calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
Just a sweet story about a budgie on the lam who was reunited with his family.

The twist? He flew out the door during extremely cold temperatures!



calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
I didn't do a lot of Christmas cards last year, unfortunately, due to my health challenges, but I did doodle this quickly to give to my budgie helper :-) I'd like to make it into a larger, more polished image someday.


Cartoon budgie Christmas card
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
This story has been going around Facebook and Twitter all day and I can't quite wrap my head around it.

836 budgies were surrendered in Detroit, Michigan, yikes! You can watch a news clip at this link, which has links to the rescue organizations working together to help the birds and accept donations.

https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/macomb-county/man-surrenders-hundreds-more-parakeets-after-contacting-rescue-to-take-nearly-500-birds
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
We had a surprise visit last weekend from a friend who brought us a copy of a card game called Trash Pandas, some chocolate and the awesome budgie plushie below. It's Sweetpea from The Secret Life of Pets! I just love it :-) My friends know me so well!


Sweetpea the budgie
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
I'm teaching myself a new (to me) piece of software called Clip Studio Paint. For years I have seen people rave about this very affordable program and I'm joining that crowd. It's so easy to get up and running and make a decent looking picture. Here's my first real picture that I did in an afternoon. It's by no means a masterpiece, but it was enough to get up to speed on all the basic features and get a little confidence.

I feel like I'm old enough that I should know how to paint digitally, but it never ends up looking right to me.


Digital drawing of a blue budgie
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
I was so busy with the first week of classes that I didn't notice Thagirion's lovely digital colouring of my Minion picture. It's so fab :-) Here's the original birthday Minion. As you can see, he's a budgie for all occasions, plus he just marked a huge milestone! 200 words! You can see his progress video on YouTube.


Christmas Minion
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
As provided by the vet:

Mix 1 part flax seed oil with 4 parts corn oil (ie 1 st to 4 tsp). Keep refrigerated. Mix well before use. Give 1 drop (0.02cc) over food once daily or give by mouth.
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
So, this story appears to have a mostly happy ending. For some baffling reason, 50ish young budgies were released in a park in Texas. A rescue group called Bears Etc. managed to rescue most of them. One of the rescuers even had her purse stolen during the rescue. Geeeez!

You can catch up on the saga and donate to them or their Amazon wishlist.

https://www.facebook.com/Bearsetc/
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
We were watching some funny parrot videos when the iPhone cockatiel came up. This inspired me to play as much of a 10 hour clip of the iPhone ringtone as I can bear in hopes that the budgies can learn it! They have kind of picked it up in a couple of days, but they do it too fast.



calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
I discovered that the Little Pet Shop cartoon has a budgie character. Unfortunately the cartoon is not one that adults can really enjoy. The main character is a screechy dog named Roxy. Of course the budgie caught my eye - she's a main character named Edie Von Keet. I snagged the picture from an LPS wiki - http://lpsawoo.wikia.com/wiki/Edie_Von_Keet.


Edie Von Keet
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
Before you think, "Man, there goes Calzephyr talking about bird poo on the Internet AGAIN", let me say - pet allergies!

How would you know if your pet had an allergy?

Would the signs be obvious?

How would you treat it?

Now, here is the bird poo part. When my budgie first had his poopy bum problem, I was trying to introduce Zupreem pellets to them along with Budgie Gourmet (Hagen). They were on their last bag of seed that they came with, Hagen Premium. All good quality bird food.

The bird lady thought his poopy bum was a sign of infection - and yes, it can be! But now I think he was having an allergic reaction to either corn, soy or orange oil in those two brands. Zupreem is also made from soy and corn. Budgie Gourment and Zupreem also have food colouring.

I stopped feeding Zupreem while after the mobile vet visit and when my budgie was in the hospital cage, I fed plain seed because I thought that would be easier on him.

Last week when the bird lady was here, she noticed that he had a poopy bum again (and I had noticed his droppings weren't great). I was so upset - not again!

But here's the thing - I realized that if my budgie was allergic to Baytril, he could be allergic to other things. Plus the other budgies all had perfect poop. I dumped all their food cups, washed them thoroughly and have been feeding the plain seed for the past few days. His poop has turned around 100%.

This second time around, it also LOOKED like he was having allergies. He was constantly rubbing his head, scratching a lot despite not molting and working his beak. I can't remember if he was doing this in August because I was so preoccupied with some family matters.

