 Hello my fellow Snifers, Flighters and Hatchlings! My name is Marlene McCohen and I want to welcome you to my channel. This is Leo and he is pretty much my emotional support bird. We have some sad news today on our channel um that I might as well just come right out and say because I know you guys are going to be wondering what happened or what the news is and basically our little Finchi has died, passed away. I'm sure you guys of course want to know what happened. Well there was nothing specific, no telltale signs of sickness, no accident or anything like that. He was just found at the bottom of his cage in the morning and he had already passed. I've had Finchi for about four years um and I don't know how old he was when I got him but I did talk to a lot of people this weekend too when they got their Finches um they were already a year old or sometimes two years old so I honestly don't know how old Finchi was but I did have a good four years with him. I wasn't there when Megan found him at the bottom of the cage and so I was called with the news and um oh it breaks my heart. It really does because Finchi was so special. I have so many great pictures of Finchi sitting on my tree and you know hanging out on my shoulder and hanging out in my room. He was just such a good sport. I'm really happy that I got him Fiona. I'm so happy that in this last year he had somebody to cuddle with and be friends with. I just loved their relationship. Immediately they were very happy with one another which means now that Fiona is alone and Fiona doesn't have a partner and I just can't have a Finch be without a partner. Really the only two options in this situation are to get another Finch for Fiona or give Fiona to somebody. I decided that I want to get another Finch for Fiona. I want to see her have that friendship. I will tell you guys that this is a fairly recent but it didn't just happen. It happened about a month ago. It's hard for me to make these videos. As much as I love filming I'm not the person to pick up a camera in an emergency or in the setting of grief. I'm a real person. I need time and in emergency situations I need to focus on the emergency. You know you need two hands and you need a calm mind and you need focus in situations and it's the same with grief. I took some time before making this video. Fiona has had her grieving period. Fiona's had about a month or so to really just kind of grieve over Finchy. You got to give your bird that time so we did give that time to Fiona and now she is ready for a friend because I can't see her alone anymore. That's something that you'll be seeing coming up. We had some really good times. I took Finchy on some day trips. I took Finchy to the grocery store before in a carry-on. I took Finchy to choose Fiona. Finchy has dad in my office with me just kind of flying around sitting on my trees sitting on my shoulder knowing whatever he kind of wanted to do and I loved that like he had such a special temperament and if you look at him like close up in photos he's just so beautiful and special. I didn't know how well I could you know bond with a Finch and hang out with a Finch. In all those great times we're so amazing because I honestly wish I could have showed them more but I don't know. I didn't sometimes or just you know things are for myself also. It's on timing because I just realized recently how much you guys enjoyed the Finchy content. I thought you know this is a parrot channel. You guys might not be interested in that and I wish I would have showed it more. I've learned a lot more about Finches. I keep learning more about Finches. I would like to invite somebody on the channel to talk about some Finch care. I mean I can always show you my Finch care and I do and I try. I believe you can bond with any bird. It just depends on you know how you live with your bird. A lot of you asked me how I got Finchy to be so tame and to be honest with you although I did do a video about it I know a lot of you are looking for these specific tips and tricks and and that is so useful. Like there are so many things you can do to get a bird to kind of adjust to you slowly and patiently and with Finchy it was just me hanging out with Finchy and that's how we bonded and I do that a lot with birds. You know it's a lot of patience and just keeping them in your environment and and eventually they gain some trust and surprisingly with Finchy that happened really fast. A lot of you saw like this small cage that I had for Finchy that would sit in the middle of kind of like the island in my kitchen and even though it was a small cage Finchy didn't you know Finchy would hang out with me in my office but what I really discovered is that Finchy loves being in the middle of action when I transferred him to a bigger cage he would like sit at the bottom because he couldn't see anything and so we really had to make some adjustments all the time. When he was in the middle of the island I learned his calls and he had a call for like what he wanted and he had a call for like when he got what he wanted which was so incredibly cute. When we would eat he would give me this call like yo where's my food too and then you know I'd give him his egg his vegetables different things and then he would eat and then he'd make like this beautiful call after like thank you and it was really I think a good part of me learning to understand and communicate with him and for him to understand that I understand him which is a huge part of taming and training and bonding with birds just showing that you're willing to accept and understand what they want really teaches them that their vocalizations and communications are valid listened and understood when a bird um feels that way they'll vocalize more they'll communicate better and they will find new ways to convey things to you and I felt that Finchy was able to do that there's one thing I want to talk a little bit about and I think I should probably make a different video about it a more specific video I think it might be of interest to you Finchy had a mate when I got Finchy and they would breed and have babies none of them really lived or survived they didn't really have the skills to take care of them I'm not one to get into breeding of birds is a lot of care and you got to be really educated on what you're doing and Finchy's they breed so easily but I did want Finchy to have a friend and a mate of course so some of you right in the comments things where I realized that this may not be clear when I chose Fiona for Finchy Fiona is actually an African Finch and Finchy was an Australian Finch and because of that they couldn't mate so they could be partners and they could give each other some companionship but they wouldn't be able to mate and I'll do the same thing looking for a mate for Fiona however on the flip side it's not that simple you definitely want to get educated on what kind of Finchy's can be together because there are aggressive Finchy's as well and there are species that will not work together and could be a danger to one another I feel like that's just a little bit important to touch on just because I see kind of a little confusion in the comments about that I think the confusion comes in because I have the hut for them to sleep in because Finchy had actually gotten used to that and what even when he was alone he liked to sleep in his hut so even though he had that he was not able to mate with Fiona and they didn't two days before this happened I feel really happy about this I took Finchy out and I cuddled him and I kissed him I gave him actually a little bit of little footsie washing I'm glad that I did have that last moment with him I wish I had more answers is you know kind of more of a surprise that's happened sometimes I'm definitely heartbroken Finchy is like out of the finches he's my Picasso you know thank you guys for watching this video till the end let me know in the comments what kind of finch you think I should get for Fiona maybe another zebra finch I don't know if I could get a zebra finch because I don't really want to feel like I'm replacing Finchy and also Finchy you know he was just one of a kind I hope you feel informed and updated with this video I love you guys so much thank you so much for always being by my side your support means the world to me I love you guys so much bye