hen, and the charcoal spotted is a rooster. Time will tell!

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So many species of birds fly in now.
Do you see the special furred visitor, gathering seeds,
along with the doves, sparrows and finches

This picture (above) was much earlier in the year during late winter, before everything had begun to bloom. You can see the stem of last year's sunflower that we hadn't taken out yet. When we did, it wasn't long before another sprouted, and it has become this amazing multi-flowered, one stalk multi sunflower plant. We've never seen anything like this! Have you? Click the picture to see the bees enjoying the pollen!

And then this huge multi-flowered sunflower plant happened!

 So beautiful. So many flowers. So amazing!

We have the bird seed in little containers in this area, 

and have so many species visiting us. 

Wonder what type of sunflower seeds these are in the bird seed!

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Now that it's summer, and the weather is consistently warm and nice, I often wonder if I should put the Triplet's aviary outside, let them fully acclimate, then give them the option to fly free. I am very torn about this, as they are only used to us, the inside environment, may not have natural bird immunities, or full defensive protective mechanisms, and all 3 of them do have disabled twisted feet. But I wonder what they would prefer, if they could communicate their wish? I just don't know if they would be able to fully protect themselves from predators...  They of course know nothing other than their current environment, and they do have it quite wonderful, right by the window, and lots of room to flit around. We as humans of course "see what they are missing outside", but they don't. It's just us humans projecting what see they are missing out on, seeing the wild sparrows outside. They're happy inside, and we know that, as they don't exhibit any unhealthy behaviors. They sure look and act very healthy, happy, active and are quite bonded to us... But we wish they had never fallen from the nest and had been successfully raised by their bird parents and were free and wild like all the others right outside the window... Oh, the ironies of life...

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Sadly, this beauty hit our window really hard 

and didn't make it. We had a lot of this species in the Spring,

But haven't seen many in recent months. 

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Thanks for reading our Feathered adventures. Please feel free to comment, ask questions, or just let us know you've stopped by to look at our fun feathered friends, inside and out. I'll be updating with more pictures as the Chickies grow and change more every week. Can't believe they're a month old now. They seem so much older all of a sudden. Pecking, flying, roosting, tweeting and clucking. Just so amazing to think of their origin, incubated in a classroom, then on be cute fluffy chicks without a mother hen, but "knowing just what to do, to be a chicken"! They're a month old this week!

Breathe deep and inhale Nature's beauty every day. Every creature matters and has a purpose on this earth! They know their purpose and just do what nature intended them to do, instinctively, intuitively. I feel so fortunate to be a part of  the rescued sparrows lives, and now the chickies, and being able to witness their growth and development from innocent baby to happy functional adult.