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.

Man's best friend probably understands him well enough

All you dog owners, this suggests that your dog might really understand what your saying. Scientists in Berlin, Germany have conducted an experiment where they had to teach 13 dogs to lie motionless while they're being scanned and hearing their owners via headphones. The test suggests that it not only matters what you say to your dog, but also how you say it.

Real Life Pokemon!?

Listen up, pokemon fans! Scientists have now discovered a type of sea slug that looks quite a bit like pikachu. And that's not all. If you search "pokemon sea slugs" you'll get images of at least two other slug pokemon look-alikes. They were found near Japan, the same place where pokemon came from. So maybe the sea slugs were the inspiration for pikachu, not the mouse as Americans once thought (and by the way, I think that dedenne was inspired by the mouse. It looks a lot more like a mouse than pikachu!).

Titanic! JK! Titanosaurs

You know what the largest dinosaur that lived on Earth is? Tyrannosaurus Rex?  Argentinosaurus? Maybe not! Just four years ago, someone in Argentina found an old bone sticking up out of the dirt on his property. Then, he started digging around that area and found the complete skeleton of six of the biggest Titanosaurs skeletons. Last Friday, the skeleton cast became a permanent attraction at The American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. For details on the story, please click here. Last Fact of the Post: Many of the important dinosaur discoveries were made in this casual way by non-experts.

Giant squid seen near land

Well, talk about surprising! You know how giant squid do exist, but live in the deeper areas? Somehow, a young giant squid made it into Toyama harbor on Christmas Eve. This was quite a surprise to everyone the harbor that day, but it was a good thing no damage was done. A few people took video of this rare sighting. It was very interesting that it happened on that day, a very special day. It could mean something very special Christmas this year. Just an idea I wanted to throw out there. To read about this story, please click on this link.  

Poor Little Bear!

You know that birds live in the city, and so do squirrels, but peregrine falcons can to. Just a few weeks ago, my family was having a barbecue in our backyard, and saw a peregrine falcon just sitting in a tree, waiting for his diner. There can be foxes, opossums and racoons can live in the city too. But bears in the city? That sounds impossible, but it's not. Just today, my father, sister and I, were biking from the library, when I saw something the size of a large dog, and thought, "What is that thing?" As I got closer I thought, "Please tell me that's just a dog." I got even closer and knew it was...(drum roll) a bear cub! And it had a broken leg! There's a YouTube video of the poor thing .( :=( (crying face) )         

Don't be so nosey!

Have you ever heard of the ox-pecker? If you don't know what it is, it's a little bird that lives in Africa and eats bugs and parasites on large, African mammals. Elephants don't like them, though. Well, sometimes, elephants aren't the only ones who think the ox-pecker is nosey. You'll get my joke if you click here  

A talking dog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The post before this one, I wrote that this one would be funnier. Well, here's the funnier post...
(Sorry, I can't post the video directly on this blog post, but to see it, click right here.)
Yeah, I know! The family dog wanted food so it was actually SPEAKING!!!!!!!!!!!! Who says dogs only talk in cartoons?  Not the people who watched that video!

Back to the zoo

Yesterday, I went to the zoo for the first time in about two years, I went to the zoo. We're still not members of the zoo, but my dad's work* was paying for everything from the entering the zoo, to the sky ride. Because of that, we got to feed the giraffes for free! A few things have changed, like the new Australia exhibit, which has an indoor AND outdoor spot for the budgies (but we didn't get to feed them). Next post will probably be more funny...

*I'm not giving away personal information.     

Possibly dino DNA without the mosquito

Something out of the ordinary happened... according to a website, today. This is going to startle you as much as me... THEY FOUND RED BLOOD CELLS FOSSILIZED  THAT BELONG TO A DINOSAUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It was 75 MILLION years old!!!!!!!!!!!

