The "Beak Hang" Sleep Position

Gentle readers: first, an apology for the long hiatus in posting.  K has been studying for an exam, which has occupied much of her spare time.  That is at last, over...at least for now, depending on results.  It is said that regular postings are the key to maintaining readership, in which case, the Budgie Blog may have lost the few loyal fans it had...but we hope not!

Now on to the budgie discussion: 

The budgies have a very interesting behavior at night, and one which we have only observed in the large cage.  They  climb up the sides of the cage at night, and hook their beaks onto one of the topmost rungs.  They then grab other rungs with their feet, usually, one foot higher, the other the lower.  Often it is the right foot that is higher, but I have not made a regular observation to see what might influence that aspect of the sleeping posture.

When I first saw this new sleeping posture in the large cage, back when the large cage was first being used, I thought it was a sign of psychological stress, as stressed out monkeys have been reported to sleep in awkward, uncomfortable positions (see the "Wire Mother" experiments).  

However, it does not appear that this is stressful to the budgies; they all do it routinely every evening, and it seems to be normal and restful for them.  It is interesting to me that this is only seen in the larger cage.  In the smaller cages, the budgies always sleep on their perches.