#we got millet (round guy to the left)

[archiepelago]

escape au where everything turns out relatively fine for all of our favorite guys . plus seb gets cats

[tastesoftamriel]

Emergency trip to Riften! (A long tale by Talviel)

[This is my first ever fanfic and I hope you guys enjoy it and let me know what you think! I haven’t done any creative writing in at least 2-3 years so apologies if it sounds a bit clunky. Anyway, happy reading!]

[EDIT! Due to the timeline of my new fics I have written, please note that this takes place on Tirdas, 19th of Sun’s Dawn, 4E 207. Sorry if this is a bit confusing but I promise this slots into a chapter that you’ll see in about four weeks!]

I was in Bruma for a week teaching a Hammerfell-style cooking class when a messenger delivered a letter that my mother was ill. Thankfully Bruma is just on the border of Skyrim so I got on my horse and set off straight away.

When I finally arrived in Riften, I was relieved to discover my father had contacted a healer to work on my mother. It turned out she had contracted rockjoint, because apparently she was out in the woods picking mushrooms when a wolf bit her! Thankfully she killed the wolf and suffered no serious injuries otherwise, but needless to say my father and I were peeved she didn’t say anything sooner (damn Imperials and their pride). The good news is that the bite is healing nicely and the worst of the rockjoint should be gone within a week or so, optimistically.

With that taken care of, I decided to wander around town a bit. The first stop was The Bee and Barb. Keerava and I were overjoyed to see each other as I hadn’t been home in over two years. Luckily it was early afternoon, so aside from the lunch regulars (who were surprised to see me), the inn was quiet and we got to spend a few hours exchanging news and gossip. We shared a flagon of mead with Talen-jei (who really only ever tolerated my presence, but was pleasant enough to me), and I was on my way again.

I was strolling through the marketplace when I heard a very familiar “Lass!”. I turned bright red, because of course it was none other than my ex-boss from the Guild, Brynjolf, running yet another scam. He pulled me aside and whispered that his new recruit had never turned up for the heist, so now he was stuck awkwardly selling skeever repellant when some pockets needed picking.

What a moral dilemma. I had promised I’d left my life of crime behind me, but deep down I’ve always been loyal to the Guild, and especially Brynjolf, who had always treated me with nothing but kindness and respect, even after I resigned. It doesn’t help that I’ve been in love with him since I first laid eyes on him either.

So what’s a woman to do? I was dressed as an innocent traveller, so nobody would suspect me. In a matter of minutes, my skilled fingers had lifted two hefty pouches of gold, several pieces of fine jewellery and amulets, a few potions…and a sweetroll (old habits die hard). I tucked my prizes into my worn travel sack and headed down to the cistern to unload the cargo.

Whoever wasn’t on a job basically screeched when they saw me. I was the Guild’s youngest recruit when they picked me up (I was just 16 at the time), and they were astounded to see me as a well-travelled young woman. In fact, I was only 17 during the plight of Alduin and worked with Brynjolf and Karliah to bring the corrupt former head of the Guild, Mercer Frey, down. I exchanged hugs with Sapphire, Rune, Thrynn, and Cynric, the old timers. They introduced me to a fair number of new faces, then hauled me off to The Ragged Flagon.

Vex, Delvin, Tonilia, and Vekel nearly fell off their seats when they saw me. Of course, Vex and Delvin immediately tried to bribe me with jobs, thinking I’d returned for good. The disappointment on their faces when I explained why I was back in Riften made me feel so guilty I almost wished I was back in the Guild. “Well the least you could do then, o cultured one, is to cook us all dinner and save me the effort!” Vekel bellowed. Now that I could happily do.

Apparently the Guild was doing brilliantly. They had a total of 35 members now, and 20 were in Riften at the moment. I scratched my head, wondering how I could pull off a feast at such short notice, but I’d been put in worse situations (one trip to Whiterun had me yanked into the Jarl’s kitchen by two very scared chefs who had apparently been notified two hours before that dignitaries were arriving and a feast for 30 was needed). So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

Brynjolf came back to see what I had found as I was in the middle of mincing garlic. I gestured to my travel sack, not wanting to get my fragrant hands over everything. He seemed pleased with the loot, but puzzled by the sweetroll. “Is this yours, lass?” He asked. When I blushingly said it was for him, he laughed and gave me a hug, thanking me for the gesture. I nearly fainted right then and there.

Three hours later, I’d accomplished it. A hearty meal for 20, comprised of rabbit millet pilaf, West Weald corn chowder, a Redguard venison pie, and the famous Jerall View Inn carrot cake (one must never omit dessert from a meal!). Vekel rolled out a barrel each of beer and mead, and enough wine to get a village drunk for a week. Sapphire went to round up the stragglers, and soon we were all sitting at The Flagon digging in. I brought news of the world, and the Guild happily told me of the best jobs they’d had since I was gone.

