Singing for his supper

We've been getting a lot of visits from a group of butcher birds just lately.

We usually give them pieces of raw mince and there are a couple of them that will actually eat out of our hands. One in particular we've nicknamed Gandalf.

Gandalf is a juvenile and therefore he's grey where older birds are usually black, hence the name Gandalf the Grey. Apart from eating out of our hands, he has a habit of sitting on the window ledge and watching us in the kitchen.

Butcher birds are probably one of the best singers of any bird I know. When they get together in a group they can be quite loud, but when one sings alone it can be very pleasant to listen too.

Below is a video I shot of Gandalf just the other day. I'm not sure if he was singing to me so I would feed him, or whether he was singing to another butcher bird sitting in one of our flower pots.



I was going to say, why would you want to keep a bird in a cage when you have this sort of thing in the wild. I'd feel like a hypocrite though, as Sammy the cockatiel is coming back to live with us soon. We're also thinking of becoming carers now that Donna has a bit more time at home, so we may end up with a couple of injured or orphaned birds in cages soon.