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I often check my Site Meter to see how people find my blog. Sometimes it's a referral from another blog that links to mine - (thank you Sharon, Laura, Lynn, other Laura ...) Often people find it through a Google search - usually the search terms are something like "Lake Gaston", "gouldian finches", "finch aviary" or "indoor aviary". Every once in awhile it's a little wierd like the person who searched for "snake haiku" and found their way to my blog. Hmm... yes, I had a post about a snake in our house last year and a totally separate post about my nephew winning a haiku contest, but alas, no snake haiku in this blog.
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But in the event that another googler comes looking for a snake haiku - here's (a very bad) one about the black rat snake that we found in our house last year, who was kind enough to leave through the same little hole (now plugged with caulk) without eating any of my little finches.
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Black snake slithered in -
And left with empty tummy.
My finches thank you.
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I don't have a photo of the snake, but here's a photo of some of the finches that he didn't eat.
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Oh, and for the record, mine was not the only blog that showed up when I googled "snake haiku" - two of my favorite blogs also made the list - Julie Zickefoose & Dharma Bums. I didn't delve into them to see if they had really posted a snake haiku, but I suspect not.
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gouldian finches
A woman from Wake Forest North Carolina sent this photo to me in July. She had titled the photo "wierd bird." Of course it did not look wierd to me - I usually have 20+ gouldian finches flying around in my indoor aviary. What was wierd, was that these birds were seen flying free near a resevoir in Wake Forest and not in their native country, Australia. A man at the museum told the woman that she had seen a gouldian finch, probably an escaped pet and that it probably wouldn't survive the winter. He's probably right. My birds really like warm temperatures.
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The woman who sent me the photo, never mentioned the bird on the right. I'm 95% sure that it's a juvenile gouldian finch, even though its beak looks a little strange in this fuzzy photo. So was there a breeding pair on the loose that raised babies in the wild??? or did Daddy & baby both escape from their cage or aviary???
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gouldian finches
a couple of weeks ago -
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rose
Wow - this squirrel has a really long tail!
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squirrel
Mealworms are a popular snack for the birds around here. Titmice, Carolina wrens and bluebirds all love them. The bluebirds are the bossiest (most bossy?), so if they're around the others seem to back off.
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bluebirds
A couple of months ago Susan posted a comment on one of my posts about my tame society finch, Honeycomb. She was disappointed that her two parakeets weren't very tame, and thought it might have been different if she had gotten only one. She ended her comment with "But I wanted them to be happy".
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Right then I decided that Honeycomb needed a bird friend. Sure, he was happy as long as he was out of the cage and hanging around with us, but what about the times when we weren't around? Enter Taffy... I hand-raised Taffy a few years ago. Like Honeycomb he was very tame and I kept him in the flight cage with my other tame birds, letting him and the others out each day for some play-time. Last fall his best bird friend died, and I moved him into the aviary so he could make some new friends.
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Would he be a good companion for Honeycomb? After a year in the aviary, would he still be tame enough to hop onto my hand so I would be able to get him back into the cage when play time was over? Yes and Yes.
So now Honeycomb has a roomie. I think the motto for society finches is "love the one(s) you're with" and it took them about 2 minutes to become best buddies. Honeycomb still loves hanging around with us. Taffy's a bit more independent but he still loves his head rubs.
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society finches
