 One day one of their babies grew up and like almost had all its feathers and they were taking care of it and they were doing so good and then the baby died. Hello my fellow snippers, flighters, and hatchlings. My name is Marlene McCown. Welcome to my channel. I can't wait for you to see who's going to be in the video today. None other than my little Finch. I call Finch Finchy and why I came up with such a generic boring name. I'll tell you in a second. But anyway, if you guys are new to the channel don't forget to subscribe, put on those notification buttons. I love sharing my life with birds and you know just kind of educating you guys and showing you guys through entertainment how to live with birds in your house. If you love animals then you're really gonna like this channel. But before we go on for all of our new hatchlings here on this channel I just want to go into real quick what Engage Not Caged is. It is my platform, my hashtag, my slogan, what I believe in. Engage Not Caged is living in a house with birds and not specifically not caging them. My birds have cages that they love to sleep in but my birds kind of have the choice to go in their cage or not. Like their cage is like their bedroom. They enjoy it. They like to play with toys in there. But I honestly like know how to live with them free and they're flighted and so I try to show you guys that on the channel like my real life with them and how I manage that because we have to do better for birds. I mean there's a lot of people that are good at working with birds, training birds but do you know how to live with a bird? Like do you know how to live with a bird? The way you live with a dog where they can go in the cage themselves in or out however they want. It's so funny like my Gala Kakatu Vinny puts himself to bed at the end of the day. You know that kind of independence is just so entertaining. So let's get on to the story of Finchi. A lot of you have seen Finchi on my channel and I'm sure you guys have a lot of questions and you guys have asked me a lot of different things about Finchi that I always wanted to cover but I never really dedicated a video to Finchi until a few weeks ago when Finchi got a girlfriend. We are choosing a mate for our handsome bachelor Finch. We would appreciate it if one of you would come forward and announce yourself as the shooter which I'll give you guys an update on that soon. Oh my god. Okay here's the story of Finchi real quick. I went to a bird mart and when I wasn't looking my dad came back with two Finches. Okay male female and he was like they were two lonely Finches I had to get them. I was like oh my god no. What? Oh you bought them? You bought them dad? God why did you get two Finches? Because they were two lonely Finches. Because one I don't set out to get birds like I prefer to have rescue birds except for my baby Brando which you guys know the whole emotional story behind that. Why did you do this to me right now? It's like baby Picasso. I'm not sure if you don't go back and watch. Also like small birds like Finches and I just like I never was into having them because I just believe in general that all birds should be outside flying around and to have a Finch it's like ah but he came back with this Finch and then it was too late so he yeah I was like oh great then he went got the Finches like this rounded cage which a lot of you guys have questions about and saw a lot in my channel sitting on the counter which we're going to address in a second. Finchy and his girlfriend came home with us and my sister named them Atticus and Jem Finch and honestly I just could not remember which was which like which was the female name and which was the male name. The more Finchy and I bonded the more I just kept going Finchy Finchy and like I know it's not the most creative name but it just like started and I loved it. He's got a lot of personality so like he literally could be like I don't know a Stephen or something but he's Finchy so in the beginning real quick Finchy and Jem Finchy and Atticus or Atticus and Jem whatever it was they made it and started laying eggs like right away so all the improvements that I wanted to do to this cage like I couldn't do it they had literal like eggs in the nest and they were like taking care of them and hanging out with them so I did not want to interfere and to be honest I didn't have any experience with Finches. Did you do? What did you do? No. Finchy's not potty trained and Finchy wet potty in my hand. We have to take a break. Do we have to take a break and clean this Finchy? Yes we do yes. Okay we're back so basically all the improvements that I had dreamt of making for the birds now that they were basically my responsibility did not happen because they were laying eggs like laying eggs they would sleep in their nest together and then these babies would hatch real fast and basically they kind of failed at being parents for a little bit like they just like did not have the care to take care of the birds and a lot of them were duds and they'd like kick them out of the nest and I would like be so nervous I'd be like what the heck happened like this was a little baby and then like after some research and some investigation with some Finch experts I realized that young Finches they kind of like they need a few attempts to learn how to take care of their babies and then one day one of their babies grew up and like almost had all its feathers and it was the cutest baby and they were taking care of it and they were doing so good and then the baby died and I wasn't interfering with this at all so like George was heartbroken he buried the birdie baby like right next to our african gray George he was very very upset I was too it was really heartbreaking and then in the same month Finchy's wife had some seizures and I tried to do everything and I couldn't get her to the