Ever Lost a Birdie?

[lplummer52]

My husband was getting ready to go out, so I thought I'd go for a swim. Birdie was with me as I was putting on bathing suit, etc. in the bedroom. I went out the door to the screened porch and callled her to come out, but she was busy with something she found on the floor. So I went out and got in the pool knowing sE'd fly to my husband as soon as I left. Eddie called out that he was leaving and I forgot to ask him if he'd put Birdie on the porch. I thought about that for a while and was suddenly concerned that Birdie might be in the house unsupervised. I called Birdie from the pool and tried to see if I could see her on the porch. She usually answers me with a loud chirp, but nothing. So I got out of the pool and came onto the porch, but no Birdie. I ran into the house calling her name, dripping wet, and went all over the house. No Birdie. Now I start to panic. I go into the courtyard where you must go through to get to the garage and called again, knowing this was crazy since if she'd gotten that far she was gone. I was about to call Eddie when I looked out the sliders onto the porch and there she was calmly eating from her playstand. Whew! She must have been on top of the hurricane shutters when I looked the first time. Silly Birdie!

 

[LaManuka]

OMG yes! We once “lost” a teeny tiny purple-crowned lorikeet called Sludge. He had a habit of hanging upside down from bath towels, curtains, people, anything he could hook a claw into really. One hot drowsy summer afternoon we looked around thinking "Gee, Sludge is quiet", and couldn't find him in any of his usual haunts. Well we turned the house inside out for over an hour looking for him EVERYWHERE, calling him but no answer, and we feared the worst. Eventually I found him hanging by two claws, upside down between some dresses I had left out for a final airing before putting them away, happy as could be, wondering what all the hubbub had been about! This was many years ago now and sadly he is no longer with us, purple-crowns being a pretty high-octane species he lived life at full speed until he finally ran out of steam after about 7 years or so with us. Still miss you little Sludge-monster!:smile015:

 

[noodles123]

Kind of related to losing birds:


When I was a kid, we spotted a blue parakeet in our large tree outside (had a parakeet as a pet at the time). We brought out some millet and it flew down to us (landed on my mom's hand). At the time, there was no real internet, and we called around etc and contacted vets, but never found the owner. Our neighbor had just lost a (beloved) parakeet from old-age, so she ended up adopting it when we couldn't find the owner. That night (after we found the bird), the temperature dropped like 40 degrees overnight, and it frosted hard. She probably wouldn't have survived, and she lived a really long time... (found her as an adult-looking bird when I was in 5th or 6th grade and she was still alive years after I graduated lol)always wondered about the person who lost her though.

Near Loss Story:

My uncle had an African Grey (wild-caught...it was the early 80s when he adopted...things were sketchy)..Anyway, my uncle forgot he had him on his shoulder and walked outside. The bird flew 50 feet or so into the neighbors tree when he got startled by the door shutting behind them. That was a VERY SCARY afternoon...My uncle tried everything to get him down and finally,he had to call someone who worked for the city in order to get a crazy extension ladder (and then he had climb the rest of the way up manually). When he got up there his Grey came down from the thin branches and hopped up. He rode down on his shoulder, but I just remember the panic and misery of those few hours! That bird was a fixture at all family gatherings (died last year from ABV/PDD.... sad)...Since he was wild-caught (and about 2 when my uncle got him) they didn't ever know for sure where he contracted it, but he didn't test positive until 2 years before his death. VERY SAD end, to a very happy rescue story...Thankfully years after the rescue!


ps: For those concerned, my bird lives in a totally different location and absolutely no exposure to any remnants of the sick bird occurred. Also, the Grey was never boarded, so rest easy (or at least know that my uncle's bird didn't spread anything around ).

 

[chris-md]

I’ve so lost my bird! Not outside, buuuut:

Long story short, we don’t secure his cage door nor his bedroom door properly before going to work in the morning. Come back 10 hours later and he was nowhere to be seen. Come to find him sleeping in his playstabd 50 feet away in another room!!

