I made over 1238 video clips, and 8 Hours of footage, and spent over 100 days documenting my budgie’s growth and Development.
Here’s how it started: As always, I was documenting the growth of baby budgies. Their development is fascinating and full of surprises. There’s always something unexpected and something new to learn. This time, however, I was completely unprepared for what came next.
For the first time, I tried breeding budgies in the aviary. Initially, I didn’t want to, but their breeding hormones were through the roof. They started destroying the aviary walls and floors, even making a hole in the wall to try nesting there. During the breeding phase, females can be very aggressive. They may hurt or even kill other females, invade other nest boxes, destroy eggs, or harm chicks.
I tried to solve the issue by providing plenty of nest boxes, but…
And it worked—kind of. The aggression stopped, the females claimed their nest boxes, and eventually, I even got my first egg…
The development was almost too perfect to be real… I even had my first egg hatch, and the baby budgie was healthy, being fed on time by the parents.
One calm morning, I was greeted by the sweet chirps of my budgies. But then I noticed Bella, my female, behaving strangely. As I’ve learned, there’s always something behind the behavior of budgies that requires attention. Sure enough, right in front of my eyes, Bella flew into another female’s nest box, where there was a hatched baby budgie. That could only mean one thing—Bella wanted to get rid of the eggs and chicks and claim the nest for herself. It was a sign of aggression… potentially even murder.
Well, there will be no more experimenting. Nestbox breeding in my aviary is now forbidden and will never be repeated. One of the baby budgies almost died, but thankfully, no other birds were harmed during this breeding season. Meanwhile, the breeding pair has been separated in my room in a breeding cage, and more eggs are hatching. Sadly, one baby budgie did not make it.
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