vet in time because she had like a few quick seizures and then she died and so I gave Finchy some time to grieve and um then I said when when you know he's had enough time to grieve we're gonna get him like a friend because he he doesn't want to be alone you know I didn't think he wants to be alone I know you guys probably want to see how cute Finchy is I thought about bringing Finchy's tree over so that you guys could see Finchy in the background no no come here Finchy come here yeah Finchy landed right here I gotta show you yeah Finchy you like that Finchy smiles it's so amazing do you want to sit right there you can sit right there what's on my shoulder it was heartbreaking and then I decided okay well now I can at least move Finchy into a better cage because these birds it's not even seasonal or it wasn't they just laid eggs every single day just like busy busy new eggs they would lay eggs on top of like the hatched birds so the hatched bird or baby or whatever so it was it was uh pretty impressive I realized pretty quickly that if they kept going and they were successful at it I would have a lot of Finchy's and uh as you guys who know I never want to breed birds that's not something I want to get into so basically then what happened was I got a bigger cage for Finchy but every time I got Finchy a bigger cage he would act so depressed and be on the bottom of the cage and the reason was because that small cage would be in the center of everything like if you guys saw it was on our island it was in the center and Finchy has a really big personality and I learned really quickly how to like engage with Finchy and understand like his vocals and what they meant so like when he'd see me eating he would like demand to eat whatever I was eating like like obviously vegetables and greens and such so he would like scream for it and then I would give it to him and then I'd hear him after he ate do like a little song of thank you so I really started picking up on like his behavior and so we really started bonding that way but every time I put him in another cage that was bigger he couldn't be in the middle of the island so he would get like depressed quiet and sit on the bottom of the cage and then another problem would happen that because he was on the bottom of the cage he would get like first I thought it was like bumblefoot I'm like oh my god something's wrong with him but he literally would get like his feet dirty because he would like step in his you know feces no matter how many perches I would put there for him and he loves his nest and he loves his like little nest house but like basically he would get himself like all dirty so if that happens to any of your birds I could do a video on how to fix it but in case you're wondering right now then I would have to kind of like give him a bath and like have some like hot water not not like too hot and not boiling but like and kind of like dip his foot in and then like kind of clean it and then he'd get a blow dry and all that and actually I think through all that that's how he got like pretty tame I never did any like treat training with him um that would be a really good and easy way to get smaller birds to come your way like budgies finches birds that are a little more fidgety pigeons outside as you guys know like I really just gain a bird's trust by the way that I bond with them and it works really well for me I'm not so technical about how I work with birds my whole thing about engage not caged is them being part of the family and I think that's what I'm trying to promote and that's the difference here and that is going to make your bird come such a long way and have such a good personality that's what finchy has so yeah I kept putting finchy back in that small cage because like he was comfortable there and then he fly all around and like anytime I switched it out he'd get all depressed so I was like okay but at the same time like obviously he would come out and like be where it's safe and like like in this room specifically but a lot of you would notice the small cage and be like why don't you let your bird out this isn't like what you promote engage not caged and I'd be like no guys you don't understand like one just what I told you is like that I would have him there so he could be in the middle of the interaction and two you don't really get to see him out with me like this because whenever we're filming a video we're so focused on the story of the other big birds and I don't really have him like in a situation where he could just get lost among all of the birds there is lots of opportunity for finchy to always be included like he is now when I'm up here in my office so yeah we have a good time and I want to tell you some really cute things about finchy finchy is to be upstairs in my bedroom and every morning I used to like obviously have this task of feeding finchy and cleaning out his water and doing all these different things and it gave me like that first task of the day and it made me really motivated to feel like whoa I did something today and then I would just get going with the rest of my day it was just this kind of weird small bonding thing that I had with them that I you know really appreciated but I think the overall thing I want you guys to realize is that like there is so much to building up trust with an animal and sometimes people make things very technical and very this is what you have to do to train a bird and this is what you have to do to get them to come to you that stuff will honestly work but there is another way there is just like kind of letting your bird know that it is not going to be in a cage situation let's not forget these are birds they want to fly and and by the way he's flighted as you guys saw like they want to fly they want to experience life and then we take that away from them so there is a lot of trust