Escape Artist Lovebirds

One day, while my brother Joe was busy working on cutting the welded wire mesh for the aviary, he heard a bird chirping above his head. He didn't bother to look up thinking that it must be one of the house birds that are hanging out in our yard because we have plenty of them around the house. Then he heard another one and it sounded familiar but he still didn’t look up because he was bent on finishing what he was doing with the wire. Anyway, as soon as he finished cutting the wire, he looked up and saw two birds that looked exactly just like ours. He felt elated thinking that we might be able to catch these birds and we’ll add them to ones in the cage. Then a thought flashed in his mind that these could be our own birds who managed to get out of their cage. He looked at the cage and saw that it was empty! Those birds chirping on the guava tree are our own birds after all! How in the world did they manage to get out of their cage, that we do not know. We were so disappointed that we lost all of our three birds including the new comer. We could not eat and function well because we were always worrying and thinking about them. We all prayed that the birds will come back to us.

Do you believe in miracles?  Would you believe that after two days of being out in the wild that they did come back to us? All four of them too! Thanks to God for answering our prayers. What amazed us most is that they knew where their home is. They must have memorized their surroundings while they were living in the cage under the guava tree, I don’t know if they can do that. What matters most is that they came back home to us. They must have gone hungry during those two days that they were on the loose and they must have remembered that they can always find food in our place. So we put out some food inside their cage and one of them would go inside to eat, gingerly at first,  and then we would close the door behind it. Once the bird had its fill with the food, we would catch it and put it inside a smaller cage. Then we would do the same process all over again with the rest of the flock until we caught all four of them. Now they are all safe and sound and doing well.

This is the reason why we built a “safety area” in the aviary. This “safety area” serves as a holding pen for any bird that may accidentally escape from the main aviary and it also serves as our access area when servicing the birds. These birds are intelligent but at the same time, they are also known to be escape artists. So we have to make sure that we close the screen door behind us whenever we go inside this “safety area” to feed the birds. There is another screen door inside this “safety area” that leads to the main aviary. This door will only be opened once a week during a scheduled cleaning on the floor of the aviary. This will minimize our intrusion into the main aviary so as not to disturb the birds.  

The Lovebirds in a Rabbit Cage

These are the four African Lovebirds that I bought from a pet shop along Magsaysay Avenue here in Baguio City, Philippines. When I first saw them, they were in two separate cages, two birds inside a cage. The sales lady told me that the two birds in the first cage are males while the other two in the next cage are females. One of the females is a Lutino with yellow feathers and that it costs more than the others. She said that I could get one male from the first cage and get another female from the other cage and pair them together. Being a newbie, I really could not tell the age of the birds and the saleslady said she doesn't know it either. Since I could not really make up my mind which ones to pick to make a pair, so I bought the whole lot instead. They all looked so beautiful anyway. I thought that it might be better if I bought the whole four of them so they can get to choose their own partner. I paid 400.00 pesos for each bird except for the Lutino which costs me 450.00 pesos. The saleslady would not budge with the price no matter how hard I tried to haggle with her but she was very helpful. I paid a total of 1,650.00 pesos for the four lovebirds. I also bought a piece of cuttle bone, a bag of sunflower seeds and a bag of small grains. She said that they prefer eating the sunflower seeds over the grains. So I brought the birds home together with their feed supply for a week. 

I didn't buy a bird cage from the pet shop because I didn't like what they were selling, they were too small I think. I planned on using a rabbit cage instead to house the birds when I got home.   I had four newly constructed all-wire rabbit cages inside the rabbitry at that time that has not been used yet. Initially, my intention in going to the pet shop was to buy some rabbits. I was getting impatient with waiting for the rabbits that I ordered from a neighbor but they were not weaned from their mother yet. So anyway, instead of coming home with some rabbits, I came home with these lovely bird. The size of the rabbit cage is 2.5 feet wide by 3 feet long by 18 inches high. It is recommended that the bird's cage should be at least 3 feet long and the width should be at least 2 feet while the height should be at least two feet. Well I had to make do with what I have which is actually much better than what they were selling at the pet shop. This cage is to be their home until such time that we could build them a house of their own.