Kika name dilemma

Of our six parrots, four of them came with names. For the most part, we've continued calling them what they've known in the past -- Rocky, Calypso, and Kika. We changed Beeps's name, but still often refer to him as "Babycake" which is what he was known as for the first few years of his life, and how he sometimes refers to himself.

Since we got Max from a breeder, we got to choose her name (we thought she was male when we did) and Daphne, intended as a breeder, was unnamed.

I've been seriously thinking about changing Kika's name, however. Every time I say her name, I think of the racial slur that is one letter away from her name. Even though it's not pronounced the same -- we say "kee-kah" -- it disturbs me. She's only 5, so we'll probably spend the next 25-45 years with her, and that's a long time to be distressed be her name!

Thomas is not being helpful in this process. He keeps suggesting other names that are one letter away from racial slurs or dictators (i.e. "let's call her Stalit!") He thinks he's being funny, and I have to admit that he does make me laugh, which only encourages him.

I've been thinking a lot about this, especially when I'm running and have time to think, and came up with what I thought was the perfect name -- Roxy. Excited, I told Thomas, and he reminded me how close that name is to Rocky. How did I miss that?

Right now, the names on my short list are: Cassia, Fausta, Livia, Silvia, Helena, Ava, and Karla. But none of them seem quite right.

I need to make a decision soon since I think the longer we call her "Kika," the more confusing it will be when we make the switch.

Possibly my longest entry ever

I'm not sure why I have so many pictures and videos from yesterday. There are a bunch I'm not even posting because this will be long enough!

First, I realized why Andreas has been sort of crabby lately: he's going through a major molt. This isn't the best picture, but you can see how the red skin is flaking off, particularly near his head. I found a piece of skin in his tank that was about the size of his belly. When I help him with the skin that's around his fingers, the skin retains the cylinder shape. I'm hoping that soon he will no longer have remnants from the colored sand they had him on in the pet store, but his tail has a long way to go yet.
We often give our empty food boxes to the parrots to destroy. This one had been on the bottom of a stand for several weeks, and yesterday Beeps decided to go down and shred it.
Here is Rocky, looking for Thomas to come home. You can see our ill-fated attempt to grow edible flowers for the lizards on the other side of the glass. Right now, it appears as though we're growing some mini maple trees!
I know I've been posting a lot of Max/lettuce pictures lately. I wish I would have caught what she did last night on video. She knows she's not supposed to go near our salads-in-progress, since she just takes the leaves and throws them on the floor. Last night, she snuck over there when my back was turned, grabbed a leaf, and ran as fast as she could to the other side of the counter. I thought she was going to throw it in the garbage, which is something she often does with things she finds on the counter, but instead she started eating the leaf.
While the humans of the house were eating dinner, the parrots of the house got busy chipping wood. I wish there were some sort of market for these tiny pieces of wood!

Rocky with a piece I thought was too thick for him (he showed me wrong):
He insists on chipping wood either on Thomas or on a towel.

Here's Beeps, chipping away. In the background is one of my favorite parrot toys. It's sucker sticks embedded in a piece of wood. This can be used as a perch or as a cage topper. Each of my parrots has at least one in their cage. Beeps has chewed away all but one stick, so I'll get him another one this weekend!
We've been doing our parrots' grooming in shifts. Part of this is due to the fact that their nails need to be trimmed at different times, and part is due to the fact that our Dremel battery does not keep its charge very long (I would have loved to get Calypso done last night). But it was Beeps and Kika who were trimmed yesterday.

Kika, in the middle of her trim:
And Beeps, right after, still in Thomas's lap. Unfortunately, the flash made him look very bright, but he'd flipped back over by the time I tried to take another picture.
After dinner, I was assembling toys to donate to the shelter where we volunteer. Even though Thomas was playing video games on the floor, Rocky climbed up on the couch next to me and played with a towel.


Then, Thomas put the video game away and we ate some strawberries for dessert. Even though Rocky spurned them the day before when I had offered them to everyone, he ate it when it came from Thomas. Of the remaining five parrots, once again only Calypso ate some.

This video was taken this morning as we were eating breakfast. We had swept up and changed the newspapers last night. However, Beeps is going through a stage where he does not want any newspaper in the tray on the stand. So, he works to throw all of the newspaper on the floor. This can be funny to watch because he's pretty small in comparison to the size of the paper, so it really takes some maneuvering on his part!

