Feathered Friends --- Outdoor Activity Edition

Beside providing premium mixed seed for my feathered friends, I also supplement them with fresh veggies and protein. Usually I give them corn and some greens like my homegrown kale, green beans and oregano, as well as broccoli, carrot, peas, and mung bean sprouts I buy from the market. 

Occasionally I give them minced apples, pears and grapes. But, they don't seem to really like them since fruit contains a lot of water which my birds, especially the budgies, consume very minimally or not at all.

I also let them play outside their cage every day, so they can play and eat together, hop around the metal perch.

I used to sunbathe them every morning for about 30 minutes to keep them healthy. And that means I bring them to the rooftop where my container garden is located. So during this time I sometimes take them out to play around the plants. Just enough to let them enjoy being in the nature and not always in  confinement.

But I had my lessons to be careful when I do this since my bird almost flew away. 

It's scary to even think about it...

Because even though they are tamed, but in the inside they are still wild birds who will run away back to the wild when given the chance.

So I have to make sure that I have the tips of their feather trimmed from time to time.

Though it looks cruel but better for their safety.

The only one I expose much to the garden is Elmo-the lovebird. Almost every day I will take him with me to the garden when I water the plants. I will let him perch on my shoulder during that time. But he will always climb up to play under the first layer of my straw hat as soon as I put the hats on. I like to double the hat, and he seems to be very delighted running round the bottom layer of the hat while I work. He's such a cutie!

When his flying feathers have regrown I decided not to trim them because I believe that he's tamed and bonded with me already. So I try to test him from time to time by bringing him with me to the garden, so he will get familiar with the house and the surrounding and make it his permanent home. Inside the house he never tries to escape but usually if I take him to play in my bedroom I will always close the window because I don't want him to be tempted, since there's a bird shop next door where he could listen to all the chatters of his kinds.

And then one day at the garden, he might be startled when I fix the position of my hats that he flew away and down to my neighbor's rooftop. 

When I jumped across the wall to pick him up he flew again to a quite long distance but he stopped because there's a wall against him. Thank God he didn't flew down the 3rd floor! I couldn't imagine how he will end up! Lesson learned!