Welcome back to Luke week and welcome to my my humble abode.
This is meet meet the birds. So we're meeting the birds.
This is scooping Wally. See, they know I'm talking about them because I just said their names.
So they got all comfortable. It's very easy to tell like how they're feeling.
They express it a lot. You can hear it's probably going to sound worse through the mics.
When you're here, it's really not very bothersome.
You've never been in this environment before. It doesn't bother you, right?
No, I don't. There's a low amount of constant chirping, usually from the birds.
And I call that the like everything is OK alarm. So them doing this amount of chirping means they're comfortable.
They feel safe, etc. If I did something that was to spook them for some reason,
if I dropped something something like that, they would go silent. Silent means like, oh, there might be something here that's like bad.
We need to pay attention for a second. Chirping generally means things are good unless, you know,
there's certain types of chirping like they have a call that I can recognize.
I don't know if we could get them to do right now, but it's like, where are you?
See, now they just got quiet. So I tried to look into why and they're taking a nap.
So you can see they open their eyes there for a bit because we laugh.
But see, his eyes are getting really droopy.
Oh, hey, boys. Oh, yeah.
So they take these like little short naps, but you can check and see why
because it's very visual, right? So the fact that they stopped chirping doesn't mean that things are necessarily bad
because in this case, it was just them taking a nap. Yep, chirping starting again, just as what it is.
But yeah, they have a specific call for like, where are you? And I can say like, I'm right here and then they'll probably do it again.
We go back and forth a few times and then eventually they'll do like a sharper one.
But it'll be the last one that they do and it's kind of like fun. They want to call you and have you come back, but I'm calling and just being
like, I'm cooking or doing whatever in the kitchen. Right now, they were recently both very sick and we've been giving them
some antibiotics and some liver support stuff.
But both of those have to be delivered to them in a way that they viciously hate.
And so to Emma and I, which is we have to catch them individually one at a time
and then get a liquid delivery and we have to feed them this stuff.
Birds really don't like that, especially budgies.
I know some other birds are more comfortable with being like held.
I have to capture them. They have really bad dark vision, so we'll turn the lights pretty low
and put a blanket over most of their cages, except for the entrance.
Then I have to reach in and catch them while they're trying to evade me, which is difficult sometimes, but I get them.
And then I have to hold them in place and hold their head in place.
But they weigh 30 grams. Don't take any of the stuff I say in this video is like hard facts.
But if I remember correctly, their bones are like a lot of like air in them.
They're hollow, I believe. So I have to make sure I don't crush this 30 gram hollow bone thing in my hands.
And I have to hold its head in place while also not breaking its neck.
And Emma has to force feed it with a syringe. And then we do that and they'll try to stick their tongue out
and push all the medicine out. And then the medicine gets in their feathers near their face
and it gunks that up and they hate that. And it's just all a horrible process.
They complain during it, but then afterwards they're all cool and stuff.
Their cage, you might be wondering like how messy it is to have birds.
It is very messy to have birds, actually extremely messy.
I don't know if this is a thing or not, but my head cannon is that they're very messy eaters and I think it's because they eat seed.
So evolutionarily, if they're messy eaters and they're eating seed,
they're going to effectively like plant plants.
If that makes sense, they want to like plant like trees and stuff.
No, not trees. Be some absceses.
Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of trees like.
Acorns and stuff.
Yikes. But you can see in their cage, we've got this paper towel
that we've kind of ripped off on the ends here. And you can see this is this was done last night or this morning.
And you can see all that debris. And then there's even little tiny bits outside of the cage.
Like there's a bit of a seed right there with budgies.
It's not that bad because they're not that big. The food that they eat is relatively small, very easy to vacuum up or sweep up or whatever.
And their poops, which, you know, you have a pet flying around your house.
Their poops are also not that bad because if you've let it dry first,
it won't leave anything behind really. And they're very, very small.
Like you can it's almost not that easy to tell what the difference
between a piece of food and a poop is in their cage. So they're not that hard to clean up after.
