Max, the early years

I forgot my camera (again!) today, but hope to remember tomorrow as I have a video of Rocky that I want to share. Instead, I went looking through some old pictures to find some that I haven't yet shared.

We purchased Max from a breeder advertising on the Internet about 6 years ago. She was hatched on 10/31/01, and we took her home in March 2002. The breeder lived several (about 6?) hours away, so all communication was done via telephone and e-mail. We never met Max before we drove to pick her up. In fact, we had never seen a timneh in person! She was our first parrot, and we were woefully unprepared, to say the least.

Here are a couple of pictures that her breeder sent to us while we were waiting for her to wean so we could take her home:

Seeing the above picture made us run out and purchase 2 of those toys so that she'd have a familiar toy when she came to live with us. She never played with that toy in our house. So much for our good intentions!

I'm not sure which one is Max and which one is her sibling (I think Max is in the back):

When deciding which of the babies to purchase, we chose Max for two main reasons:

• Our breeder sais she could tell by the shape of her head that Max was a boy and her sibling was a girl (later DNA tests proved that Max was a girl, so there goes the head shape sexing theory!) We'd heard the rumor that birds are more likely to bond to a member of the opposite sex (this is NOT true!) and Thomas graciously said he'd rather the bird bond to me because he knew it would mean more to me than to him.
• From her description of the babies, Max was much more playful and curious. We were up to the challenge and wanted an inquisitive bird (we had no idea what we were in for!)

She was trying to take this picture of Max's sibling for that potential new owner, and Max had to stick her head in!

Here is a picture taken after Max had been with us only a few weeks, getting some cuddles from Thomas. You can see that her flight feathers are clipped. She also had a fair number of red feathers that disappeared after her first molt.
Here is a more recent picture, taken in April 2007, so about 10 months ago. She can be absolutely adorable when she wants to be picked up! She's got this head-tilt down to a science where it is almost impossible for me to not give in to her.
Max was the first parrot we acquired, and she's the reason we have the others now. As we approach the 6 year anniversary of her joining our lives, it's pretty difficult to imagine what our lives would have been like had we not introduced her!