After Mika had her shower on Saturday morning, I took her and Stewie out on the balcony in their travel cages to soak up some sun. Stewie admired her wet bird look and decided to take a bath in his water dish.

It was such a gorgeous weekend, the entire flock (myself included) enjoyed hanging out on the balcony.

Both of them now have similar travel cages.

The two travel cages are basically plain ol’ cockatiel cages you find at pet stores: much too small for permanent homes, but perfect as travel cages. Since the travel cage is only for transport and short stays, I’m not as concerned about the bar diameter or spacing; I just wanted something light-weight, roomy enough for either bird to move around just in case they had to stay in it for a few days, and easy to store.

Here’s a closer shot of Mika in her new travel cage showing off her pretty blue and green wing feathers.

Mika’s previous travel carrier was a mesh and polyester contraption that was very convenient for being able to fold down into a small space.

What was not quite convenient about it was that Mika managed to chew her way out of it! 🙂

On our last car ride I had to pinch pieces of it together to prevent her from sticking her entire head through the hole she created … we even stopped at a PetCo on the way home to see if we could find a travel cage right then and there.

In the end, I ordered the cage online at BirdCages.com, the same site I bought my other cages. In the past their delivery was so amazingly fast that I decided I’d even order a dinky little cage from them. Shipping was still free, but it took close to a week. Not bad at all, but my big 100-lb cages arrived in TWO days.

Six days is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to wait with free shipping, but I was in a hurry for it to arrive since I didn’t have anything to transport her in (except the now exceptionally well ventilated Port-a-Pet) …and you never know what’s going to come up that’ll require a trip outside the house.

p.s. You can often find good deals on used travel carriers for birds on eBay, Craigs List and similar sites.