The trip from Moss Beach, CA to Salt Lake City, UT was over 750 miles.  We thought about flying with the birds versus driving, but settled on driving because it would be less disruptive for the birds.  Audrey has flown several times before and it’s quite stressful for him.

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So the next question was how to travel with the birds.  We have travel cages, but they’re very small and the trip was scheduled to take 11 hours (it took 16).  Conner does not like small spaces.  Jon configured a regular cage for the car by putting a cardboard partition inside the cage.

The purpose of the partition was to allow Audrey and Conner to be in the same cage together.  I didn’t want Conner getting upset in the dark and hurting Audrey.  For Audrey’s side, we put in towels.  Because Audrey has a poor grip, I wanted to protect him in case he fell.

We started driving at 2 pm.  Conner was very agitated, giving out warning sounds for every car and bird that he saw.  Things got better once it got dark, although Conner would sometimes fly like he was having a night fright.  Audrey fared much better and actually spent some time sleeping.

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We arrived at 7 am and went straight to bed.  The cockatiels spent the whole day sleeping and by the next day they were completely normal.

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Audrey and Conner are much happier in their new space.  I’ll post pictures later of their setup.  For now I leave you with a picture of Conner carefully inspecting the partition.

Conner is quite the engineer and therefore wanted to understand how the partition was constructed.