Elbie is Famous!; Or, Embarrass the Bird in December

The year of lovebird shaming has come to an end. Well, almost.
The embarrassment wouldn't be complete without a Christmassy outfit, no?

Arrrr, Pirate Elbie in November.
BatBird costume for October.
Elbie goes all Heston in September.
Augustus, in August
July, Elbie always gets his man!
June, as a very dashing Red Coat.
May, as Indie!
April, as the WWI fighter pilot Billy Bishop.
March, as a sea captain.
February, as a debonair monsieur.
January, as a Bavarian.

Elbie is Famous!; Or, Embarrass the Bird in November

I resisted the urge to put a tiny parrot on Elbie's shoulder. Wrong decision?

BatBird costume for October.
Elbie goes all Heston in September.
Augustus, in August
July, Elbie always gets his man!
June, as a very dashing Red Coat.
May, as Indie!
April, as the WWI fighter pilot Billy Bishop.
March, as a sea captain.
February, as a debonair monsieur.
January, as a Bavarian.

Elbie is Famous!; Or, Embarrass the Bird in October

Bat-Bird!
What! It's his Halloween costume!

Elbie goes all Heston in September.
Augustus, in August
July, Elbie always gets his man!
June, as a very dashing Red Coat.
May, as Indie!
April, as the WWI fighter pilot Billy Bishop.
March, as a sea captain.
February, as a debonair monsieur.
January, as a Bavarian.

Elbie is Famous!; Or, Embarrass the Bird in August

 This month, Elbie's very imperial. Augustus in August!

July, Elbie always gets his man!
June, as a very dashing Red Coat.
May, as Indie!
April, as the WWI fighter pilot Billy Bishop.
March, as a sea captain.
February, as a debonair monsieur.
January, as a Bavarian.

Elbie is Famous!; Or, Embarrass the Bird in July

July bring Canada Day. Here's Constable Elbie, of the RCMP.

June, as a very dashing Red Coat.
May, as Indie!
April, as the WWI fighter pilot Billy Bishop.
March, as a sea captain.
February, as a debonair monsieur.
January, as a Bavarian.

Elbie is Famous!; Or, Embarrass the Bird in June

The War of 1812 is big news around my locale. They've been bigging it up since last year, as from 2012-2014 it's the bicentenary of the war itself.

Here you see Elbie as a British red coat, defending British North America from invaders!
In particular, he's placed in the Battle of Stoney Creek, fought on June 6, 1813. It was a turning point in the war, and significant win for the British.

May, as Indie!
April, as the WWI fighter pilot Billy Bishop.
March, as a sea captain.
February, as a debonair monsieur.
January, as a Bavarian.

Elbie is Famous!; Or, Embarrass the Bird in May

Elbie Jones!
Indiana Elbie!
Something to that effect.
Because the only way you could improve Indiana Jones is to make him into a lovebird.

April, as a WWI fighter pilot.
March, in the rain.
February, tux and tails.
January, in lederhosen.

Elbie is Famous!; Or, Centrefold Bird

I have this unweildy habit of getting myself started on far too many crafty-type projects than one human should assume they can handle.

Over the holidays I decided it would be great fun to make myself a 2013 calendar.
Because really,
1) those art supplies from art school lo those embarrassingly-many years ago aren't going to use themselves!
2) where else, pray tell, can one find a calendar of one's pet, dressed up in amusing outfits? WHERE!?

Nowhere, that's where, except for the bizarre and often quite silly depths of my odd-duck imagination.

Forthwith I will be sharing these singularly amusing monthly images.

Here's the little feathered jerk in a pair of lederhosen.

HA! Take THAT Elbie! I put you in LEDERHOSEN! Mwuhahahaha! The internet is looking now! You have no place to hide, bitey bird!

(note to self: it may not be best for one's mental health to take personal vendetta against most beloved pet out on one's crafting blog.)

Because He Makes Me Smile; Or, Elbie the Reading Lovebird

A very speedy interlude today.
I found this picture hiding on my over-clogged, uber-foldered desktop.
It was taken this summer.
Aw, he thinks he's people!

PS: That's a great book we're reading.

Canary Update: Or, Hilts is Allllllright!

Just a quick update from a while ago, when I posted about little Hilts and his mystery illness.

He's alright!

Well, he appears to be alright.

He's been living in a different room than the other birds, quiet, nice and secluded. He seems much more chipper, tweeting occasionally and perching again!

So, my theory is he was just messing with me. He wanted to go in to semi-retirement, get settled in a different, more peaceful address.

All is well, and I thank you all so much for the sympathy and concern expressed during his illness.

Now, on to knitting!

Grieving a Pet

I'm generally not keen on sharing personal or sad news online, but I currently have a very sick canary.

My experience with these creatures leads me to believe he'll die sometime quite soon, though he is scheduled to see the vet.

