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Dougal's Pet Corner
The place for your pet stories and pictures, let me have them |
Hello Dougal, my
name is Purty and I am a lovebird. I want everyone, as it is St Valentine's Day, to know
how to look after us like my owners do. So here goes…
I really do need a cage at least 30 x 30 x 18 inches as I have a partner who lives with
me. The spacing between the bars of the cage should be no more than half an inch or I
might get stuck and please make sure the bars are horizontal, because I love to climb, oh,
and the cage shouldn't have sharp edges cos I get hurt quite easily. I like to be enclosed
on three sides and the cage must be square or rectangle shaped, as round cages can make me
very nervous, and it's harder to climb.
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Please don't buy a cage that
doesn't have a lock nor one that has sliding doors if you can help it, you need one with a
door which has a very sturdy catch, and that closes very tightly as we are escape artists. |
If it does have a sliding door, then you need to buy a lock
for it so that it doesn't open up more than half an inch, or we'll be off. The only
thing that we lovebirds can drink is water, clean, fresh water. Do not give us
commercially packaged juices to drink. These "human" juice drinks contain
artificial sweeteners and preservatives. If you give us fresh slices of fruit and
vegetables such as pears and celery, we will bite into these and drink the natural juice.
We lovebirds like a seed-based diet. However, not just seeds it gets so boring. We do like
fruit and vegetables every day. About 75% of our diet should consist of seeds and 30%
should be of fruit and vegetables.
We like to play with colourful toys that you can buy in pet stores, but be very careful,
some toys are not suitable for lovebirds. Toys made of rubber or soft plastic are
dangerous, because if we eat some pieces of rubber, this will cause serious damage to our
bowels, maybe even paralysis of the intestinal muscles. A blocked bowel results in death,
we don't really think about the consequences when we are chewing away! Do not buy toys
that contain small parts such as beads or fuzzy, stuffed toys because if we eat the
threads and stuffing it is really serious. |
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Dougal Continued
We do like those nice natural cotton toys you can get, as we can nibble away on them and
preen the ends, if we do ingest any of this, because it's made with natural cotton we
don't have a problem passing it on, so to speak! It also gives us something to
do and stops us getting bored. I am lucky, I have a partner, but if you have a single,
female lovebird, do not give her a "Happy Hut," which is a cosy tent. Before my
partner arrived I became so attached to my home-made tent that I tried to lay an egg
inside it, and suffered from egg binding. That hurt!
We have some friends who are living at Paws'n'Claws at the moment, but they would love to
move in with a nice family. In fact they have everything there you need to make sure us
Lovebirds are kept really healthy and happy.
Bye for now, Purty |
| Gardens
for birds: Natural Shelter |
Garden birds need
shelter for several reasons. Each night they require a place to roost that is warm and
dry, and safe from predators. Every spring they require secure sites in which to build
nests, and every day they need shelter to protect them from the weather and from the
attention of predators.
For many species of birds, these needs are met by bushes, particularly thorny ones, and
once again, the 'common or garden' hawthorn is the 'market leader'. Whilst a tall mature
hawthorn hedge offers a lot of feeding opportunities, a regularly-trimmed one provides
protected nest sites in its branches, and an impenetrable sanctuary for small birds
perhaps pursued by a sparrow hawk. Even in winter, the tight mesh of branches of a trimmed
hawthorn hedge, breaks the full force of the wind, despite its lack of leaves.
For overnight roosting in winter, shrubs that hold their leaves are helpful. For this
reason, ivy is excellent cover for a wide range of wildlife, as well as birds. Large ivy
bushes will also provide nesting shelter in the spring. Another native shrub important as
roost cover is bramble. It is semi-evergreen and is also brilliant for nesting birds, as
well as for its food value; it does, however, need a fair amount of space.
Native honeysuckle is a climber that provides beautiful flowers and scent. It also has
stringy bark which birds can use for constructing nests. Other climbers can give shelter
high enough up walls to be out of the way of predators. One example that seems to be liked
for nesting in by one of our rarer garden birds, the spotted fly-catcher, is Clematis
Montana. Spotted fly-catchers are a Biodiversity Action Plan priority species and deserve
all the help we can give them.
Cley-Spey
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