As the night wore on and the booze flowed freely, slowly the Guild members disappeared back to the cistern with full bellies and happy hearts. By two, the only ones left at The Flagon were me, Brynjolf, and Vekel, who had promised to clean up. Brynjolf and I had broken out the bottles of sujamma and matze I’d been hoarding since my last trip to Raven Rock, and were playing “Never have I ever”. Well, we learned a lot of things about each other that night. Drunk and laughing, I leaned my head on Brynjolf’s shoulder and he stroked my hair affectionately. “We’ve missed you, lass.” He said. “I’ve missed you.”

I almost startled myself sober. “You…have?” I stuttered, unable to believe my ears. “Yup.” He said. “You were one of our finest recruits, just…so young. You’ve grown into a fine woman, lass, and even though you’re no longer running with the Guild, I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished. You’re the pride of Riften, in case nobody’s mentioned it yet.”

Vekel cleared his throat, having clearly been eavesdropping on our conversation and seeing where it was heading, even though blockhead me was too drunk to figure it out yet. “Well, you two have a nice night, morning, whatever. I’m off to bed.” He declared loudly, before disappearing home.

I stood up, wobbling. “He’s got a point, it’s getting late. I should probably head back to my parents.” I mumbled. Brynjolf stood up to steady me, his hands unusually tight around my waist. “You needn’t go, lass. Riftweald Manor is still ours, where we store our extra things. Grab a bottle of wine, and let’s go, better than waking everyone in the cistern up.” I grabbed a bottle of Alto wine from the counter. “You know me far too well, Brynjolf.” I giggled, leaning on him for support as we stumbled our way to the manor.

When we got in at last (Brynjolf had left the key behind so we drunkenly had to pick the lock), he gesticulated around, showing me what the Guild had done with the place since I’d been gone. The place was lavish, decorated with the best finds from certain jobs. Maps adorned the walls, pinned with the locations of targets. Large empty chests were everywhere, ready to be filled and brought down to the vault. It was certainly much nicer than when Mercer had left it to rot.

Brynjolf and I sat cross legged on the biggest bed we could find, leaning comfortably on the soft pillows and passing the bottle of wine between us. We talked about nothing in particular, breaking out in fits of laughter for no reason. Even while being drunker than Brenuin in Whiterun, I was both happy and astounded to see the personal side of Brynjolf I had never seen while working for him.

I said something to him, I don’t remember what, and he swatted me over the head with a pillow, and the remnants of the bottle of wine went flying across the room. “Oi, what is this, the Dark Brotherhood?” I cackled. “You just killed the wine!” “Fuck the wine, fight me you wench!” Brynjolf hollered, hitting me over the head again with the pillow. “Wench? WENCH? Well I never!” I shouted back, grabbing another pillow and whacking him with it. Soon there were feathers everywhere and we were cackling like hagravens. He pulled my hair and I pulled his. Soon we were tumbling across the bed, flailing about and feebly slapping at each other.

Then the unexpected happened. Well, unexpected to me anyway; as I mentioned before I am a blockhead. He grabbed my head and kissed me, hard. Startled, I pulled back. “Brynjolf, what are you doing?“ I stuttered, unable to believe what had just happened. “What I always should have done, lass. Well, since you were a little older, anyway.” I laughed, and leaned in. “I can’t believe it. I’ve been in love with you since I first saw you.” “I wouldn’t call this love, lass, but let’s just enjoy tonight, while you’re still here.”

If you’ve made it this far, dear reader, I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on the rest. Needless to say, I stumbled back to my parents’ house sometime the next afternoon with my clothes in disarray, while Brynjolf made his unsteady way back to the cistern. When I got to the house, I was relieved to see my mother was asleep and resting. My father, on the other hand, was sitting at the dining table tinkering with something. He grinned at me widely. “So, the classic Nordic walk of shame. Glad to see you got that from me at least.” He laughed. I groaned and fell into my bed, still thinking about the surreal night before.

[windycityparrot]

