Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Treats For Tweets # Chewy Influencer

I'm sending May flowers to everyone all this month.
 My birds are weird. Maybe all birds are weird, but these two are especially weird. We currently have two budgies. The green one is Norris and the blue one is Calder. They get along well and both like to sing. They greet us every morning with loud chirps and also chirp along when the dogs bark at the mailman and the trash truck. They're cheerful little members of the family.
As you can see in these awful pictures, they try to hide whenever they see the camera. I guess to them it looks like a big scary predator. If I open their cage to get a picture, they panic and start flapping around, so this is about as good as it gets.
I put their seed in a little dish on the bottom of their cage and Calder and Norris come down and join us for breakfast. They sit on the edge of their bowl and happily chomp on their seeds, throwing the husks all over the place. Birds are messy!

They do love treats and we often give them honey sticks which are just seeds stuck together with honey. Their very favorite treat, however, is spray millet. It seems to be irresistible and once they start on it, they can't stop till it's gone.

The weird part is that they don't come running to taste their treat as soon as I hang it in the cage. Instead they sit on the highest perch on the opposite side of the cage and stare at the treat. They don't take their eyes off the treat and they chatter softly to themselves. I can imagine the conversation:

Calder: What do you think? Is it safe?
Norris:  I don't know, it could be poison.
Calder: She's been good so far and hasn't tried to poison us.
Norris: A bird can't be too careful.
Calder: It looks like the last one and it was delicious.
Norris: I heard about a bird that ate a treat once and couldn't ever fly again after that.
Calder: Maybe we should just watch it for awhile.
Norris: Go try it if you want to.
Calder: I don't want to be first, you try it.
Norris: The last one was good, but this could be the bad one.
Calder: Let's wait and see what happens.

The silly pair do this act for two or three days every single time I give them a treat, even if they just finished one the day before. Finally they break down and try the treat and decide that it's so good they have to finish it. When I find the bare stick, I replace it and we go thru this act again. We both think it's hilarious.

This month Chewy offered some treats for our feathered family members. One was this bag of spray millet, their absolute favorite.
Each spray looks like this with lots of tiny seeds.
We used to fasten them to the cage bars with twist ties, but the birds chewed on the ties, so I found these clips that hold the sprays to the cage safely.
A few days ago I clipped one to the cage and we watched them discuss the merits of actually trying this treat. After only two days they took a chance and cleaned it off in no time.
There is one problem with millet. Each of those tiny seeds is encased in a tiny husk and they throw the husks out of the cage. There's plenty of cleanup involved with millet. I repeat, birds are messy!
 Chewy sent Calder and Norris this bag of spray millet at no charge to us in exchange for our honest review. We had to wait a few days until they actually decided to try the treat, but they both agreed that it was wonderful.


6 comments:

Bella Roxy & Macdui said...

How funny! Maybe there is truth to the term bird-brain. At least you don't have to constantly replace the seeds...Chirp-Out-Loud!

Molly the Airedale said...

How wonderful that the birdies got treats from Chewy! That's so funny that they stare at it instead of diving right in and enjoying it!

♥♥ The OP Pack ♥♥ said...

those two birds have their own way of keeping you guessing. We think it is great that chewy.com now lets the birds do some testing too. Mom would love to get a canary, but then you reminded her about the mess - she said forget it:)

Woos - Lightning and Misty

Two French Bulldogs said...

Bet those seeds are tasty
Lily & Edward

Marjie said...

Shannon's budgies always amuse us. She has left them with us for extended periods when they've gone on vacation, but not recently since she has Jeff and Cass both within half an hour of her (instead of 2 hours). I do love listening to them talk; I'm sure yours give you lots of enjoyment, too! But the seeds! They get everywhere! (I think Shannon's birdies need treats, since she's preoccupied with baby Nora).

Lapdog Creations said...

Sure looks like they enjoyed it! My parents' birds love those things too!