Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Stella's ideas of acceptable perches

Thomas had to work late last night, so I was home for a few hours with the parrots. As I was cooking, I heard wings flapping and someone landing on the garbage can. I assumed it was Max. I said, "Max, why are you in the garbage?" on my way to remove her, only to discover it was my other grey. Stella had never gone there before. Living with a curious, flighted bird can be a challenge, but it still makes me happy whenever she does something like this, as it brings into focus the sharp change in her personality since she's been with us. She just reinforces in my mind the amazing resiliency of parrots in the way they can recover from sub-optimal conditions and be happy again!After removing her from the garbage to her stand, she once again took off, this time landing on the sink.Max has also started hanging out on the sink, thanks to Stella. In some ways, they act like a little flock. They still don't physically interact, and they don't call for each other when they're separated, but they tend to like to be in the same room. Stella has picked up the majority of Max's vocalizations, to the point where I can't tell who's speaking if I'm in another room.

This morning, they were both talking about kissing, so there was a chorus of "Gimme a kiss!" followed by kiss sounds.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That Stella sure is a winner (as is Max and all the rest, of course). Don't you just love to see birds come out of their shells? It's so heart-warming. That happened with Charlie the cockatiel, and it just makes me feel so good to see him happy as can be. Cheers, and good work! And like Stella, Charlie learned all his sounds and words from his "big cockatiel brother." They too don't physically interact but would be lost without each other. Thank you for sharing!

Mary said...

Shannon,

Thanks for the nice comment! I do love to watch them come out of their shells! I sometimes go back and read old posts from last summer when she first came to us because she really has changed so much!

I'm glad to know you've had the same experience with Charlie as I have with Stella. There really are so many more similarities between parrot species than meet the eye!

DweezelJazz said...

It makes me so very happy to see Stella doing so well. Thank you for taking her in giving her such a lovely home.