Parrot Musings

I am pretty upset that this picture turned out so blurry! I've probably mentioned here before that I've been clicker training my parrots. With Max, we play a little game where I tell her she's costing me money and needs to get a job. We shake on it. Then I ask her what kind of job she wants to get and she performs tricks based on my questions. For example:

• ballerina (turns around)
• philosopher (scratches the base of her head as a "think" motion)
• greeter (waves, which is fast up and down movement of extended foot)
• security guard (lifts up her wings)
• crossing guard (holds her foot up with toes extended)
• boxer (punches out her foot into a ball)
• bait shop owner (turns her head to listen for worms) This is what she's doing in the above picture

We have so much fun with this little game, and it provides us with almost endless tricks that she can learn. Right now she is working on perfecting taking a bow and then I'll ask her if she wants to be an actress. I never know what she's going to learn next as it depends on what she decides to do during training and what I reinforce.

Here is Beeps, ripping up the real estate section that was lining the bottom of his stand. He was doing this amazingly cute dance that I was trying to catch on video. However, as soon as he sees me with the camera lately, he runs to whatever newspaper is handy and starts ripping it up. I thought this was a funny picture since the real estate market isn't exactly what it used to be, and he seems to be sending that message :)

As an aside, we've been working with Beeps on his flying. He is really good at navigating around corners, etc., but very bad at landing. In the past, his landing method was to crash into a wall and then tumble down to the ground. We were actually thinking that we were going to have to give him a light clip so that we could work on landing, but in the last week or so, he really seems to have gotten it. We're still working on this, and also on him flying with volition instead of just staying where he is and beeping until someone brings him where he wants to go.

And here is Elsa during her soak last weekend. She is all puffy right now, as she wasn't exactly happy that I was soaking her. She is going through a molt, so she needed to be soaked. You can't really tell from this picture, but she has her entire head under water.

Of course Andreas also got a soaking. His molt is really progressing. If you look at pictures of them when we first got them, they barely look like the same lizards. You can see that he still needs to molt out skin on his legs and the lower portion of his tail. Apparently this may take several molts to occur.