The feathers tell all

The parakeets involved: Cumulus, left; possible victim. Blu, right; possible suspect 

     Earlier today, one of my sisters asked if she could have one of the two tail feathers that were shed at the bottom of the parakeet cage. I'd said sure. The issue fell from my mind for a little while. Later, however, I started to think that something might be wrong. I did know that my parakeets were molting and there were cute little feathers in and around the cage. Then I looked into the cage, and one of my birds, the newer one named Cumulus, had only the shorter tail feathers left. That's when I started researching to get a better picture of what was going on...

Exhibit A - Feathers collected

Molting

     As I said before, I know parakeets molt. Who owns a bird and doesn't know about molting? I'd gotten worried because most of the feathers I'd seen in previous molting periods were nice little contour -- short feathers that are half fluffy and half stiff -- and down feathers. (ALL fluffy!) There were some wing and tail feathers here and there, but nothing like today. There were at least three tail feathers, all from the same bird.

Exhibit B - Close-up of most bloody feather

Blood Feathers

     When I found the two feathers on the floor of the cage, both had blood on or in them. In the picture, the one that's mostly black had a little blood on the tip, or calamus, but the tip of the feather on the right was filled with blood, along with this clear goop that came out when I squeezed the end. My panic alarm was beginning to sound. I went right to the computer and found out about "blood feathers." These are the feathers that grow in to replace the feathers lost when a bird molts. These are also dangerous feathers to lose or to have pulled out! This is because the feather is getting blood pumped into it through the shaft, the long middle part, to grow. Breaking the feather at this point is kinda like cutting a blood vessel, except unlike our blood, bird blood doesn't clot as fast, so the poor parakeet can bleed to death. What's weird is that the blood in the tip of the feather in the picture was still fluid, and Cumulus appeared fine. At least, that's the message I got from Cumulus's running away from the camera when I took photos.

Exhibit C - The cagemates aren't to nice

Fighter Fowl

     More searching revealed that sometimes birds pull out their feathers if they:

• Have parasites (but that's rare)
• Have feather follicle inflammation (what a mouthful!)
• Itchiness
• Pain inside the body
• Have skin inflammation
• Have heavy-metal poisoning
• Are malnourished
• Are anxious or bored
• Or fight with the other bird they live with

I am not the best parakeet owner, but I have noticed that the cagemates don't always get along, especially when food is involved. They threaten to bite each other. They shove each other off the bar. They yell. And then, sometimes, they chirp normally, as if talking, yell once or twice, then go back to their original volume. These birds are also clever. More than once they have unhooked their bathtub, dumped it out, and dragged it all the way to the patch of cage floor under the food holder, presumably to catch seeds. So, Blu might have been just smart enough to wait to pull some feathers until Cumulus was molting and he could do the most damage.
    Okay, so maybe it's not that, but I'm pretty sure I haven't fed my pets anything that had heavy metals lately. More likely, the birds were bored.

Anyway... 

    Since Cumulus seems fine, there probably isn't much to worry about, but I learned a lot of things in my research. Here are a couple sites I visited:

Where I learned the parts of a feather, and more.

About blood feathers

     Do you have any tips for calming down two caged birds and keeping them from fighting? Have any questions or comments about the parakeets? Please tell me in the comments below.

Please, One's Enough.

Three weeks ago, I was coming home from a summer camp for the night, and as I was taking my bird's food out to change the seed, I noticed my white bird lying motionless on the bottom of the cage. I was worried. I poked it with my finger. No motion. I screamed as I realized that one of my birds had died. It was late, so there was no time to bury her, as I'd wanted to do, so instead I had to tie her up in a plastic bag and throw her body in the trash. She had always been the more territorial and feisty, as female parakeets often are, but she'd been a great pet anyway.

It was hotter in the house than usual, and I read that parakeets can't stand the heat nearly as well as they stand cold: it takes a few days for parakeet hypothermia to set in, but parakeet heatstroke can be set in fifteen minutes. It was only my female, Clair, that died. My male had always been more resilient. He was more clumsy, but he'd always get back up in a second after bumping into a wall. The next day, we bought a new parakeet and some helpful supplies.

This weekend, I was going on a walk and saw a crow sitting on the ground. It didn't even bother flying away. Neither of its wings looked broken, but it still didn't look okay. I went right home after that, and didn't call animal control because we learned from the bear day (see post "Poor Little Bear!" ) that animal control doesn't work on Saturdays, so I went back with a small cup of wild birdseed and my sister. I poured the seeds in front of the crow, then we just stayed by it for a while. The crow looked at the seeds, but it didn't try to eat them, almost as if it knew it was going to die soon. A little before we left it, it tipped over, closed its eyes, and started breathing heavily. It didn't die until I don't know how long after we left it. The next day, I saw a few flies on it. A small part of me wished they were mourning instead of feeding on the crow.
Maybe the crow had injured a wing and could not fly. Maybe it was sick. Crows may be very intelligent, but they still have no access to modern medicine and are just as susceptible to disease and death as we are.

I think I'll be looking forward to the start of school a little more.

Book Recommendation

A lot of people like superheros, and even people who don't usually know about Superman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, Captain America, and the Hulk. If you're familiar with the theme of this blog, you're probably wondering why I started this post with superheros. Well, the hero-creating people at DC, Marvel, etc. tend to get a fair amount of their inspiration from animals. There are the common ones that get movies, like Spider-man, but there's a lesser-known hero who's actually pretty cool. The one I'm talking about is based off a common mammal that's brown, grey, red, black, or white, found on almost every continent, is high-energy, intelligent, and has a big fluffy tail. Yes, it's a squirrel, and they've got more hero-worthy powers than one might think. (To find out more click on these links.) The hero's name is Squirrel Girl, whose powers include a big tail, running 20 mph, and talking to squirrels. She first showed up in Marvel comics in 1991. Now she has two novels by Shannon and Dean Hale,and both are fun books that I highly recommend.