What a sweet story, and what a lucky little bird! Happy endings are the best. Laurel

Katie, I'm not sure what you meant by an airlock. You mean a passage so they can get inside and outside? Or a way you can get in and they can't get out? A few suggestions. Make sure you get welded wire that's made for bird cages. A lot of places on the internet sell that, and large retail bird shops can get it for you. The Aviary in Perrine, between So Miami and Homestead has it. Since it's for finches, I would build it out of 1 X 1 wood frame. With 1/2 X 1 inch welded wire. The wire comes in 3 and 4 ft widths. Build all six panels separate (four sides, roof and floor), with welded wire on both sides of the wood frame. Varmits can't reach through and grab your birds that way. You can use a staple gun with SS staples for that, goes real fast. Then drill holes and put it together with SS screws and lock nuts, so you can take it apart if you ever need to. A 6 X 8 X 4 aviary built this way is strong and not heavy at all. Two people can move it with no problems. If you need a way to get in, just build a separate box with another door that you can attach to the outside. That you can use just one layer of welded wire. Build the door to the inside as a 1/2 door, open at the bottom. The birds will go up when you try to get in and not past you and into the airlock. Another trick is to paint the wire, both sides, with dark brown annodized paint. You can roll that on. It makes the wire disappear. Personally, I would have the cage above the ground with no contact. Birds get a lot a parasites and disease from dirt. If you want to put them on dirt, I suggest you get a gallon of Novalsan and learn how to use it. Novalsan you can get at most any large feed and seed farm supply. Corrie

pife, Painting nestboxes is not necessary, but if you want to preserve the wood, you only need to paint the outside. To keep them cool, use a light color. Painting the exterior of the box white or light tan (before nesting season begins) can help reduce interior temperatures. Here is a great site for reference about nestboxes, safe setup, and monitoring. You can also do a site search there for more info about paint and nestboxes. BlueBars Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.sialis.org/index.html

Always stop and breathe if you have this happen do not panic and start clicking on the screen, that is exactly what they want to happen and also never call the numbers. If on a pc hit control alt delete and go to applications and end task on all the open apps shown. This will close the browser safely with out clicking on anything. The problem with clicking any where including the x to close can be linked to an install instruction rather than what you think it is. Run an updated malwarebytes scan and your antivirus program scan as well as a good online antivirus scan like this bitdefender free scanner http://www.bitdefender.com/scanner/online/free.html Right now there are several fake ransomeware drive bys happening. just going to a legit webpage that has a nefarious ad link it it can trigger it, but NOTHING happens to your computer till you start clicking on something or calling the numbers. Do control alt delete or shut down the computer. It can be very scary especially with the ones that have audio and start alerting you loudly and in a very scary way that you are infected or worse. If you get a true ransomeware that is a different animal and in most cases will take a complete re install of the operating system and loss of all your files, unless of course you are very smart and keep an image update of your current system, then you just reinstall from your image.