I personally don't think I would want a bigger bird because a lot of bigger birds will have very liquidy and very large poops
that might make you not want to let them go out and fly.
Personally, I'm not willing to have a winged, caged animal
that I never let out, that doesn't feel fair at all. I was talking earlier about how they're really emotive.
They have this one thing that is my favorite, which I just call poof,
which is you'll see them like their feathers will will come out, come out, come out, come out,
come out, come out, come out, come out. And then they'll be like and like almost uncontrollably.
And they're like, oh, OK, that's when they'll get like really excited.
If you ever see one of their feet come up like this, those are all good signs.
Good things are happening. If you can see like the individual bones of their legs,
if their body gets really pulled in, if their wings are out, stuff like that,
those are all generally bad signs, something bad is happening. If their wings are out and they're not upset, they might be sick
or they might be overheating. Hopefully it's the overheating.
If they're really skinny and stuff like that, it might be because something scared them
or something like that, but they're they're super, super emotive.
When Sammy walked in, we had the radio on and he was wondering what that was about.
You know, the whole everything is OK alarm thing I was explaining. They like that from other sources as well.
Like I'll be like in discord arguing with someone about something
and like actually be angry and they'll just love it.
Oh, we missed it, but Scoop just poofed.
So I probably because I started talking more in an animated way.
They love it over COVID when I used to film Wansho here.
They were stoked every single time Wansho would happen because I would be projecting more and more energetic about things
and kind of dialed in and they were just like, yeah, this is great.
When I leave for the day, usually we leave the radio on or some type of music
so that there's other noise in the house so that we're sort of communicating to them.
Like everything's OK, everything's all right. They have musical preferences.
They both really like sea shanties.
I think it's because there's a lot of talking.
There's a lot of kind of easier to hear human voices.
I think they like that part. Then when you get into other stuff, it gets the preferences start to differ a little bit.
Scoop really likes the soundtrack to Initial D gets super hyped up.
We'll sing along with it really loudly, very into it. Wally not so much, doesn't love that a lot.
But Wally really likes Baba Yetu, which is the like intro song.
I think it's civilization four or five. I don't remember which one things that have fairly predictable flow
that they can sing along with well and songs that they've heard in the past
so that they can sing along with it well. But yeah, they all have their musical preferences.
It's all it's it's weird. Let's let's open them up to see what happens.
They're going to get quiet probably while I open. No, excited.
Yeah. Oh, come on, Scoop, we got to get a proof on film.
Come on, dude, you're about to do it. Are they usually this nervous when people come over?
People don't come over that often. Well, when people do, are they nervous?
And I don't I don't think they're too nervous right now.
So a lot of animals, if they're caged and you open the cage,
they're going to like bolt out, right? Birds not necessarily.
If they've been stuck in the cage for a long time, like if I'm away all weekend, so I'm only here like morning and night,
they're not necessarily going to be super driven to come out of the cage because they actually really like it inside the cage,
partially because Emma does these cool setups with the rope bridges
and all that kind of stuff, but partially just because they think it's safe in there.
Part of it might also be because they're like, I don't know if I want to go out there with unknown person.
Oh, yeah, we did this thing too. My desk has a few bird implements.
So we have this like double bridge thing here and we have this spiral along here with this wooden thingy.
That's just to get them to go to different places in the house.
So they'll they'll sit like both up here while I'm playing.
Our first bird, we only had the one bird and that made it
so that he was much more bonded with us, specifically me.
But with these birds, I had to go back in office.
I knew there was going to be a significant amount of time that I wasn't at home with them.
Not only was were COVID restrictions being lifted, so I was going to be out naturally more, but I wasn't purely work from home anymore.
So we wanted to get they're very social, they're pack animals.
So we want to get them a little buddy, but that means that they didn't bond with us as much.
They bonded with each other more and with birds that will often result in them
being less interested in like landing on you,
being touched by you, different things like that. So our previous bird would hang out on my desk, on my hand,
on my keyboard, on my shoulder, 80 percent of the time.
