Friday, July 25, 2008

Video Friday & Unsuccessful foraging

My weekly Wednesday farmers' market purchase included beets with the tops still on. Max was extremely interested in the greens on Wednesday evening:
Since we didn't have any plans for the tops, I decided to give Max a foraging opportunity yesterday and hoped to have a fun entry for today. I placed the beet greens on the bottom of her cage and sprinkled a little bit of seed mix for her to find in between the leaves.
When I came home, hoping to see the leaves destroyed signaling hours of entertainment, I was disappointed. It looks like she hardly touched her beet greens.

Later on during the night, one of the leaves found its way to the ground (not sure if Max threw it down or if I accidentally knocked it out of her cage). Rocky found it and started destroying the leaf. Next time we get these, I may parcel the leaves out and try again!My baby Australian Rainbowfish are all doing very well. The smaller two are now larger than the larger one when I first spotted him. You can see one of the smaller babies in this picture. She (he?) is about 2 inches in from the left and one inch down from the top -- in the upper left quadrant of this photo. You can see a couple of the adult fish for a size comparison. I think they're big enough for us to clean the tank this weekend.
Apparently I was video-happy last night and this morning. It all started with Calypso playing with one of his favorite toys that I made for him from veggie-tanned leather and beads. He must have played with this toy for 15 minutes.

He was in a whistling mood last night, so I was trying to capture him whistling "charge." It didn't work, but you can hear him giving me kisses and making his squeaky-toy noises. Max whistles a bit in the background.

Max had to go in her cage for a bit because she buzzed Beeps and needed to cool down. She kept trying to get my attention by talking about kissing and making kissing sounds.

I took this video this morning. We've gotten into a pretty good routine where I understand her body language, and she kept begging for head pets this morning. I was trying to get a video of that, but couldn't. However, I think this is very interesting also. She acts like she wants me to scratch her head, but when my fingers get close to her head, she gently takes my fingers in her beak and guides my hand down to a point where she can step up on my hand. She knows how to get what she wants!

5 comments:

Scritches.com said...

Mary: These are wonderful ideas; thanks! We sang Christmas carols for amazon.com last Christmas, which was a nice piece of change for us. And we do already have CDs of various types, but I'll share the other ideas with the group.

Anonymous said...

I loved watching all the videos and hearing all the smoochy noises your birds make. It is really quite adorable. ^w^

Anonymous said...

Also, I have a question for you.
Do you have any suggestions on preventing birds from plucking? My mother-in-law has a cockatiel that recently began plucking her feathers again. (Our theory is that she feels neglected--my sister-in-law just had a baby who is getting all the attention.) I know you have had birds with similar problems in the past, and I was wondering how you helped them.
Thanks for the help.

Mary said...

Sammi --

Max especially is obsessed with kissing!

I will write an entry to talk about plucking more so that my answer doesn't get buried here!

Mary said...

Love the videos! Your birds are so sweet. My birds and dog can be fussy about food but I wonder if they know if something isn't just right with it. I don't push it. They might have insight I don't. They're smarter than we are!! :)