Whew! So I could have saved my budgie and myself a lot of suffering and a huge chunk of change for a $4 bag of birdseed :/ CRAZY.
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
Aw, some sad news. On Disco's FB page it was revealed that he passed away back in January. If you haven't watched Disco's delightful videos, check them out.
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
I think I have a posting routine figured out - if I post here and crosspost to LJ, then I can back it up with LJ Archive. But since DW forked off before a lot of LJ improvements were made, it's not so easy to add an Instagram!

I had to wait a while for my husband to pick me up, so I used just about every filter on every graphics program I had on my phone!

Birb! #weird #budgies #mirrorimage #picsaypro #rainbow #birds #budgerigar #parakeet #birb #cosmic #wellensittich #budgerigars #bored #overdone #mirrorimages #mirrorgram
calzephyr: Male House sparrow (birds)
Originally posted by [livejournal.com profile] calzephyr77 at Budgie colouring book :-D
Hi friends, I turned some of my photos of my birds past and present into a colouring book. You can purchase it as a PDF from my Etsy shop and print as many times as you like for personal use. It's 13 pages of budgie colouring fun :-)

calzephyr: Male House sparrow (birds)

Mellow is the last budgie that I would call obnoxious, but she has been so obnoxious!

She developed a fascination with her reflection in the mirror and the craft cabinet and so very wants to meet that other bird. She's been running up and down the one perch and squashing herself between it and the food cup in order to get out.

This developed into a little flying routine where she would try to escape, flap to the lower perch then up to the main perch. Now she forgoes the escaping part and does a little circuit around the cage - down, up, across, down, up, across, down, up, across and the pattern of her wing flaps is so annoying. Flap, flap, fla-flap! Flap, flap, fla-flap!

It's driving Muffin and Feisty crazy, particularly Feisty, because every so often she pauses on the main perch to flap and scream while he's sitting there. Sometimes she lets go of the perch and hovers while flapping and screaming.

Mellow flew on the weekend. Mellow is not a good flyer. Is it sad that she never learned to fly? How is that possible? Her tumour makes it a little difficult and for the first five years of her life she was never let out of the cage because it was located in a hotel.

She flew a few times when we brought her home, but it was disastrous. Usually young budgies learn quickly to avoid walls - but not Mellow. She didn't have much motivation to fly until she met her reflection. Feisty used to sit on top of the cage and chirp encouragement, then he began to flap and scream it. It was kind of like when my husband tried to teach me how to drive ;)

Anyway, Mellow finally braved the open door and flew! Badly. I had to catch her after a while. She couldn't figure out how to get back in the cage. But I think she enjoyed her big adventure because she is still doing her little circuit. Now she over shoots the main perch just a little so she can gracefully land on it. It's never too late to learn!

So...now that I got out, how do I get in?  )

calzephyr: Male House sparrow (birds)
I took this picture the other week of Feisty, just before the fifth anniversary of when we adopted him from the humane society. Alas he was in the middle of a very hard moult, which shows. I found his papers recently too. It's so hard to believe - I had no expectations for his health when we got him, and he does have a tumour or something weird going on with him - his beak overgrows. I really have no idea how old he is, as he was an adult when we got him. He is still wild and untamed, but he's such a good budgie and so smart. He chows down on Zupreem and new foods and pushes Mellow out of the way for a lettuce bath. He's a very attentive spouse and preens Mellow every hour, it seems!

I suppose if I knew that I would be taking photos of him, I would have cleaned all of Muffin's powder off the mirror :-)



calzephyr: Male House sparrow (birds)

I hope there's a lot more of the budgie than in the trailer!

Doh :-D

Jun. 7th, 2015 09:06 am
calzephyr: A green and yellow budgie (Feisty)
Originally posted by [livejournal.com profile] calzephyr77 at Doh :-D
I misread a friend's FB update as "galactic budgie" instead of "galactic bulge" and came up with this at midnight:

galacticbudgie_sq.jpg
calzephyr: Male House sparrow (birds)
Another picture down for the comic expo...although now I see I have to touch up the top part. I just bought a refill for my YROOOO marker, and that's where I exhausted it after trying to revive it with plain alcohol.



Love Budgies by calzephyr on DeviantArt
calzephyr: Male House sparrow (birds)
Originally posted by [livejournal.com profile] calzephyr77 at Smoking with budgies
Click for larger

IMG_1294019126372712

Profile

calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
calzephyr

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1 234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 8th, 2025 02:31 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios