Bird Supplies

Seed mixtures, pasta de cría and cuttlebone:

the feed follows the beak. Canaries and finches eat small seed, and their mixtures are built on alpiste. Budgies take a millet-based mix. Cockatiels and lovebirds want a larger blend with sunflower in it, the seed they pick out first and grow fat on. Complete foods, where the seed comes mixed with pellets, cost more and waste less, because the bird cannot sort out its favourites and fling the rest on the floor. Breeders add a soft egg food while there are chicks in the nest, and most keepers clip a cuttlebone or a mineral block to the bars for the bird to gnaw. Vitamins and mite sprays are worth buying new and sealed. An everyday kilo of budgie or canary mixture costs about ₡2,000 to ₡3,500 new, and a premium complete food runs closer to ₡4,500 to ₡7,000 a kilo. Feed that cheap leaves no reason to accept an opened bag. The second-hand savings are in the hardware, which wears slowly but loses most of its price once used.

Perches, toys, drinkers and carriers:

the dowels that come with a new cage are all one thickness, and a bird gripping the same smooth rod all day ends up with sore feet. A natural branch from an untreated fruit tree, scrubbed and dried, gives it different widths to hold. Sandpaper sleeves sold as claw trimmers wear the underside of the foot, not the nail, so leave them out. Toys should suit the beak: a budgie is happy with a bell and a ladder, while a cockatiel or a lovebird needs soft wood, palm leaf or cardboard to shred. Tube drinkers that clip on outside the bars stay cleaner than open dishes, and a small plastic carrier with a wire door beats a cardboard box for any trip. Cages, voladoras and birds looking for a new home sit under birds.

Gorrión feeders and fruit tables for garden birds:

a good share of Costa Rican bird kit never goes near a cage. Garden feeding here runs on fruit rather than seed: half a ripe banana or a slice of papaya on a board brings viudas, yigüirros and wintering orioles to a patio in Atenas or Santa Ana. A gorrión feeder takes plain white sugar dissolved in water, never honey and never red colouring; the red plastic on the feeder is what draws the birds. Choose one that comes fully apart so a bottle brush reaches every port, with bee guards on the flowers and an ant moat on the hanger.

What moth webbing in a seed bag tells you:

open any bag of second-hand seed before you take it home. Silky threads clumping the grains, small grubs, hollow husks or a musty, oily smell mean moths or weevils have been at it, and they will move into the rest of your feed. Plastic drinkers go cloudy and their valves stick or drip, so fill one at the handover and see whether it holds. Rope perches and rope toys fray into strands that can wrap round a toe; pass on any that look hairy. On a gorrión feeder, look for hairline cracks in the base, flowers gone pale and brittle in the sun, and black mould in joints a brush cannot reach.

Listing a breeder’s leftover feeders and seed:

most of this kit comes up when someone stops keeping birds, moves house, or loses the canary the whole set-up was bought for. Group it by bird rather than by item, because people look for canary gear or cockatiel gear, not for drinkers. For food, photograph the seal and the printed date in one shot. For perches and toys, say which birds used them and what got chewed. A carrier sells on its door: show it latched, because a bird that slips out of a loose door in the street becomes a notice in animals lost and found. A sack of alpiste left from a breeding season is worth listing while its date is still months away, not once the moths have found it.