This crappy situation has recalled in my mind previous pet bird deaths, and I'm going to tell you a story about one.

A person I know, likely not meaning to do harm or be viscous, once responded to "my canary's just died and we're very sad about it", with "well, it's just a bird".
I suppose comparatively one could say it's easier to bond with a dog or cat. But grieving over a pet seems to have an awful lot more to do with the human than the animal.

I'm not on some campaign to end flippancy to unconventional pet owners' grief and love for their animals; just ruminating on how people decide to draw the line, culturally, on
1) what animals are acceptable "pets"
2) what animals are high-level "companions"
2) what animals are low-level "furniture", and don't require or induce dear feelings from their owners

Another one of my favourite stories:
I was at the vet, in the waiting room. Just arrived, holding my bird's cage. A woman with a cat in her arms comes right up to me. She coos to her cat "look kitty, lunch!"
I kid you not, folks.

Of course, the bird's already in a high-stress situation. They're easily stressed animals. Putting a predator right in its face is not going to help. At least, it's not going to help the bird, but I suppose the bird doesn't matter.

End rant masquerading as rumination.

If anyone's interested, I'll keep you updated on my poor little guy's progress. It's Hilts, by the way. He's made more than one appearance on the blog.

New Look!

As you may have noticed, I've been tooling around with the look of the blog.
This is still something of a work in progress, so don't be surprised if it's changed up a bit soon.
I'd also like to hear what you think of the new look!
I really dig yellow, and it's awfully appropriate (canaries and all), but am trying to decide on juuuust the right shade of it.

There's also the new logo I've designed.
I was inspired by this adorable photo of my great little guy Butters, lo those many years ago.

Finally, I've set up a shiny, new email address (mostly because gmail is just so functional!)

You can now reach me at gmail here: canaryknitsdesigns.

Just a Bit of Cute Birdie

Title is pretty self-explanatory.

Here's Hilts, grudgingly sitting still for his picture.

Zebra Finch Fantastic: Peg, the One-Legged Bird

I hemmed and hawed about whether or not to post this post; it's a good story in the end, but scared me very much when it happened.

Ultimately, I thought it would have made me feel much better if, in my desperate google searches for "zebra finch leg break", I found some reassurance that it's not necessarily the end of her little bird life.

So, to the story:

One morning, I awoke to discover one of the three month old zebra finch females had her leg caught in part of the cage. These birds aren't the cleverest or strongest of creatures, and when stuck, they'll thrash in order to get away.

On closer inspection, it was clear (and I'm not going to get too graphic here) that her right leg was broken.
I felt so sick and terrible and afraid.
Of course, I carefully freed her immediately. She flew off, and, while clearly struggling to remain balanced on one foot, she seemed absolutely fine.

And of course, I was still very worried.
Her leg was broken in such a way that it was obvious that splinting it was not going to help. I knew she'd have to lose her leg.

Fear not, folks. Remember: happy ending.

I took her to the vet. He explained how lucky I (well, how lucky she) was: the way she had broken her leg had ensured that she didn't bleed terribly. He amputated the leg, and gave me some antibiotics for the newly named Peg.
(naming her Peg - does that make me evil?)

She got her two drops of antibiotics twice a day for a week. Her stump still looked suspiciously red and a bit inflamed (to this untrained eye), so I still worried.

Now it's been several months, and she's thriving.

She very quickly learned to compensate for her new balance. She's back in the cage with her mom and sisters. She eats as heartily as ever - most of the time she beats the other birds to the feeders. And her poor little stump leg has healed perfectly.

Birds can be mean to each other, and I keep a watch out for any bullying. They tend to pick on the weakest member of the flock, but it seemed Peg happily eats, chirps and snuggles into sleepytime perch alongside her family.

So, take heart: if you have a zebra finch who's broken her leg, and it's clear she'll have to get it amputated, this will not end her life. She still has the ability to be a happy, funny, curious, chirping little feather face for a long time to come.

I, I Love You Like a LoveBird Elbie!

And You Keep Tweet, Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet!

(I thought myself very clever when I stumbled upon the really rather perfectly serendipitous alignment of Serena Gomez's "Love You Like A Love Song" and the silly insertion of Elbie-inspired lyrics. I had to share).

Ok, here's the story of Elbie:

Back in March, I had this great desire to add to my (sadly dwindling) flock. It was around that time that I only had Butters and Hilts (the elderly canaries), and so added Henry and Anne. Shortly thereafter, Henry and Anne added a total of six finch babies for me.

Hanging out on Kijiji can be a recipe for disaster (for the pet lovers among us, certainly). I spotted two ads that were almost impossible to pass over: a lovely male Gouldian finch, and a hand-raised peach faced lovebird.

Elbie was born/hatched in March, so he's still just a wee young one.

