Budgies have always been around. My hub used to breed them until we lost a few and he never really replaced them. It seems the cage door was left open and they escaped.To crochet a budgie is not exactly straight forward. That is unless you want a generic looking bird with a beak stuck on its face. It took me a while to work out the beak, and the tail. Mine are a bit stockier than the real thing, but then they have what I now call the Aussiegurumi look. Why should the Japanese be the only ones who can cutesy up any critter to the stage of non identification?
The budgie is actually an Australian native bird and is the most popular pet bird in the world. In the wild they live amongst the grassy plains and open scrub land of inland Australia and gather in large flocks. There are over thirty species of budgies that are available today and they are all descendants of the original light green coloured Australian budgie. Nowadays the original Australian Budgie is a protected species and cannot be kept in captivity.The domesticated budgie has changed a lot from its original appearance; it is now more than three times the size of its ancestor.
Colours to try when making budgies include yellows, greens, grey, white, blues, turquoise, cobalt and lavenders. I basically used scraps for these. You will never see red in a budgie except for the eyes. My son reckons if you feed white budgies red food colouring you can get pink ones. I find this hard to believe, but he says this works. Breeders try to get a necklace of back spots on the neck. Budgie nostrils are called the cere and males have blue, females have pink – brown. Every year we go to the Ekka and check out the budgie breeders pavilion. The prize birds are pretty amazing.
I have a flock of these in my lounge room, and may have to start smuggling them out of the country. The term budgie smuggler is a funny one. The thought of a budgie squished down the front of a pair of speedos is an amusing one. I feel sorry for the budgie!
We have so many native birds here it was hard to know where to start. The Corella, galah, lorikeet, rosella, cockatoo and kookaburra are common visitors to our bird feeder on the deck. In fact some mornings they drive me nuts with the noise they make in the gum trees. Of course then there is the mess they leave on the deck and the washing. I have a mission to try and design a few more of our Aussie birds in crochet. The colours are magnificant!
Thanks for looking, I hope you like my budgies. If you want the pattern it is available at www.crochetroo.etsy.com
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