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I am so proud of myself right now, I just made Nila a deluxe dead mandarin tree perch!

I recently chopped down the dead mandarin tree in our back yard and it looked like something Nila might like.
Despite having absolutely no technical prowess with power tools I embarked on an ambitious plan.
I went to my favourite op shop, made a donation for a coffee table frame, which looks a bit worse for wear. I didn't want to buy a good wooden coffee table as someone could use it....
I couldn't fit the frame in my little 2 door car, luckily a customer of my boyfriend was leaving the op shop at the same time and offered to drop it off at work in his ute!
When he dropped it off he said he had some old, rather cruddy, plywood lying around that would be the right size for my project! He dropped it off when he came to pick up the car mr redzone had repaired for him.
Perfect timing!

I bought some pretty fabric and clear pvc table cloth, which I washed and aired.

After a wrestling match with the jigsaw, with a causualty in the blade department, the plywood was reduced in size enough to get it home in redzones ute.

I stapled fabric and pvc over the ply, screwed the tree on to table top and delegated attaching the table top to the frame to my lovely boyfriend, since the margin of error permissible was well beyond my capabilities.

I trimmed the branches down to a size that just fits into the house and installed it in the big living room.
The boyfriend thinks I'm crazy for not trimming it more, but it is soft wood so his birdiness should do that over the next few weeks. The excess pvc came in handy as a carpet protector.

I spent $20 on the whole thing. Decorating it will probably be the expensive part!
Nila loves it! He has been jumping and climbing all over it. He loves the twigs and bark, as they are easy to strip.


- Claire

Photo to be added by my technical team soon.

My girlfriend is awesome, she made my bird the best tree ever!

That's gorgeous. Well done! Nila looks to be loving it and I'm sure Squidgy will get to use it too!

Ellie.

Yeah I'm sure squidgette will like it!

Ps you can really see Nila's colours in that pic

Double thumbs up!

I love it!!! Great job Claire.

Cheers guys. I have decorated it a bit now. I'll share some pics next time I hack redzones account.

Redzone wrote:My girlfriend is awesome, she made my bird the best tree ever! ]

I can't believe I actually got away with that comment

Nila still loves his tree!

InTheAir wrote:Cheers guys. I have decorated it a bit now. I'll share some pics next time I hack redzones account.

Redzone wrote:My girlfriend is awesome, she made my bird the best tree ever! ]

I can't believe I actually got away with that comment

Maybe because its true

That's great!

Mel, that's it!

Aero, don't fear, I have been patting myself on the back since I conceived the idea! I think I like it more than the bird does

I spent ages decorating it with toys and Nila likes the plastic bottle tops and the basket Ball hoop a little bit... mostly be just likes the branches and bark. He's definitely a minimalist, like myself.

I'm making one for squidgette now, I used all the good tree on Nilas perch so I've had to attempt some joinery on her perch. I have opted for strawberry patterned table cloth for her. Nila got a very masculine butterfly pattern. It works well with his manly name

Looks great! Making things is waaaaay for fun than buying them, isn't it?

That is great. maybe this is what I need to do in my basement.

I need a good tree though

Melika wrote:Looks great! Making things is waaaaay for fun than buying them, isn't it?

Thanks. You're so right! Nila likes home made stuff best anyway.

ranechild wrote:That is great. maybe this is what I need to do in my basement.

I need a good tree though

I think the tree is by far the hardest part to find. Poor squidgette has been seriously short changed in the one I made her. I'm too scared to use the bottle brush tree from out the front as wild lorikeets and galahs have been spending lots of time in it lately and I'm not sure how prevalent pbfd is in our area.

Anyone got any ideas on how I could sterilise a tree that won't fit in the oven?

Maybe you could call a local tree pruning business and ask them for a nice off cut of something safe, if American wild birds aren't too disease ridden....
The rest of the build was just staples and 3 ginormous screws in the bottom.

I wonder if you could steam clean it Claire? Doesn't the temp get up extremely high in those steam cleaners?

Oak is ok right? We just had a bit of a storm the other day and there is a decent sized oak branch in the front yard... How do we sterilize these again?

I've read several methods of disinfecting. Claire got me thinking. The first was soaking in a tub of water with added bleach. One capful of bleach to one quart of water were the amounts. I wouldn't take the chance only because the odor is horrific and my birds would fly the opposite direction. But it said to follow this up with a few days bake time in direct sun. The second was using vinegar..again a very strong odor, but it said to let bake in the sun for a few days so the odor may dissipate. Next was using GSE. Grapefruit seed extract. This seemed to be the most popular and deemed safest method if you can't fit your perch or tree stand in the oven. Only problem is that it is not available everywhere for purchase. And finally is baking in the oven. This was listed as 300 degrees for 30 minutes. If you live somewhere hot, baking in the sun after a thorough scrubbing should do the same thing. So far that is all I can find.

Oh, and the only kind of oak I believe that is listed questionable is red oak.

maybe i can find a maple tree out back. That would be easier. I do have several Sassafrass trees, but I don't want to cut them down!!! They are too awesome! Maybe I will sacrifice one for the basement.

What about rubbing alcohol? I was reading that the vitacritter dye gets diluted in rubbing alcohol and that seemed like a pretty evaporative way to disinfect something...

Thanks Mel. I think I like the idea of a steam cleaner best, if I had one.

I had googled this first, and didn't like the answers!
Bottlebrush bark is quite thick and porous, so I'm dubious about bleaching it. Nila loves chewing bark.
Last time I used some the lorikeets hadn't been around for a while, I just gave it a good wash and left it in the sun for ages. There was also a major storm so it got pretty well rinsed before I even got to it.