That could have gone wrong in so many ways, but he was safe and sound, and had himself a nice little adventure!

 

[beetory]

Once my Darling was startled and she flew off and we did not see where she landed. She is a very dark green color and our floor at the time was a dark dark brown. We all took careful steps while we were looking for her and calling out to her, she wasn't very vocal at the time because she was just kind of wary of us so we knew she wasn't going to help us find out where she was. We found after about 10 minutes of looking under a table.

 

[BoomBoom]

Without reading the main post, I started to panic thinking Birdie flew away! Whew! So happy all is well. I haven't experienced losing any of my birds but I can just imagine the insanity of it all.

 

[Billdore]

I lost Timneh outside I think the spring after I got her. I was as dumb as could be and took her outside with clipped wings. She got startled and flew over the house from the backyard probably higher and further than shes ever flown in her life. I panicked traffic roaring, got a few people in the neighborhood looking. going into backyards, and my neighbor 4 houses down said you looking for a parrot. alomst in tears now I say yes and in the bushes by the banister hiding was my baby. She whistled up a storm and latched onto my shoulder. gotta say the walk to the house was scary everyone wanted to see her and i'm like please let me get inside. She wouldn't leave my shoulder for an hour. She was just as scared as I was I think. So scary an unreal feeling of relief when she was found. Living in vermont it gets cold and tons of trees. I got very lucky that day like winning the lottery lucky.

 

[Sunnyclover]

I came home today and Finley had broken out of his cage and if I didn't have a camera on him I'd have no clue how he did it because ALL the doors to his cage were shut. Turns out he opened his food dish door after an hour of working at it and then carefully sholut it back when he left his cage. Anyways
..I couldn't find him for a bit when I got home but he was safe and sound and surprisingly did not poop all over the house. I decided to take him on my next errands of going to pick up papers from the vet and the store and dry cleaners. We'll see if he busts out again tomorrow during my hour workout...if so some adjustments will be made. Silly Fin.

 

[charmedbyekkie]

Yep, like Chris's story, but I had already left for work and my partner just needed to quickly pop out for an errand. He thought he locked Cairo's cage, but then he came back to no Cairo in his cage. Haha, he completely panicked, thinking I'd murder him when I'd come home in a few hours. So he dashed around the house, calling out. But Cairo didn't respond - he just sat on my piano in the middle of the living room, quietly watching my frantic partner. It took my partner a while to notice the bemused yet silent Cairo.

 

[ChristaNL]

Same here ... my greys would be out of the cage sometimes when I got home.
I just put it down to being forgetfull, not closing the doors properly ec.etc. (so basicly blaming myself), untill I discovered Appie would work at the little sidedoors and somehow spring the latch from the inside out -> and ALWAYS close it behind her again!

I should have known, she is almost as good at closing doors as opening them-
I keep losing her and finding her in the catcarier I use to transport them (door shut behind her of course)...

(Japie just closes doors, I have not seen him opening them, but who knows...)

=

I once lost a budgie to the great outdoors - from the aviary.
Just the usual "he was faster then I was through the door"

We got him as a stray as well (someone found him outside, it was a fierce winter), so maybe he went "home-hopping"?

(I lost him 2 summers after that first winter, never heard anything about him again.)
There were a lot of people with aviaries around at that time, so he could have found somewhere to live without any problems (if he did not get eaten of course).

 

[LordTriggs]

I once lost Rio, went to the bathroom and left him just doing his thang around. Came back out and didn't see him, went upstairs as he liked going there to play on the clothes airer and his boing was attached to the skylight, nothing.

Now the panic begins. I look in the wardrobe, behind the sofa, in cupboards, on top of them, in every conceivable nook and cranny I could think of. I slowly go to sit down and as I do I hear an angry squeal, I stand up thinking he somehow chewed his way into my chair and was stuck! as I turn I hear a little croak behind me again. Where had this idiot decided to hang out for roughly 10 minutes? On my back pocket!