But my on my, let me tell you, after having had only "simple" birds (canaries and finches) for a very long time, adding a clever, curious, loud, playful, destructive and downright adorable lovebird to the mix does tend to change one's attitude towards birds.

That is, the little jerk is (most likely) smarter than me.
This, I do not care for.

I like to be able to outwit my birds. I know, I'm petty. I can predict their movements, laugh at their silly ineptitude and feel certain that their food likes and dislike (yes, birds do have these, and they're all individual from each other!) will remain constant.

Elbie is another story.

Being stubborn, he refuses to eat his veggies.
Instead, he picks them up (very carefully) and deposits them in his drinking cup.
Little jerk.
Broccoli that's been sitting in water all day just isn't a great scent to be greeted with upon your arrival home.

While he's never bit me, it's quite clear that he hates hands. I guess they're big, scary things for birds.
So, after he's let out for a fly, I have to retrieve him with a badminton racquet.
Srsly, a badminton racquet.
Little cute jerk.
He'll happily step onto this bird-wrangling device, and be delivered back to his cage in a usual huff.

Here, in this picture, you see him bugging Butters.
Butters, I think, looks really rather annoyed.
"Hey you! Get off my cage you jerk bird!"

Thus is the story of Elbie. He's generally naughty and funny. I promise if he ever does anything amazing (like, behave himself!) I'll get photographic proof and show you.
For now, he's quite keen on thrashing his bell toy against the cage, and snacking on the random (and much appreciated!) sunflower seed or rice cereal puff that's gifted his way.

Oiseau Wednesday

Handful of finch!

Here you see the bebes, at three weeks old.
On the far left is "Little Grey", the biggest (and so I'm assuming oldest). Next to Little Grey is Dark Grey (and yes, these are temporary names. I'm waiting to see the sex of the birds to permanently name them!)
And, on the far right, the wee baby Eddie. Much smaller than the others!

Little Grey took his/her first flight yesterday! I was very proud.

Oiseau Wednesday

More bird content!

Here's Anne and Henry's babies at two weeks old. Awww, so ugly (still!)
They've opened their eyes and are growing feathers at this point, so I can already see that one of the fledglings takes after Anne, and another after Henry. Little Eddie is still several days behind the others in development, but is being fed and still seems strong (as a little bird can be).

I love their little frowny faces!

Birds, Birds Everywhere!

This weekend saw me start my great ambitions of learning to be a birder. I went out with a friend and a small group (all of whom seemed to really know what they were doing! Methinks I need a good pair of binoculars).

It seems that birds get up awfully early, because, as you can see in the photo below, I had myself out of bed and in my car far before I normally would!

The pretty scene of the sun over the marsh.
Our bird walk took us across marshland, along streams and through small woods and valleys.

Here's a mama Canada Goose on her nest.


A Mute Swan, who decided to paddle right beneath us all.


Though it may not be terribly easy to see, here's a Blue Jays on its nest.


A White-Breasted Nuthatch - a new spotting for me!


And, in another new spotting, a Yellow Warbler, in the middle of flitting from one tree-top branch to another.


And the ubiquitous, friendly and curious Black-Capped Chickadee. I had a couple of these tiny sweeties hop right onto my hand! They're so used to people coming by to feed them, that an outstretched hand is all that's needed to tempt them over.

I'm really looking forward to getting out there and spotting some more - I hear the Orioles should have migrated up here by next week!

Oiseau Wednesday

While it's a bit difficult to see, here is Henry and Anne's wee clutch of baby birds. They're about a week old, and are beginning to grow tiny feathers on their tiny wings.
Anne had laid five eggs, but only three hatched.
Two of the little ones are thriving; one of them is... well... I'm a bit concerned for the poor thing. It's much smaller than its siblings, and keeps (falling out of? getting kicked out of?) the nest. I've had to replace the small bird back into its home about three or four times.
I figure, if this tiny baby lives another week, it'll make it to adulthood.¹
Fingers crossed!!
___________
¹If this little one survives, and is a boy, I have to name him Edward :)

Henry, Anne and the Egg

I did promise to keep you updated on some of those various goings-on from my marathon-posting last month, and I'm happy to say there's some good news!
Early this morning, Anne laid an egg!

Below you see the happy couple side-by-side, celebrating their achievement with a spot of mutual feather preening.

The egg is about the size of my thumbnail. What will likely happen is Anne will lay one egg a day til her brood is complete - usually they consist of four to six eggs. After that, she'll sit on them for about two weeks til they hatch.
If they hatch!
When birds mate, they do it very quickly. So, I can't really be sure that these eggs are fertilized, seeing as how I never actually witnessed Henry and Anne being amourous.
If the eggs aren't fertilized, it's best to remove them after about three weeks. Otherwise the little hen will sit and sit, all for naught.