I know! It's poorly preserved, though. Now, about that first sentence in this blog post, that was just ONE website. There are other websites with the same story. Amazingly, it's not as uncommon as you may think. More research needs to be done for scientists to find out if it's true. If it is true, than we could be on our way to an actual Jurassic Park!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Although, we're going to need to genetically modify them to not eat humans, and then there's the problem of making sure they will not change gender as they grow so they can actually all be female, and then to make sure they will not be able to escape even without electricity...   

Chameo-saurus

I haven't posted something for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time(O.K., not THAT long.) so now, here is my new post. This family studies a country for two weeks in the summer, and we can't do the same country until five years have passed. This week it's Yemen. My mom found a lot of videos about the animals in an island off the coast of Yemen. One of them is called the calyptratus. If you prefer a more easy pronunciation, it's also called the veiled chameleon. One more thing, I wanted to post about the brontosaurus being classified as its own species, but I kept forgetting.    

New, cool frog!

A new frog has been discovered in the part of the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. But this frog is not as ordinary as it sounds. This new frog can SHAPE-SHIFT! Although it can't shape-shift into a different animal, it's still very cool. Hear is what I mean by "shape-shift"; it can change

from having prickly skin to having smooth skin in about five minutes. To read more, click right over here.       

Ancient Mammals

I'm about to go to the museum, I need to post this fast. In China, two mammal species were discovered. They lived in the Jurassic. One probably lived in trees, and the other was probably a digger. You can find out more if  you click here.

Talkative birds

My parakeets are SO talkative! As I am writing this, my parakeets are doing rapid, silent chirps. A couple minuets ago, as I was doing my excersize, and there was one point where they were chirping so loud that they chirped over the loud music. Then sometimes, they don't make a sound, and just sit on one of their perches looking at me as if there're thinking, "What are you doing here? Don't you have more important things to do than watch us?" They are just so funny.

Denver zoo visit

A few days ago, I went to the Denver Zoo and had so much fun! There were so many animals, and we took so many pictures. We stayed longer than mom expected! Like I said, there are so many pictures. But I will only show a few.

Rico the fossa

Sleeping maned wolf

Capybara!!!!!!! 

Bactran camel 

Mongolian horse 

Asian elephant 

Of course, we saw more animals than just that. We also saw lions, a tiger, lorries and lorikeets, mongooses, hyenas, an ostrich... oh, there were just so many!

Introducing...the water bear!

Want to know about the animal I think is awesome and cute? Like small animals? Then meet...the tardigrade!! This animal lives just ... everywhere.The tardigrade (also known as the water bear.) can survive basically everything! To find out more check out this site.

Just a few facts...

My dad sent this photo of a quetzal. Did you know that a large pterasaur was named after this bird?If you didn't know, it's called the Quetzalcoatl.If you think it's in snow, your wrong. That's really moss(this bird lives in central and south america.).

Boat Poem

I wrote this poem today. My mother had assigned me to write about what I would do if I had a boat.

If I had a boat, I'd sail far and wide,
Not afraid of the storm, or a great big tide.
First I'd got to the Philippines, crossing the Pacific,
'Cause it's where I was born; it must be terrific!
I would then head to Japan and China, too,
To see a cute panda, wild or in a zoo.
I would sail to the North Pole,
To see polar bears, and not to be cold,
I'd sail south down to Europe and Germany.
I could fit in there then buy some taffy.
When I leave there, I will continue south
To see a hammer-headed bat with a lip mouth.
I would sail west to Rio de Janeiro
To go to the Amazon with so many birds, oh!
I would sail through the Magellan Strait
To see some llamas, just at lleast eight.
Then to go west, all the way to Hawaii,
The most tropical state, and often say, "Ay!"
When I get back home, I 'll use a microscope
To see bacteria? A great big nope!
I would see a TARDIGRADE*!

(I spelled "lleast" with two "l"s on purpose, and I don't know that they really say "Ay!" in Hawaii.)


* See one of my newer posts.