Rocky decided to take advantage of the paper on the floor to cover himself with the paper and walk around. I started calling his name towards the end of the video so that you could see him. Otherwise, it just looks like a moving piece of newspaper! Towards the middle of the video, you see Beeps walking over on the edge of the tray.

A typical evening

We've been eating a lot of salads lately. The farmer at the market makes a wonderful greens mix, and we got some mushrooms in our CSA last week. Thomas chopped up the mushrooms and had them in a bowl, waiting to be parceled out onto the salads and the pizza that we made. Of course, nosy Max had to come over and started eating the mushrooms:
You can see by the way her eyes are pinned how much she's enjoying it! She also saw the bowl of greens and had to come over and start throwing them out of the bowl. I don't know what it is about greens that makes her act so destructively!
Back in the living room, Rocky has started hanging out under his cage again! I think this is one of the most adorable things that he does, and he hadn't done it for several months.
Kika was also making us laugh yesterday. Even though she has plenty of wood toys in her cage, even some that are exactly the same as in Rocky's cage, she had to stretch out her body to destroy his. He did not seem to mind the intrusion!
I was sitting on the couch and assembling toys to give to the birds currently residing at the shelter where I volunteer. Max gets quite jealous when I do this, as she wants all of the toys for herself. She climbed down from her cage and perched on the shoes I wear around the house. Finally I gave her a wood slat to chew (even though she has plenty in her cage) and she walked happily back to her cage.

Weekend recap

We had a pretty busy weekend. I left work a bit early on Friday in order to run a few errands. We had symphony tickets for the evening, so Thomas and I stopped to get a coffee drink (the concert didn't even start until 8 pm and we wanted to stay awake!) We brought the drinks home and were drinking them in the kitchen while doing other things. All of a sudden, I felt a sharp pain on my right forearm and looked down to see a caique attached to my skin, grinding away. Devilcake! As best as we can tell, he was angry because I didn't offer him any of my drink which looked like a smoothie (due to the caffeine inside). Luckily he didn't do serious damage and my arm is almost healed.

With the rhubarb I bought last week, we made a rhubarb-pineapple compote. Here are a couple of in process pictures:

The finished product did not look appetizing, but was absolutely delicious! I've been adding it to my morning yogurt instead of honey.

I know I've posted pictures like these before, but I just love this routine Thomas and Max have. This usually only happens on the weekends, when he has a bit more time to eat breakfast and read the paper. She waits patiently (well, for a timneh) for him to finish. She'll occasionally throw out a "want some!" or start dancing around, but Thomas reminds her she needs to wait her turn.
And then, when he is done, she is allowed to drink up the remaining soy milk:
On to my other grey! When we got her, less than 2 months ago, we were told she was terrified of toys. What a difference 2 months makes as she is now a master toy destroyer. I know I've mentioned this before, but I think one of the best parrot toys is a simple untreated 2X4 chopped into thin slices. We drill some and hang them on wire or chain in their cages, and also give them out as foot toys.
Here is a short video of her destroying the wood:

While we are lucky that Thomas is handy enough to slice the 2X4s himself, you can buy these at places like The Parrot Asylum. Every single one of our birds (even Daphne our budgie) has toys made with these in their cage.

Let me finish with a scare I had this morning. When I looked in Andreas's cage, this is what I saw:
Why would he sleep like that? I was terrified that he had died during the night since both of the lizards are usually so careful to contain themselves fully in their hides (they are prey animals, after all). Luckily this was a false alarm and I brought him out to warm up.

Grey videos

Here are a couple of grey videos that I took over the weekend. Kika was clipped when she was surrendered to the rescue, so now we're waiting for her flight feathers to grow out so that she can fly. In the meantime, we have been having her flap her wings so she can work on strengthening her muscles. She loves this and will often start flapping when I pick her up.

In this video, Max is eating a pellet. As I've mentioned before, Max does not have a food dish in her cage. Every morning, I wrap her pellets in little pieces of adding machine tape and hide them in her cage for her to find. We've recently started doing this with Kika, slowly (5 of her 20 pellets are wrapped and hidden) and hope to soon have her on 100% foraging as well.