I'd be like playing video games with him riding on my wrist and he'd just be like chirping at me while I'm playing.
These ones don't do that, but they do like being near us
because I think we're still considered like part of the pack. So they like sitting like up here with me.
They just don't want to actually be like on my shoulder. See, they like this.
Like I came in, got fairly close and started talking to them
and they both got really comfortable and started like almost immediately falling asleep.
They've never they've never been played crab rave. But let's let's give it a shot. Let's see how it goes.
First time ever thing. Oh, so OK, so while he's stretching, they're both stretching a little bit.
Scoop just poofed while he's still stretching. That's often a sign that they're getting ready to oh, while he's poofing.
There we go. Good job. Yeah, come on out.
Come on out. What if I do this? Hello. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness.
Wow. Outside of the cage would be so much cooler right now.
I'm sorry, Wally. I think that was not appreciated
because I've been catching them recently to give them stuff.
Oh, here we go. There we go. Good job, Scooby.
Whoa.
Hey, good job, Scooby. Good job, Scooby.
I don't think they care at all.
So they often won't exactly match the song,
but you'll notice that like they're kind of their energy will a little bit.
So Wally was singing in a particular way and then once Crab Rave kind of like hit its groove,
the way that he was singing changed. It became a little sharper.
It became a little bit more like, which is more similar to the song.
He's not going to exactly match the song,
but I can tell he's kind of he's enjoying it.
And you saw when he chirped there, he kind of put his wings out a little bit, too.
Like he's into it. He likes this scoop. On the other hand, I expected to like this more.
It's entirely distracted by whatever's on top of the cage.
I think they're going to do it. Sometimes they play with each other through the cage.
Yeah, there we go.
We don't know why they like this. Is there a reason for their name?
Scoop, I believe, is just that he looks like a scoop of ice cream.
A very odd amount of budgie names are food.
We didn't know this when we named our first bird, who was named Tequito.
So food. And then we heard it was a thing and then Scoop got named Scoop anyways.
But yeah, tons of budgies are named after food for whatever reason.
Scoop is like a very, very like pretty for a budgie.
Wally's name is like maybe a little sad.
Wally is very traditional for what a budgie looks like.
Like if you Google Australian budgie, like Australian wild budgie,
you'll see 4,000 wallies. They just they all look like that.
They look green and yellow, which is a very similar color scheme to our first bird,
but with some different patterns and stuff. When we first got Wally, he had a lot of discoloring in his feathers for some reason.
I don't know if it was a nutritional thing or if it was just baby feathers or something. I'm not certain.
He's always had a like super great personality.
As much as you wouldn't be able to tell right now is significantly braver
and significantly more adventurous than Scoop is. Anytime something like significantly new changes,
like if we put a new toy into their environment, they'll both stay significantly far away from it for a while.
And then eventually they'll decide that it's cool. So Scoop will like try to push Wally to go check it out,
because he knows that Wally will eventually check it out and Scoop like never will.
But if you've ever seen the movie Wally, Scoop looks kind of like I think the robot's name is like Eve.
Wally is, you know, a little bit grungier, but gets it done and has a great personality.
And then he grew out of those feathers and now he looks great.
But I think we keep the name because it has a lot of positive qualities as well.
If they bond more directly with you, their chirps will start sounding more like words.
They'll want to do more things that you do that want to interact with you more.
They'll be more interested in you because you're the only thing that they're bonded with.
They don't have another bird buddy. So it's a little bit easier to teach a bird like that tricks and whatever else.
When they're just bonded with each other, they're not going to be as interested in like trying to sound like you or do the things that you do.
But something that I have taught them, which I'm not going to do over their cage right now,
because I don't actually want them to do this. But when I want them to go to bed or at least get in their cage,
I'll like dome my arms over the top of the cage.
So I almost make like a lid on the cage. If they don't take the hint, I'll put one of my arms down on the side that I don't want them to be on.
They start like ushering them towards the cage door and then kind of get them to go in.
