Grey videos

Last night, Thomas and Rocky went downstairs to work out while the greys and I made dinner. Max doesn't really like this arrangement. She loves the basement and would rather have gone down with Thomas. However, she can get into mischief, which means Thomas has to stop working out to rescue her. Also, she is very dusty and we're trying to keep our downstairs DVD player in good working order by limiting its exposure to our dusty greys.

She flew to the perch closest to the basement door, a chair, and stared longingly at the door. (I did take her down for a couple of quick visits, which she loved).

In this video, I'm trying to engage her in one of her favorite activities -- talking about kissing. Instead, Stella responds with a kiss (she's out of view of the camera) and then Max quietly says "hello" towards the end. I'm posting this because I love it when I ask one of them for a kiss and get a response from someone else. This actually happens quite regularly in our house since the greys and caiques love making the kiss sound!



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As I've mentioned many times before, I am fascinated by the ways in which my parrots interact with each other. There is actually very little interaction between them; I often wonder whether they recognize each other as parrots? Or do they consider themselves human and therefore above even recognizing the lower beings inhabiting the same living room?

The greys are the exception. There is little-to-no physical interaction, but they will chase each other around and will vocally interact. It's been very interesting to watch. When Stella first came to us, she was terrified and her wings were clipped. The first few days, Max buzzed her several times; once she even fell off of her cage and reopened her mutilation chest wound. I wrote about Stella's introduction to our house here, including mentioning the first time Max buzzed her.

What a difference a year makes! Stella now is extremely confident. Rereading the entry I linked above, I barely recognize her as the same bird! I'm not exactly sure when this happened, but at some point she definitely put Max in her place! Stella has achieved a sort of authority over Max. Max no longer tries to buzz her or knock her off of her perch. In contrast, Stella frequently chases Max around and makes her leave her perch.

I'd love to be able to capture more of this on video, but there's little warning when this type of thing happens, so I just have the end here.

Max had been on the chair closest to the basement door (see the above story). For some reason, Stella decided she wanted to perch there, so she flew over and landed on the chair, forcing Max off. Max ran across the table to be close to me, and in this video you can see Stella running over to chase her off.

Max actually flew around, landed on my head, and when I moved my head to get her off, landed back on her perch. You can see Stella following this action.