Peanut:
I took Peanut flying this morning we have not been for a while. His recall was good, a bit tardy, but he came fairly quickly. I am practicing getting him out of trees right now, so I throw him up and call him down. Amazing how difficult it is for a bird to fly down.


The babies:
The second baby is also working on flight skills. I think a she, made circles round the lounge but was unable to come down. I had to get the birdie off the tv unit. The first baby is getting to be a confident flyer and can make a landing on my shoulder without too much skin loss for me. Navigation sort of works, but the brake system of the landing gear needs a bit of practice. The 3 other babies have come out the box but are still doing wing exercises, not enough flight feathers yet for flight.

The two oldest babies don't always wait to finish a meal, they have started picking at other food. Hand feeding takes too long for them, they have people to see and places to go, very busy birdies. The oldest baby has also discovered it is not possible to fly with a full crop. It is only 10g difference but enough to ground him.

They are all tame so taking them out so late was not really a bad thing, they had much longer with parents.

My daughters baby IRN is refusing to wean. If s/he is alone the birdie can eat out a dish, as soon as I am sighted the begging starts, so I am feeding 6 babies still. The baby keeps getting renamed so I guess we are waiting till a name sticks. The baby suns are housed in the same cage as the baby IRN, I am thinking if they all friends Peanut may not notice a IRN in the middle of a flock of baby suns. He loves the baby suns but is still intent on seeing the IRN off the property. Peanut makes sure he gets his share of left over formula daily although it is only about 20ml shared with 5 sun conures. On days the babies don't have enough left over, I just add a little water. Peanut is happy I think with even runny formula by spoon.

Sounds like you have a very fun and busy house!

I was reading a study about co-parenting and leaving babies with the parents for a longer time. The article said that the babies actually progressed better, gained more weight than hand feeding and learned many important birdie skills from the parents. The humans handled the babies and the parents were fine with it and not stressed and it wasn't anymore difficult to tame them when they were eventually removed.

Have you noticed any pros and/or cons leaving them with the parents longer?

Hey Angie sounds like you have a full house and sounds like such fun. Wish I could be there to see it all. That Peanut he just makes me laugh.

Weights quite a bit heavier for age, the oldest was very wild and bit me a number of times. Not aggressive but very scared and untrusting. He, I think is now tame but very independent, but then Peanut is not cuddly and this is a Peanut sibling so it can be un related to a time frame. At this point in his life learning to fly is his main concern, they all get independent at fledging and later come back to be cuddly.

The second baby is a cuddly velcro birdie, possibly female. They are all tame and starting to preen each other. Peanut is in charge of baby inspection and preening so they do have adult role model. This is one of the most important things I think is to learn to be a bird. Peanut was budgie educated, he is now the only one that can still be threatened by the budgie, budgie says move and Peanut moves. All five of the babies now rush to be with me, so I think in future I will be leaving with the parents to about 6 weeks instead of 4. Although I have to add that these 2 clutches came from the best sets of parents, the other 2 pairs are less than good parents. Soon they will be stepping up, at present I offer a flat hand as perching skills need to be perfected.

I wish I could post pics, I do try get with the cell phone but most often the quality is real bad.

Angie do you handle them at all prior to pulling them from the nest or do the parents insist they are better left alone?

I wanna see pictures...

I handle the babies almost daily after they have rings on at about 14 days or so. At banding they weigh about 37-39g and not too small to touch anymore. I generally send the parents out the nest box because they get upset if they see me touching babies but are fine afterwards. I also clean out the nest box about once a week from the time of banding. Replacing shavings in more upsetting to the parents than touching the babies, but the box gets dirty when the babies are left for a long time. On the whole I have to say I am pleased with the babies. Only the oldest is not extremely tame but, it may be character or flight skill related and not related to time with the parents. It will be another week or ten days until the flight experiments are over. All babies have this streak of independence when learning to fly. I choose not to clip at this point because I know the flying around crazy will stop.