Nesting

Stella's picked up the intensity of her nesting attempts lately. Spring is (kind of) in the air, and that's prompting her to try to find the appropriate nest cavity.

We've had talks about the futility of this. There are no male greys in our house, so any eggs she would lay would be infertile anyway -- why put yourself through that trauma? She disregards my advice. However, despite her best attempts, she has not quite figured out how to fit under the stove:We are very careful to discourage this behavior; she was removed from the floor as soon as I snapped my pictures.

While it may be sexist on our part, our philosophy has been to allow our male birds (Rocky and the caiques) to do any nesting they want, providing it does not negatively impact their behavior, while preventing nesting behaviors in our female birds (Daphne and the greys). This is because we don't want to encourage egg-laying in our females. I know some people who have lost birds (usually cockatiels) to egg-binding, so we're careful with our ladies. That's not to say it won't happen; we're just trying to reduce the probability of that happening.

Since Max and Daphne have, thus far, shown very little interest in nesting, it's mostly just a concern with Stella. Happily, although she does seem determined to fit under the stove, she always steps up nicely when we remove her from the area. That doesn't mean she'll stay on her stand once she flies there, preferring another try with the oven. As yet, she has not attempted any nesting in the living room, so this is just a concern in the kitchen.

Since you couldn't see her face in the above pictures, here's one I took this morning:I think she is trying to look innocent, as she had just recently thrown all of my recyclables (they had been waiting on the counter to be removed to the garage) onto the ground.