Thanks Soulsearching. I appreciate your understanding. If I were to tell the average joe in the street my experiences, I would expect they wouldn't believe me. It's so good to be able to come here and share our experiences without ridicule.
Another experience I had involved our finch who was dying. We knew he didn't have long left in the world and decided against taking him to the vets because I feared the vet would put him down and the journey and experience of travelling would be too truamatic for him. It was back in February 2008 and Gordon Smith a famous medium was demonstrating mediumship in our local city that evening and I had been looking forward to it for months, had even checked to see that we could buy tickets at the door which we could.
Anyway the night before I hadn't been able to sleep and had been checking on our little Squeaky (finch) regularly, expecting at some point to find him passed to spirit. At 4:30ish am I decided I would try to get some sleep. That was the last time I checked on him. I layed in bed, eyes glazed, like in zombie mode for what seemed like half an hour. At 5:30am I heard my mum's voice speak above my head saying 'come on alana' in a stern voice. My mum however was asleep in the next room. I knew that that telepathic (?) experience meant Squeaky had passed. I went downstairs and sure enough he was dead. I woke my mum up who had to get up at 6am anyway and she was so sympathetic, nothing like the stern voice I had heard minutes earlier.
I had a special relationship with Squeaky. He would come towards me as I spoke to him and wasn't scared of humans at all. He had such character too for such a little bird and during his life had decided (after his mate died) that he wanted to live with our budgies in their cage. Some of our birds would even eat from my dad's plate at dinner. (we let them fly freely in our house with a cage that they can go in to sleep, eat and drink when they wish)
I agree with you Soulsearching that our feathered friends are connected to angels. Our birds have been a ray of sunshine through dark times. They are so intuitive too. Sometimes I wish I could hug them, but I respect that it's not in their nature.