Max really loves foraging, and I think it's adorable how she eats the pellet out of the wrapper.

Also, in the background, you can hear Rocky making his vomit sounds. I did a quick search and was amazed that I haven't talked much about this before. I will do so in an upcoming post. His vomit sounds are how he lets us know he wants something (he used to scream). As soon as I finished taking this video, I gave him attention so as to avert the screams!

Updates on all the parrots

It's been a long time since I've made a post with pictures of all of the parrots in our house. Hopefully this won't get too long!

We've recently been making our own nut butter. We just get bags of roasted unsalted nuts from Trader Joe's and blend them up. It's delicious! Lately I've been dipping apple slices in the nut butter as part of my breakfast. Of course observant Max noticed this and came over to help herself.
Kika loves getting sprayed almost as much as Max does. I've been trying to spray her at least once a day to help with her new feather growth. Another thing we've been working on with her is getting her to hold her own food, like she is with a piece of bread in this photo. She prefers to nibble as Thomas or I hold the food in front of her. She's starting to catch on!
I'll finish talking about the female parrots in the house with Daphne. She is so docile and well-behaved that I rarely talk about her here. She also tends not to photograph well as she gets washed out. I've been unable to capture how pretty she is -- she usually looks aqua in pictures but she's more of a periwinkle.

One nice thing about the small stature of a budgie is that she can perch just about anywhere. When she's in the kitchen with us, I usually place her on a bowl, like here:Calypso is one of the most beautiful parrots I have ever seen. Here he is, wondering why I'm taking pictures of him instead of feeding him breakfast!Caiques tend to be playful parrots, and that's certainly true for Beeps. This figure-8 dog pull toy is the best $1 I've ever spent. He's been swinging on it, doing flips through the loops, and all sorts of other things. One of his favorites is for me to swing it while he hangs off and flaps -- I can get it going faster than he can.

Getting in position to do a flip: Posing (you can see Kika's face in the background):
This video of Rocky is a bit longer than I normally like to do (about 40 seconds). This morning I put the ipod on instead of listening to the radio, and the parrots were happy to hear some of their favorite songs. For whatever reason, they all love the band Bowling for Soup. I was in the kitchen with everyone else and Rocky was in the living room, being antisocial and playing on his cage. As soon as this song came on, I could hear him singing. I tried to capture that on video, but he wouldn't sing in front of the camera -- only dance (I taped a little longer than usual as I was hoping he'd forget about the camera and start singing).

Rocky is quite musical, and I use this to my advantage. If he's really worked up (screaming) or about to attack, I either start singing one of his favorite songs or put them on the ipod (depending on how much time I have) and he immediately brightens up, joins in the dancing, and often starts singing.

Parrot relationships and Kika update

There are times in our house when all of the parrots are getting along quite well...
And then one of them (usually Beeps) has to instigate another one (usually Max)...
Thomas is currently a resident physician, which means that he's graduated from medical school but is still in training before he can get his license and practice on his own. During this additional training, he spends quite a few nights on call, which means he stays at the hospital (with no sleep) overnight. The animals and I were alone last Friday night, when Max and Rocky resumed their strange friendship.

When Thomas isn't there, they often like to hang out in the little area in front of our stairs, and sometimes on the stairs themselves. I can't figure out why they do this, or why they only do it when I'm alone with them. Thomas thought I was making this up until I showed him pictures.
A few Kika updates. As I mentioned in my previous post, we try to get the parrots to make decision for themselves. Here is Kika deciding which piece of dried fruit she wants to eat:
This made me so happy! I was knitting on the couch and looked up to see her playing with a box that was on top of Rocky's cage. I was happy that she felt comfortable enough to do that! Of course then Rocky had to come over and play with that box even though it had probably been three months since the last time he'd played with it!
We have to get Kika a new cage. She's currently in the dome-top cage that we got from the rescue when we were fostering her. I really prefer the play-top cages since the parrots spend a lot of time on top of their cages and a play-top seems to encourage that type of play better. Hopefully we'll be getting one in the next month or so -- I have to get my act together!!!

Grey matters

In the absence of anything exciting happening at our house, I thought I'd share some pictures of my little grey girls.