For all their intelligence they can be pretty darn dumb!

 

[LaManuka]

It’s usually the smartest ones who get themselves in the most trouble

 

[lplummer52]

LordTriggs: I've had the exact same back pocket experience!

 

[LordTriggs]

at least I'm not the only one! Thank god I sit down slowly otherwise there would have been a pancake

 

[EllenD]

Oh yeah, I lost Bowie under the couch not long ago, he was hormonal and was "making himself a nest" under the couch with stuff he had collected. I kept calling and calling to him but he didn't answer, which was really concerning. I looked everywhere and couldn't find him, and after about 20 minutes I was certain that he had either gotten outside and he was gone, or he had died inside the house somewhere since he wasn't answering me...So i'm losing my mind, and I kept asking Lita, my Quaker, "where's Bowie Lita?" over and over again, and she just stared at me from her play-stand. Finally she flies over and lands on the top of the back of the couch and starts doing the "Quaker March" back and forth on the couch. So I look behind the couch and see nothing, but I hear him making this weird, soft, hormonal chirping. I look under the couch with a flashlight and there he is, completely fluffed-up into a ball of feathers, looking right at me but totally ignoring me, and talking to himself in half-bird, half-English jabbering...Long story short, he ended up charging at me and attaching to my hand and not letting go, falling off, then running back under the couch again, then charged at me again and attached to the skin on the top of my foot, until this time I grabbed him and then he snapped-out of his little hormonal "trance" that he was in, and he knew he was in trouble, and just flew to his cage...

Now all the furniture is blocked-off so they can't get underneath it ever again.

 

[LaManuka]

Thanx for starting up this thread lplummer52, I'm loving reading all the naughty bird stories

 

[GaleriaGila]

The Rbird sometimes tries to hide behind the living room drapes and fails to answer my calls, but there's about a foot worth of tail feathers sticking out from under the hem. I'm sure he wonders how I find him so fast.

That's the fun side of a happy ending.

Of course, we also hear about the tragedies... a bird that tries to hide and gets stepped on... a bird that disappears only to find a household hazard that ends in tragedy... a bird that makes it outside and is never seen again. When I hear those gut-wrenching stories, I always run around checking and bird-proofing the place!

These tails, happy endings and otherwise, are always good reminders, and I appreciate them. We love our birds so much!

 

[LaManuka]

Oh GaleriaGila you are so right! It's a fine that separates an amusing (mis)adventure from a full blown tragedy! I was doing some spring cleaning around the house one day with my ex-cockatiel Kang (Fang's predecessor) and was taking some bags of trash out to the bin when I realised I had walked a few steps out the back door with Kang still on my shoulder. She was fully flighted but definitely not an outdoor bird. I tried to quietly retrace my steps back into the house when something spooked her and she took off. I don't know who screamed louder, her or me, but she did a few laps around the house then disappeared behind our garage, I thought never to be seen again. About 30 seconds later she re-appeared, this time with a butcherbird in hot pursuit! For those unfamiliar with butcherbirds, beautiful as the are, they are a predatory bird and absolutely lethal to domestic feathery escapees like Kang! Well Kang then proceeded to crash into the guava tree in our back yard, falling exhausted in a heap in the undergrowth beneath the tree, with the butcherbird following her all the way down. I'm still barefoot in the yard watching this all unfold so at this stage there's no choice, I have to go leaping into the undergrowth with heaven-only-knows-what living in there, to get to her before the butcherbird does! Happily I managed to grab her and get her back into the house, both our hearts racing, wondering if the shock of all these events will kill her. Maybe 10 minutes later, she is happily preening and resettling as if nothing has happened and I'm the one still in shock!

 

[LaManuka]

Re above post, meant to say "It's a fine line....", don't seem to be able to edit it now... duh!!!!

 

[crazyforfeathers]

I can relate to this very much! I one thought I lost my conure and he was watching me from a curtain rod the whole time I was turning the living room upside down.