In Memory.. Lady Bird and EmnEm passed away together after escaping their cage just hours after their clutch of babies was born (Broken feeder).   Luckily we were able to foster the babies with the pair that lived in the cage next to theirs (next photo)

Also in Memory

We also shared our lives with 2 others who's passing was heart-wrenching.  A young female rescued from a nest of bullies and an old man (who bonded together and shared their nest).  After the eldest died of old age we the female passed away quickly - no bird could replace her partner.

Babies first sounds
Mona peeks her head into the nest to see what the racket is.  It took a while, but after a time I could hear the tiny "peep peeps" coming from the nest. It's a very soft sound to start off with.

This is Orville teaching the babies how to search for food.  We put soft cloths on the bottom of the cage as the nest was pretty high and the little ones were still learning how to fly.

This is the 2 brothers (Nemo and Cecil) They currently live together in the same cage (we have a few cages!) and spend the days calling to the Green African Finch who lives next door to them.

New Clutch (That's Mona sleeping on top of Orville keeping the eggs warm)
We finally allowed Mona and Orville to have a clutch of their own and they raised 2 chicks (names Mini and Leo). Mini and Leo are grown now and live together in the cage next door - we are not allowing them to breed - they just love each other and until we decide if we want to mix our birds up a bit they can stay this way)

Mini and Leo as infants

Foster Parents
This is the wonderful pair of Zebra Finches that fostered the five babies just hatched (That's Mona on the bottom and Orville on top).  They took over as parents after the parents passed away.

We were delighted to see that the babies were accepted by the new foster parents.   Here's the oldest of the chicks asking Orville for some supper. 

It was a bit alarming to see all these yellow lumps all over the chicks necks - but normal as it's their crop and they were feeding wonderfully.

The house gets smaller and smaller.. that's Mona in the nest. By this time Orville had given up trying to cuddle with Mona and had his afternoon naps out on a perch in peace.

You can see the colours starting to form on the baby finches now.  Mona still sleeps with the kids.

Helen - African Green Finch
This is our newest addition to the family. We rescued her from the pet store - no one wanted her because her head was bald and she was a very stressed out bird.  She's hard to take photos of as we are still getting her used to our family - most of her feathers have returned but she's still bald in spots.  We just dont know why.

Cecil showing off his feathers

New Hatchlings
These are the new baby Zebra Finch hatchlings being born.  Luckily our birds were generous enough to allow us to take photos of the entire process.

Five little heads start looking up. Um, yes, that's bird poop on the outside of the nest - you can't clean it until the birds have moved out.

After a while it started to get a tad crowded in the nest.  The birds REALLY started to chirp by this picture! You can see the Mona has an expression of "Phew! I'm tired" on her face. By this point both foster parents were napping whenever they could.

The babies were getting used to me taking pictures by now. 

Finally! The babies started to get brave and come out of the nest!

These are the 3 sisters - they are the hardest to take pictures as once one of them goes crazy? The other 2 follow suit and fly off in a million directions at once.

Leo continues to have bad "feather" days even now! This is him in his younger days before he turned his bright colours.

Nemo coming in for a landing