Here is Kika on top of her cage with one of her favorite toys. It's a wood block with paper sucker sticks inserted. That toy was new when she came into our house less than a month ago, and she works on it a little more every day. She'll need a new one pretty soon!
Here she is on the shower curtain this morning, looking quizzically at me. She has so many pin feathers right now! I've been misting her daily and she sits on the shower curtain when I shower so that the humidity might help her skin feel better where the new feathers are poking through.
And preening herself on her cage.
Now, on to my mischief-maker, Max. I've shown pictures in the past of our shower curtain. We space shampoo bottles out so that the parrots are less likely to bother each other. My face wash is apparently no match for Max! As this separates her from Calypso and is therefore unnecessary, it just makes me laugh.

As I was putting the birds in their cages for the morning, I came for Max last. As the longest-tenured bird in our house, one of her perks is that she gets out of her cage first and goes into her cage last. I found her perching on our dishes! If you look on the top of her head, you'll see a darkened spot. She has lip prints on her from when I kissed her after applying chapstick. I just couldn't help myself -- her head was so soft and she smelled so good.

The Figure 8 Toy

We have a figure-8 rope toy that I think is made for playing tug with dogs. I may have mentioned this before, as one of Max's tricks is to do a loop through the bottom section, and she also loves hanging off of it as I push her. Lately, Beeps has been hanging out in the bottom part. I catch him there several times a day. We've added several swings to his cage, but he's not interested in them.
Max also likes to perch on the upper level of the stand and swing the figure-8 toy at whichever parrot happens to be hanging out underneath it. The caiques are too short to be knocked off, but she has successfully knocked Rocky and Kika down in the past. They have learned and no longer stand where she can reach them.

Kika has been revealing more of her personality to us, which we love! She is still incredibly sweet to the humans in the house, but has started asserting herself more with the other parrots.

Last night, Max was on the middle part of the stand and I was scratching her head. Kika has been closely watching my interactions with the other parrots, and she inched closer for a better look of what I was doing to Max. With no warning, she reached out and bit Max on the wing! Luckily she just grabbed a beakful of feathers and no harm was done. However, I felt guilty because I had lulled Max into a false sense of security.

This is what I saw when I came home from work yesterday:Thomas was in the living room playing video games, and the other parrots were with him. Max had flown into the kitchen and was playing with the jacket that he'd left on the kitchen counter instead of putting it away in the closet. He said Max wouldn't stay in the living room because she was so enthralled with the jacket! I was surprised he allowed this as she ruined the zipper on another jacket the morning we left for Madrid earlier this year. I hung the jacket in the closet before any damage was done to this zipper.

In which we fail fostering (again)...

This will probably not come as a surprise to some of you out there, but we have decided that we can't live without Kika.

The reason I didn't post on Monday is that I had to bring Kika to the rescue facility to meet her potential new owner. I felt sick, my emotions were all over the place, and I couldn't come up with words to express how I was feeling.

When we agreed to take her in, we knew that there was someone interested in her and that this most likely would be very short term (less than 2 weeks). She just couldn't handle it at the rescue and we wanted to stop further mutilation. Based on the description of her by her previous owners and her behavior at the center, we expected a scared, difficult grey. What we found was completely the opposite.

We told ourselves we couldn't fall in love with her, but we couldn't help ourselves.

She started making sad, mournful noises (grey owners will know what I'm talking about) the moment I took her toys out of her cage so that she would have something familiar if she was adopted. These continued the entire drive, as I fought back tears. It was so hard leaving her there.

A couple of hours later, Thomas called me, himself almost in tears, and asked whether there was any way we could adopt her. I called up to the facility and was told that if the person looking at her didn't want to adopt her, we could have her, but we would have to wait and see.

Luckily for us, Kika was still available at the end of the day! She made happy noises the entire car ride back home. I'm sure she was just picking up on my emotions, but it's amazing how sensitive these creatures are.

We got home much later than usual, so Thomas was cooking dinner. He told me that all of the parrots were mad at me for possibly sending one of them away and they were worried that they might be next. Of course he was just kidding!

As was the case before, she is adapting quite well to our house. Max hasn't tried to buzz her in almost a week. She gets along with the caiques, and the parrots are able to share stands without problems.

Kika must have lived in a technologically advanced house (at least compared to us) as she has regaled us with her repertoire of at least 5 different phone rings. She also makes normal grey sounds that I love -- clicks, clucks, beeps, whistles, etc. She and Max make identical sounds, to the point where it's impossible for me to tell which grey is making the noise.

