The New Blue Wonder Waxies

Today was sort of a rainy blue day, so Toby and I decided we needed a bird fix at our favorite local Bird Farm. I’ve written about the Magnolia Bird Farm a few times before. It’s like visiting a zoo except only for birds. The cages are big and they have all sorts of interesting varieties of birds and bird gear.

I fell in love with the Blue Capped Waxbills. We have Rosy Rumped Waxbills already and they are sweet little birds that mind their own business and don’t cause any trouble in the aviary. So of course I begged Toby for permission to get some more birds. It’s an addiction I think.

Adding another pair will bring our bird count up to 15. That’s FIFTEEN birds living in the aviary in my office. We do have a big cage but still. We officially ARE the crazy bird people. I justified adding two new birds by thinking they would offset our over population of brown spice finches. There’s just too much brown in that cage. Maybe adding some more Waxbills will even things out I thought. Maybe the Waxbills will band together fight off the Spice finches who love their life so much they had not one brood, but two last spring! I know my logic is faulty but I was blinded by the Blue Capped Waxbills vibrancy and cute round bodies. There is nothing I love better than a chubby little bird. Like Leontine’s for example. I inquired with the very friendly bird farm staff and they assured me that Blue Capped Waxbills are indeed very good natured and we shouldn’t have any problem. So that was that.

It’s a good thing Toby is just as much of a softie when it comes to birds as I am because I think we might have had a marital dispute if he had said no. I purchased them with my own earnings and out we went with two of the cutest new little blue birds that you ever did see. Zippity doo dah!

What we didn’t expect was how aggressively they took to their new cage. It’s normal for birds to be stand-offish while they are getting acquainted with the other birds but these two were no wall flowers. They jumped right out of their box and right up to the other birds to say hello. Then the male walked over to a long piece of grass laying on the bottom of the cage, popped it into his beak and proceeded to serenade the female with a funny little head bobbing song. I’ve captured a snippet of it here (1.1 meg quicktime movie). (and here is the non-hollywood version) Too bad the only digital video camera I had charged up was my spy camera. The movie is very bad quality with lots of background noise. You can hardly hear or see him, but he’s that little blur in the middle right-ish bobbing and serenading. I looped it 3 times so you won’t miss it. It was the most amazing thing! All this happened within the first 30 minutes of them being in their new cage! These are no shy birdies!

Toby got out his snazzy camera and took some lovely shots below.

Now can you see why I fell in love with the little blue wonder waxies?