FINCHforum

I just moved my two zebra finches into a larger cage, but during the process, one of them (Henry) escaped and had quite the adventure flying around the living room. He eventually flew back into the old cage, where I left him for a half hour or so to calm down before I made my second attempt to get him into the new cage. I ended up putting the cages side by side with the doors open right next to each other, and with a towel placed over the gap between them. I also mostly covered the old cage to try to encourage him to join his pal (Chester) in the new cage... (This is the part where Chester simply flew back into the old cage lol.)

Anyhow, I ended up taking all the food out of the old cage and moving everything to the new one, and just left them alone for a bit. I went and checked on them, and they've now both moved to the new cage. However, Henry seems to be sort of... wheezing. Like, he sits on the perch with his beak open, and I can hear him breathing. I know that can be a sign of air sac mites, but do you think it could just be due to his stressful morning? I've never noticed him breathing like this before, and Chester seems fine. Do I need to be concerned? Or do you suppose he just needs to calm down a bit more?

I've left them alone in a secluded room for the time being, hoping that they'll relax a bit. I don't want to keep stressing them, but I'm paranoid that something is wrong, so I keep checking in on them, which seems to be making them a little nervous. Should I just leave them alone for a few hours? I don't want to add to their stress level by checking to make sure they're um, not stressing. Haha I'm sorry if this is a ridiculous post. I'm paranoid to the extent that I'm basically just sitting here thinking of all the things that could be wrong.

If anyone can put my worries to rest, that'd be great. Thanks

I'd leave them alone for the rest of the day. Being caught is always stressful, new cages are stressful, change is stressful. Give him a chance to calm down and see how he is doing later today.

Is your bird still wheezing? One of mine started making a strange, somewhat wheezy sounding noise. He was making it and I looked over and he was a bit puffed up and was (for lack of a better description) wagging his tail. It was bizarre. I haven't seen it since. It wasn't quite like how you described; he doesn't have his beak real wide open and he hasn't done it when he's stressed out. It was very random. Sorry if that doesn't help you much, I don't know why my zebra did it.

Nope, he seems to be okay now. It's been about a week since it happened, and he hasn't done it since. I guess his little adventure around the living room just got him all worked up. He's cool now though

He was probably just tuckered out from all the commotion. I always get worried that my birds will have a heart attack when they accidentally escape from the cage. They look like they just ran a marathon