when they learn that you're not going to do that especially if they are a rescue and they came from somewhere else where they're always locked up in the cage I really want to stress on that because um I really want you to when you work with a bird come from the place of this is a family member I do see a lot of times people try to take away that guilt of like well I spent a good enough amount of time with a bird or maybe quality time so they could go back in the cage no one's against cages but why not let them kind of make that choice themselves if you're good with your animals and you're good with your birds and you have a real gift with them and if you're really doing the work you will be able to have a cage that the bird can go into itself and be free in your house because you have a sense of control you know what I mean birds are difficult because they'll chew up things they'll destroy things they'll damage things and if you guys watch my instagram you'll see a lot of that rambunctiousness but also like I know what's entertaining so I know what's going to happen because I literally know everything they're going to do before they do it and I'll be like this will be entertaining I will let it happen it just about like really being in tune with your animals and always striving to be better I'm always striving to be better like you know recently I found out that Fanchie loves to be on the tree in my office and so like it's part it's an idea like okay like let's get Finchie a tree that Finchie can sit on all the time that Finchie feels comfortable in and I don't know how it's gonna work with Finchie's girlfriend because Finchie's girlfriend is a very rambunctious breed and I don't know how it's gonna work when Finchie has the girlfriend and they're together and maybe he won't be like a mommy's boy anymore but I wanted to address some other questions and also I'm realizing that I didn't ask you guys on Instagram what you might want to know about Finchie so if there's anything you want to know then maybe we'll do another video please let me know in the comments and I'll collect it and I'll do another video for you I know some of you are going to ask why I got Finchie a friend that he couldn't mate with why not just not have like the nest because if the nest isn't there they're not going to breed and my answer to that is that Finchie was used to his nest and that's like where he sleeps and he likes it so I'm not gonna take that away from him that's like his little place that he loves to sleep in at night so I want him to have that his wife was the one that kind of like did all the foraging with all of the nesting materials let's talk about Finchie's personality guys if you saw did you guys watch the video where we went to get Finchie a girlfriend and we took Finchie out and like the carry on Finchie was so happy Finchie was on his tippy toes looking out the window and my cousin Mandy would hold Finchie up so he could see and then we did some videos like on Instagram and stuff so you guys could see and we took Finchie some other places that day and he was just so happy and that makes me really happy just to be able to give him that kind of entertainment that also just kind of like solidified to me like how much he wants to see and why he liked that smaller cage like right now he's in a bigger cage and he's just not happy like he won't even fly up and perch on the purchase like so I have to put everything super low because he's just like just not happy I'm hoping that when he gets his girlfriend then maybe the two of them can like be more excited together because they're like you know she's still in quarantine but it's about time for them to be together I am thinking about kind of bringing his other cage back a little bit again so that like maybe I can move him in and out like hey if I want him to see what we're doing and let's say there's too many animals like running around or whatever or too many doors opening he'll be in that little cage sometimes I don't know we'll see what happens the other day he was hanging out outside in a cage like I rolled the whole thing outside he loved that like he loved to have like his bath he has a little bath he's just an amazing bird he's got a very strong personality just the way he would boss me around I love those kind of birds you know when you give them a little bit of like control they have so much to say to communicate and like it's all about listening you really got to listen to the animals so that's like my answer to how to tame a fish just kind of bond to hang out with them when you include a bird like inclusion is so important for birds I'd love to know what else you guys want to know about Finchi I'm happy that you guys like Finchi soon when we do their introduction I'll reveal the name of Finchi's girlfriend I hopefully they will be in a relationship you guys let me know what you think what do you think Finchi this is Finchi up close do you see how he smiles you guys have any questions let me know I love you guys so much thank you so much for watching this video enjoy this pick me Marlene submission don't forget to submit yours on instagram follow my instagram to be always up to date with what is happening with me bye guys by the way don't forget if you guys are looking for an amazing bird food brand for your bird that is healthy organic and not full of food colorings and sugar and peanut smash check out Marlene's signature blend I did this along with tops parrot food I encourage you guys to check out my feathered fun box it's a passion project it's a subscription box that comes with parrot toys for your bird and also special merch kind of like my dream box honestly I put so much into it I love that there's something like this for birds out in the world that's why I created it www.featheredfunbox.com I love you guys so so much thank you for listening