Hi! I'm Finchy, a chestnut pied society finch. Mom called me "Leonardo daFinchy" because she thought I was a boy-bird at first. I'm a small bird; I only weigh about 16 grams--as much as Fig Newton cookie!Mom rescued me from a pet store on September 1, 2000. She came into the pet store to buy seeds for her cockatiels, then noticed me breathing very hard while hobbling around on the bottom of a cage. Imagine her surprise when she saw one of my legs was deformed and broken! Even though she didn't know about finches, she took me home anyway.
A Vet Man looked at my leg and said my right leg was deformed and broken. He also told Mom that I had permanent nerve damage; that meant my leg wouldn't work ever again. To make matters worse, the long toe on my left leg was dislocated from when I got hit with a net. You can see how my foot is locked in a permanent "v"-shape. My longest toe is also missing. Oh, well. Things like that happen in life. I'm just glad Mom likes the poem about "being your brother's keeper" because that's what she is to me.
I couldn't stand up well at all. Mom put me in a hospital cage for one month. During this time, I learned how to balance, groom, and bathe. Mom said I was very a special bird. She bought me my own cage and built a platform inside of it so I could rest there during the day.
First, I learned how to navigate the cage, then I tried using the stick perches. By November, I figured out how to use the perches. Here's a picture of me on one of them. I rest my injured leg on the perch, but the back toe sometimes sticks out.
In December, I decided to surprise Mom by perching on a food cup and playing with a cockatiel pacifier toy. Mom gave me all kinds of good stuff to eat: millet, oats, scrambled eggs, rice, pasta, and wheatgrass. I also got half-hour grooming sessions each night. I thought Mom would like it if I talked to her, so I would sing, "Brr-eee, brr-eee, brr-eee!" like a cricket and tell her, "Pick, pick!" when she invaded my territory. When she gave me special food treats, I would get excited and say, "Week-week, week-week."
I started getting lonely in that cage, so I decided to make friends with the bigger birds in the house. The one named Misty used to sit on her eggs a lot. I would fly into her cage and chatter my beak at her. Then, when she would get off her eggs, I would sneak up next to them and make "whirring" sounds to see if they had babies in them. Nope!
After a while, Mom realized how smart I was. She taught me to land on the coffee table. She used scrambled eggs to coax me there. Hey, I never turn down scrambled eggs! I even landed on Mom a few times so she knew how much I loved being with her. I also joined the rest of the flock at dinner time and drank out of my own personal drinking cup (a bottle cap). This is a picture of me being groomed by my Dad. I loved when he did that to me!
In August of 2001, Mom got me my own friend. His name was Vinny, and he was a very, very sick finch. Mom used to take me to visit Vinny in his incubator during the day. Sometimes she would let us play on the floor together. We loved to take baths and play with a cockatiel pacifier toy. Vinny even started grooming my feathers! I loved to snuggle with him, too.
When Vinny got well, Mom let him live with me. I showed him where to perch and find food. He was a good finch, so I said he could be my boyfriend and we fell in love. Vinny liked to date me and bring nesting materials to me. On October 25, I laid my first egg! I had four more, but none of them had babies inside. Still, it was fun to sit on them together with Vinny.
I loved Vinny so much, that I made a lot of eggs with him. This is what my eggs looked like. Small, huh? In March of 2002, one of them finally hatched! The baby, Dali, lived only ten days, but Mom said we took real good care of our baby. I liked to sit on Dali to keep her warm. I had to learn what "share" meant, though. Vinny always wanted to feed Dali at the same time I did. This is Dali (photo below, left). She was so small, she could fit on a penny!
We had three more babies in April (photo above, right). Tiger, Ty, and Tagi lived for only nine days, but Vinny and I took great care of them. I love being in a house with so much love!NOTE: On June 4, 2002, Finchy passed away. You can read her tribute by clicking HERE.
Photos and text Copyright 1998-2006 by Keri Krause. Please do not use this material without my permission. Thank you.
Last updated: 8/10/06
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