Zen And The Art Of Budgerigar Maintenance

budg·er·i·gar ˈbəjərēˌɡär noun a small gregarious Australian parakeet that in the wild is green with a yellow head. It is popular as a pet bird and has been bred into a variety of colors. This article about budgies was originally written April 14, 2010. Fast-forward to the fall of 2016 when we acquired Bacon our first budgie. Today our family includes 4 budgies, Bacon, Eggs, Toast, Jam which we appropriately named the Breakfast Club. (and Peaches our Rescue Senegal too!) "If you going to talk the talk then you must walk the walk" has been said an infinite number of times over the years. Cleaning and feeding 4 millet loving budgies and a Senegal on a daily basis provides lots of insight which allows me to understand what all of you go through daily to one degree or another. Before resetting this journey: Every morning the light over the Breakfast Clubs cage turns on, and they instantly begin to chat, plan and plot their day. It's not loud, more like bursts of little chortles. You can hear the four different voices. Those 4 voices are easy to focus on and bring a smile to my face. It somehow allows me to ignore the UPS truck's emission noise in the sound of its downshifting transmission in the front as it slows for the speed bump and the occasional garbage truck making its rounds in the alley. I stand in front of the cage with a grin. They all usually freeze when I approach and huddle in a corner as my arm goes in to switch out the water and seed dishes from the night before. But I can sit at my desk for my 10 feet away and watch them. They're always in motion and I like my flowers with wings. Currently, all 4 budgies are flighted. It's unlikely that three of them have ever really been out of any cage. Bacon who was extracted from a tree across from the Birdie Boutique did fly out of the cage once and flew directly into the screen of an open window clearly having plotted her escape in advance. Toast got out once and landed on the crown molding 9 feet up in the air, which is why we keep a butterfly net next to the cage. Our plan is this fall to clip all 4 bird's wings at one time. This will allow them to be outside of the cage with far less likelihood of injuring themselves. It will also give us an opportunity to begin to socialize with the birds which I believe can be done at any age. We suspect all four budgies are fairly young. Because they are all rescues we have no idea of their precise age. We think it would be fun once acclimated to allow them free flight in our high ceiling apartment. As you know we preach free flight but always with the birds safety in mind first hand. Birds have been flying with no restraint for the past 99 million years. Then around 327 BC Alexander the Great was gifted an Alexandrian parakeet. Think about it, have you ever approached a bird out-of-doors? Pigeons in the city will walk away from you not fly but probably won't engage you. You can have the fullest of backyard bird feeders with wild birds happily stuffing their crops but will fly off the moment you approach the feeders. Whether you're in the North American woods or the rain forests of South America, approach a bird and it will fly away. So some guy who wanted to suck up to Al the Great said "that's no fun, let's put the little brother in a cage so we can watch it is much as we want because it can't fly away, in a cage." Thus the caged bird keeping timeline is now officially been set to start at 327 BC and stops at - now. That's 2389 years of humans keeping pet birds, yet in the past 15 years bird ownership in America has slipped from 5.4% of American households to 3.1% of American households. It appears that 2% of American households simply turned all those birds over to rescues. Because all the avian rescues in America are now overflowing with unwanted pet birds and parrots. So we can conclude that we haven't learned a lot about keeping birds as pets in 24 centuries. The Internet is awash with information related to the captive bird. Some are very good. Some of the information about pet birds is very bad. What's even more frustrating is, it's hard to find a single repository of everything you need to know for keeping your particular species of bird. For those of you who don't know we have more than 1000 pages of information right here on our blog. We see our bird care blog (and eCommerce website) not as a two-dimensional screen be it desktop, tablet or smart phone. It's an organic source of information always changing always updated. You are reading this content from August 25, 2017 which is refreshing original blog post from seven years. Further we encourage you to reach out on the top left side of our website "Ask Us Anything" asking any bird related question you have. You will get a personal response quickly.  We know whatever bird care problem you are having is not an isolated issue. Someone else is also seeking a solution. They may not be a regular reader of our bird care blog but hopefully at some point their query will be answered (or started) with a Google search related link. It looks like I've been off road, so let's get back to the main highway. We learned this firsthand when we rescued Popcorn from some bushes not far from the Birdie Boutique. She had clearly flown's out of somebody's door or window, because when we got her home she could fly but she panicked and flew into a wall and lost herself behind an entertainment unit (which is why we talk about stick training) We also learned cockatiel's wings grow back very fast, about 90 days in that they can fly very fast, up to 30 mph https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugqvw3JZPZk We clipped her wings and after about four weeks I would start flipping her a foot away from the cage on to the cage, increasing my distance daily and weekly. She caught on quickly and became a precise flyer. When you have a flighted bird in your home you learn to walk backwards through the doors so you don't crush a bird or slam a door in a birds beak. One day I was walking backwards, her cage immediately to my left. She was on the bird cage top Booda rope perch which meant we had about a 2 foot separation. I got into the hallway and started to close the door slowly yet with only 6 inches of separation between door and jam she came perfectly perpendicular to the ground without a feather touching a piece of wood, indicating to me we