I like the idea of rubbing alcohol and then rinsing it well. I'll look into that.

Further reading revealed that bleach doesn't kill pbfd spore thingies, disinfectant sold in pet store doesn't either, so I have ordered f10sc instead.

I read about that stuff too. What is it???

Veterinary grade disinfectant.

Nothing like going pro.

ranechild wrote:Nothing like going pro.

oh yeah!
It's surprising safe, from reading the msds and some other info, though I will be rinsing the perches after treating them...

Does bottlebrush grow fast? If I were to grow one, how long till it would be big enough to harvest?

No idea. The trees at our house are well established. My horticultural knowledge extends as far as buying lots of books about Australian trees and putting them on the book shelf. According to my latest acquisition they are fast growing.
I've been thinking of buying a biggish one as a house/nila plant. He enjoys ripping up the flowers on the rare occasions I relax my pbfd paranoia enough to give him some.
The specimens out the front very drought resistant, so they could probably cope with my habit of only watering houseplants after I notice they look dead.

Ahhh...so they are xeriscape plants. Perfect. Ill have to look into acquiring one if I can. I use bamboo and Areca in the house for now, but when the birds chew on them or land in them, they break off easily. Need something a bit sturdier.

Ooh that's a new word for me. I had to look that one up!
I just hope a bottlebrush fares better than our poor deceased cactus.

Edit: what would be a bird safe way of doing bonsi wires? I'd love to modify a tree to suit his birdiness.

Claire...what kind of wire are you looking to use?? The normal wire is so thin I would be afraid he would start pulling it apart.

Alpha...I actually don't live in a dry climate. I live in Hawaii. I'm just lazy about watering indoor plants lol

Mel, Nila doesn't pull things apart, he just mouths them a lot, so I worry about toxicity mostly.
Alpha, in qld there appear to be 2 season; flood and drought. We are in the latter at present.
In the house is always drought though, I'm lazy too.

Well, if he doesn't pull things apart, I use a rubber coated garden wire for my rose bushes thats really good. He won't have any contact with the metal and the rubber is pretty heavy duty. It looks like this

Where are you Alphawolf?

ps, here's a current pic of the playstand/birdy gym

Does he ever leave it lol. Love the cargo net and the rope ladder. I don't know if Nila likes bells, but my crew does and they loved when I tied bells to the ends of the smallest branches so that when the branches moved the tree made noise

Nila is not very keen on bells. He doesn't like to ring them, just tries to pull the clapper out
He has hardly played with any of the toys, he just likes stripping the bark and climbing, especially the ropes. I love watching him land on the swinging rope, it takes such precision!
I think he leaves the tree on purpose so he can try landing on the trickest looking part a minute later.

That little daredevil takes after someone I know

He was a bit of a late starter because of his jmbs, but he makes up for it now.
I saw him do a really bad misjudgement when he was coming in to land, he overshot the branch and ended up grabbing the one behind it as it went by at beak height. After a bit of air cycling, he climbed onto the branch he was hanging from and started preening, like cats do when they know you saw them stuff up

I get so jealous of the cool things Nila can do. He has the perfect body for free form gymnastics on bars and his strength to weight ratio is well beyond anything I could ever achieve! Not to mention the ability to fly off before he hits the ground *sigh* the lucky little devil doesn't get blisters either...

I'm setting up the big cage for Budgies today and I'm stealing that bell on the end of the branch idea. Hope they're heavy enough to jingle it......

Go for it MissK!!! I love to hear the tinkling noise. It means they're enjoying my hard work

My first attempt at a play stand
Made from a sweet gum
I'm sure over time I will either improve on this or turn my entire bedroom into a giant bird cage.. either way I was sure to overload this thing with toys like I see most of the others.

I'll probably replace them with various foraging concepts later though.

So far it's been a success.. When I brought him in from outside he was really anxious to check it out and now he's not paying me any attention and suddenly toys he didn't care about before are awesome to him now... go figure

That is a very lovely tree, Claire. When you posted it I was on my phone and did'nt get to see it properly. Now I know what ugly brick wall you were talking about

Ash

Here's a photo of Rocky's fig tree. Keeping it from falling over has been a little problematic, but right now I have another branch kind of propping it up. There aren't many toys, since that was part of the problem, but we're getting there. It's a little hard for me to chase things he drops because the cage it's on is 5 feet tall, and so am I. It scrapes the ceiling. Still, today he was nice enough to toss his "girlfriend" over the front so I could just pick her off the floor. She's that little pink ball, for those who didn't know. There are clear sheets of hard plastic under it so there won't be Budgie Issues I can't reach, and it's easier to clean up, in theory. I have trouble watering my houseplants, too....... Nice thing about this is that it doesn't take up any extra floor space.

That looks like lots of fun...kind of wish I was a bird lol.

Two words: Pizza and Beer.

Me, I kinda wish I could hold a camera steady.

Nice tree, and Rocky is looking so happy and relaxed! I only got so far as cleaning and washing my tree branch and left it in the sun to bake. Now I have to prepare the base.

Ash

I tried a base to keep mine from rotating and falling forward. Let's just say that Physics was not my friend......

Rocky looks happy with it. He can watch budgies while doing toe hangs!

Yeah, and there's just something I love about watching them go upside-down. Magenta never does it anymore, now s/he has so many things to do in the flight cage. Once in a while, but almost never. S/he would hang from the ceiling by a toe in the QT cage........

Riff Raff tries to bite Rocky through the plastic while he's doing the wings dance for her. I'd like to let all the Budgies out on the tree, but they are not tame enough - I don't think I'd ever get them back! Maybe Riff. I saw her almost come to me when I put the food in today.