Life is returning to normal at our house now that the birds are gone. We have food in the fridge, laundry is done, and I am only slightly behind in my Spanish homework. I have all day tomorrow, ha ha!
We decided to head down to the malecon and have a beer while watching the sunset. It was a bit cloudy but the sunset was still beautiful.
Yesterday we returned the baby parrots to Conrehabit. We’d taken care of them for more than two weeks, and it was time for us to get back to studying our Spanish, which we’d been neglecting during their time with us. Not to mention laundry and other household chores.
When we got back from dropping them off and were unloading the empty laundry basket/cage from the back of the car, guess what! One little scamp had hitchhiked back home with us! So we took little Iggy (Paul called all the bald ones Iggy) inside and he spent another night with us. Below is a picture of him eating out of a dish. He was a perfect little gentleman, never spilling a drop.
As we started into the second week though, we had several birds die. Not just ones that we suspected weren’t thriving, either. We were told that after being in captivity a week, some birds will just die. We knew we were doing a good thing for most of them, but it was still hard to deal with. All in all, we lost 10 birds.
This afternoon we went to deliver Iggy back to his flock-mates and had planned on helping with the 1 pm feeding. But we were happy to see a lot of people feeding the birds when we got there and we were told they had enough helpers for the feeding. I really hope this keeps up, as they expect it to be around 3-4 months before they’ll be self-sufficient enough to be set free.
We skipped the benefit this afternoon to do some grocery shopping and come home to study. And I will say, the house seems really quiet right now.
Isn’t this picture funny? The one parrot with the big belly must have gorged himself on the saucer of food. The one next to him didn’t eat, I guess.
I promise this will be our last baby parrot post, at least until they are ready to head to the Conrehabit ranch.
Paul and I have been caring for 50 baby parrots now for more than a week. It has been a lot of work but also quite an education. While we have had birds in our household in the past (and are still working on getting our Amazon, Tiko, to join us here in Mazatlan) it is quite a bit different to have so many babies in the house.
It’s a good thing we are retired, because otherwise it would be impossible to devote this much time to these little guys. On Spanish class mornings we really have to crank to get through all the chores! We feed these guys at 7, 1, and 6:30 pm.
I call this one “Jackets but no Pants.” You can see they are starting to feather out on their chests.
The birds start making noise about 6 am. We get up and give each group a saucer of food. Right now we have 12 birds who are reliably able to eat on their own. We then make a cup of coffee and maybe even eat something.
After that I mix up the day’s food. They eat a combination of baby rice cereal and electrolyte water. I mix up two liters in the Vita-Mix. I microwave the electrolyte water so the whole mixture is nice and warm.
Isn’t this guy cute? Almost fully feathered out. He is a mess though because when he feeds himself he makes such a mess and even walks through the food saucer. Not too smart! I love the drip hanging off his beak.
We head into the laundry room to get started. We both put on our aprons. We have three separate groups of birds. 12 in a Rubbermaid container, 12 in a laundry basket, and 26 in the cage Conrehabit gave us the birds in. We get started on the group that was fed first last time.
We each grab two birds and get started with the syringes. Sometimes you get some wonderful “stand up and eat” guys and sometimes they are sullen and uncooperative. Sometimes they cry and open their mouth and as soon as you get the syringe near them they turn their head. There is one who delights in shaking bird food all over you, bite after bite. As each bird is fed it goes into an “interim” laundry basket. That gives me a chance to change the bedding before we put them back home.
This one wasn’t interested in eating…he just wanted to read the sports page.
We are glad that 12 are eating on their own since now that cuts down on the amount of hand feeding needed three times per day. We just “top them up” at the end of the meal if we think they need a little more.
After lunch we take the cages out to the patio so they can have a little sun and fresh air. When it gets close to dinner time we take them back in the laundry room for dinner and bed. We generate two big black garbage bags of used newspaper every two days. Thank goodness for friends who have pitched in to collect papers from their neighbors and have brought us all the newspaper we need and also to take our dog-walking shift at the local shelter.
So, we are glad to be taking care of these little birds but I think we will also be relieved when they head to the aviary and later, we hope, back to the wild.
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