needed to move through the house with more vigilance. It's taking Peaches a bit longer (months) to learn landings. Fortunately she's very slow and deliberate although clearly isn't making the same snap decisions on where to land that Popcorn did. It's as though she knows that when she misses that top Booda rope perch she has a fallback of her nearby foraging box or the cage cover left on top which gives her plenty to grip and cease flight. We have a pretty clear idea on how you deal with the Breakfast Club budgie's wing clipping and flight training process. Feathered factoid: We rarely clip our birds wings but when we do it's in the bathroom which leaves little room for escape. Some tips on holding and toweling your birds. We will allow them to sit on the top of their cage endeared to by our clipping on a big fat millet spray. And then one by one begin some human to bird social interaction until they understand my name is not Freddy Krueger. I'm the guy who supplies them with millet a.k.a. birdie crack. Take them off the top of the cage, and let them fly back to the cage and do that repeatedly. And like I'm now encouraging Peaches to fly to various play stands where she knows she is safe all while attempting to teach her to fly back to me, I will be doing something similar with the four budgies. We feed Peaches our Senegal parrot frozen thawed vegetables daily and she digs right in. Although our budgies enjoy fresh romaine lettuce daily it has been hard to gain their acceptance of vegetables. They haven't touched the thawed frozen (too firm?) so we bought some canned vegetables, mushed them up and coated them with millet seed which went over as well as a child with fresh Brussels sprouts. The biggest lesson we have learned in dealing with our loyal readers and customers is that the best tool you can have with any bird is patience. In the wild birds spend 60% of the time trying to find food and 40% of their time trying not to be food. They instinctively suspect anything but another bird of their own species to possibly bring harm. A constant feedback touch point we get is "my bird won't play with his new toy", "my bird is freaked out because I changed a couple of things in its cage", "my won't touch any new food I offer her". Remember the birds life, change can take time. The flip side of that is the more change you offer your bird the more easily your bird will except change. Peaches eats anything we offer. Often from a broken open bag in deliveries. Even something like Goldenfeast Colossal parrot food, which we mixed with Higgins Safflower Gold and Hagen Tropimix. I simply pull out the large nuts that she cannot crack and crack them so little goes to waste other than what she throws out. Even though she does not like them, I leave in the dried chili peppers and cinnamon sticks from the Safflower Gold mix just to give her something more to do, ie "pick them out" which is a subtle form of foraging and enrichment. The 4 budgies split a millet spray four ways every other day. When introducing canned vegetables, we smother them in millet seed which looked as though the mixture remained untouched over the day. No millet sprays were served although we did leave their basic seed which is currently Higgins Vita Parakeet, which we top with Kaylor of Colorado dried mixed vegetables (those always get eaten totally) switching off with Higgins egg food. The little buggers will not starve. The one downside here is we are often vacuuming. Anyone who serves millet sprays to their birds know what I mean. With that introduction, let's check into the way back machine Video and see what I had to say seven years ago. Begin original article When we refer to parakeets we're actually talking about the "Budgerigar." The word comes from the aborigines of Australia, the Parakeet homeland. They're closely related to lorikeets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAiMIwbilB4 Budgies are small, seed eating birds and wild Budgies are found throughout parts of Australia. They've been around an estimated 5,000,000 years and although they're naturally green and yellow with black markings, you'll now find them in blues, yellows, greys and some even have small crests.   They're popular pets as they are inexpensive to buy and to maintain. And although many young people start with a pet parakeet early in life, we don't hear about longevity much. I'm reminded of a local bird club meeting I attended several years ago. Dr. Karen Becker was one of the guest speakers. She told the story of doing intake on a new patient, a Budgie. The woman who brought in the Budgie in was older, late seventies, early eighties I recall. When asked how old the Parakeet was, the woman responded 26 years old. Not seeing a lot of double decade Budgies, the first question Dr. Becker had, "how are you so sure of the age"? The woman promptly took out a receipt from the (manila folder she carried in) from F.W. Woolworths. She had paid $5.00 for the bird, twenty six years earlier. 

When asked what the woman attributed the long life of the bird, her answer was "we've shared a cup of decaffeinated green tea every morning since I brought him home". (We'll reserve a discussion about tea and pet bird care in another article)  Budgies can be finger tamed with a lot of patience and could possibly have a vocabulary of a 100 words or more. Growing up, my next door neighbor, Mrs. Massey had a budgie that spoke phrases in Greek (she was Greek), Italian, Spanish and English. Budgies don't need a big cage, although bigger is better. Like many birds its easier to bond with your Keet if its a solo bird - that said Budgies tend to be happier with another Budgie or 2 (or more) in the bird cage. We really like this Prevue bird cage for multiple budgies as the 26 inches bird cage width allows a certain amount of flight. 

Budgies are primarily seed eaters but love all sorts of foods. A good seed blend should include millet, canary seed and oat groats. A seed only diet can lead to malnutrition and may cut their lives short. Fresh foods should be introduced on a regular basis.  Bird toys and Parakeet accessories should be size appropriate. For a complete selection of Budgie toy, accessories and bird cages. Find Budgie Supplies here>> written by mitch rezman approved by catherine tobsing your zygodactyl footnotte https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGqtH5YWBMM   Click to Post