Although we weren't looking to add another bird to our house, I think she's a good fit and will enjoy life with us. But she is absolutely the last until we move as there is no more space in the living room.

Parrot interactions

When I write about the lizards, it's usually about Andreas. He is much friendlier and more active than Elsa. She was out of her hide yesterday when I got home from work, however, and also enjoyed dandelions that I picked from our yard. I just can't believe how much these guys love the dandelions. I may try to figure out a way to grow them in the house year-round for them.
When I was outside picking the dandelions, there was this bird in our tree, very close to where I was. I'm not good at bird identification, so I'm not sure what he was. (EDIT: a friend e-mailed me to let me know he was a white breasted nuthatch -- I need to get better at my bird IDs! And thanks, P!) But he was beautiful, and I spent several minutes watching him (her?) hop around our tree. P told me that these birds will hop around the trees, looking for bugs, spider eggs, and whatnot. Once they go around a tree, they fly to another and start foraging some more.
Max has recently been using the pen cup on our table as a foraging toy. Parrots shouldn't eat ink, so we watch her closely, but figure there's no harm in letting her play briefly with the top of the pen. Thomas and I sometimes talk about what professions the parrots would be if they were humans. Maybe Max would be a writer?
Kika has been hanging out with the caiques. It's very sweet. Beeps seems to be protecting her from Max. When they're all on the stands, he'll place himself in between the greys. That's Calypso near her in this picture; you can kind of see Beeps in the back.
Speaking of Kika, I heard her first word in the almost 5 days she's been with us -- a standard "hello!" Her voice is much quieter and sweeter than Max's. She's been making a lot of grey noises and whistling. Her chest wound is almost completely healed and she has tons of pin feathers growing. She also has been destroying several of the toys I made her. She loves the finger traps! They are one of my favorite components to teach birds how to play with toys.

Below is a rare action shot of Max and Beeps playing. I love the way movement was captured in that some of their feathers seem see-through.
I used to be very careful in keeping them separate so that this kind of thing didn't happen. But I've come to believe that it really is some kind of play that they do. And I'm always closely watching to make sure that it doesn't escalate. Additionally, they are both flighted and able to escape the situation. I've seen many outside birds behave in similar ways. Finally, they are of very similar size -- I would never let them play with a budgie or a full-size macaw (enough disclaimers?)

No pictures of Rocky recently, but he is still doing well. I think he's been behaving better since I've been handling him, so I don't have as much to write about.

Mostly shower scenes

This is what greeted me when I walked in on Thomas showering Monday morning:
From left to right, that's Max, Rocky, Kika, and Beeps. Calypso doesn't like to shower with Thomas, and Daphne can't be in the bathroom because she has trouble breathing with the hot, moist air. All of the birds went under the spray with him for a few moments and were drenched.

This was the scene when I showered this morning:
From left to right, that's Max, Calypso, and Kika. Beeps likes to hang out on the towel rack instead of the top of the shower door when he showers with me. Rocky prefers to walk around the house and hang out on the floor of the bathroom.

Here's a close-up of Beeps on the towel rack:
He has such good posture! Compare that to Calypso:
This is actually a pretty good picture of my beautiful, but non-photogenic, caique. He had been sprayed before the shower, so he was slightly wet. I had gone into the kitchen to refill the spray bottle so I could spray the lizards' food. Calypso spied this and demanded a quick shower.

Here's how Kika looked this morning:
If you compare her mutilation sores to the first day we had her, she's made amazing progress in a few short days. I think she'll be completely healed by the weekend. In other progress news, she has started eating Harrison's pellets, which are among the most nutritious for greys and should jumpstart her feather regrowth.

And just so she doesn't feel left out, here's a shower picture of Max:
I had heard how much uromastyx lizards loved dandelion flowers. However, by the time we brought our lizards home last year (May 31), there was nary a dandelion to be seen in our yard. There haven't been any pesticides applied to our lawn for at least 3 years, so they're safe to feed. I just go out there, clip off the heads, wash them, and serve.

I was amazed at how happy they made Andreas! He ate about 8 of them. I have never seen him so excited about food before! We're going to see if we can freeze some for him -- not so sure how that will turn out!