And they understand that they don't necessarily always do it,
but they understand what I'm trying to accomplish. Like one time, one of them suddenly showed a very obvious sign that he was sick.
Birds, one of these budgies will try to hide sickness
because pack animals, they don't want to be the weak one in the pack, because that's how you get picked off by prey.
So I was like, OK, I need to get you to the vet now.
And I domed over and they resisted a little bit, but eventually they did go in naturally.
So I didn't have to actually catch them, which can be an issue if they're out during the day
and it's really bright, it's pretty hard to catch a bird that doesn't want to be caught,
especially in a way that won't hurt them. Like I can't use a net or something because there's a huge chance it would break one of their wings.
Oh, yeah, they're playing through the cage.
What this is, I have no idea why they do this.
I don't know, but they do it every day. Every day that they're let out, they'll play through the cage.
There you go. Up on the thing. Oh, I don't think we're really going to be able to do this.
Are you going to go back in? You guys are supposed to both be out.
So you can kind of see like he was standing on this end of the cage.
He's looking over the end and he's looking around. He was considering flying down to here.
So if they're going to go inside, usually they'll fly around and land actually on these angled doors
and then kind of walk up and then hop in. It's usually how they do it.
They can fly all the way in and land on like say the triangle or something else is in there,
depending on how the cage is configured. But usually they'll land on the doors because it's a predictable thing.
It's also much easier for them to hold on to and then they can walk along it and jump in.
They really like sucking on strings. Scoop is doing that right now.
We don't necessarily know why. I don't know what they would do like in the wild that's like this,
but they're all kind of obsessed with it. Like the bottom of that triangle toy used to be up here.
We change their arrangement all the time. It's supposed to be good for their mental development.
So the strings at the bottom would dangle through the cage into where they are right now.
And they would just sit there for hours, just suck on strings.
I don't know. Their two perches that they're on right now are their nighttime perches.
So usually what happens is we cover the cage with blankets
and then we open just this end of the cage that they're currently on.
Because that's next to me and they like being near me when they're going to bed.
So they both have their own perch. There's a food bowl in the middle so that they have access to food
if they want to snack at night. They come on that side, then we kind of wind down for a little bit
and then we do the final cover. If we fully cover them all suddenly, they'll get kind of upset about it.
Another thing they'll do is they'll fly back here
and they'll sit like on the back of the couch. Luckily for us, they don't go to the like back, back of the couch.
They just go on these cushions. It would suck if they went back there because then dandruff from them, feathers, poo,
whatever else might get actually in the couch. By them just sitting on the crest of the cushion,
it's very easy to clean and everything's all fine.
And also another thing I noticed is they actually don't do that that much.
Usually any form of defecation or whatever is done in their cage.
There's a little bit that happens outside of it, but not very much.
And that's even when they spend a significant portion of the day out.
Scooper really likes doing things like this. Like he's doing some project right now, I don't know what it is,
but he'll, we'll come back and he'll have like tied something around something else or
he'll have grabbed like this toy that we call the octopus toy,
which has like one ball head thing and then a bunch of strands that come with it.
But they're, they're, they're not tiny strings. They're bigger, like almost like a wicker materials strings.
I don't know what to call it. And he'll like grab one of them and like flip it over something else.
Even though this thing weighs like more than he does, he'll just find a way to use leverage and his ability to like turn his head and stuff to,
to flip it over. He really enjoys the, the puzzles and the projects.
And you can see they're, they're both pretty into it.
Like while he's just watching them right now,
it's cheer and form basically. It's like, it's like when you're all in gaming and then you just share your screen
so your friends can watch you. Yeah, basically.
What are you doing?
One legs up, I guess. Yeah, just grab it on the side of the cage.
I'm doing this now. Is it nap time?
Is that what's happening? Nope, breathing. Hope you guys enjoyed the video.
Hope you guys enjoyed Luke week. I don't know if this is the last video or not. So maybe there's one more, maybe there isn't, I don't know.
If you want to see more bird content, let me know. It's probably not going to happen, but maybe.
And yeah, thanks for being subscribed to Flow Play.