Concetrated parrots

All four of these guys have their own cages, in this room, but they frequently all hang out on the stand:

Of course Rocky had to threaten me:

Clown loach disappearing act

We have a very sneaky clown loach in our aquarium. She manages to completely disappear for hours at a time! We don't have that many hiding spaces, so I have no idea where she is. After several days of not being able to find her, I thought perhaps she'd died and been eaten by the other occupants of the tank, but yesterday when I got home from work, she was out and begging for food along with the other two:

This is reminiscent of our pleco, who would disappear for months at a time.  Ultimately, I was able to discover her hiding place.  Unfortunately, she died in August while we were on vacation.  It was a shock as we should have had her for many years yet.  We have not replaced her, opting for more frequent tank cleanings.

Beeps and the fish

Having moved Calypso into the kitchen, we needed to move one of the stands in order to have room for his cage. The stand is placed in front of our aquarium, across from Beeps's cage. Surprisingly, the parrots love having another stand in the living room, even though they have their cages as well.

Beeps particularly likes the stand. If he's on the end and stretches his body out, he can glimpse what's going on in the kitchen without having to fly in there. I'm not sure this will have a positive impact on his fitness level!

He also likes to watch the fish swimming around. I tried to get a picture of him watching the fish, but he turned to me as soon as he saw the camera (the camera is something that can trigger attacks.)

In this picture, it looks like the fish are ganging up on him to launch an attack!

Pleco sighting!

Now that we know where to look (see here), we see our pleco much more frequently than ever before. Lately, however, she's been coming out of her normal hiding place.

Last night, she was out, and changed colors in order to blend in with our gravel!Her "normal" color is much darker. Just amazing! Thomas took a close-up so you can see her bristles and eye:

Pleco

We only get a pleco sighting every few months. We have gone over a year without seeing her. But she was out last night!She blends in so well -- nature is amazing. She's grown quite a bit since the last time I saw her. According to the websites I found, she should be full-grown now.

Cider helper

When I got home from work yesterday, Thomas was brewing. Actually, he was bottling (a cyser) and racking (a trippel) and making cider. I'm not exactly sure if you "brew" a cider. I got home just in time to cap the cysers. A task that was made more difficult by curious greys investigating my work and a rouge caique who was let out of his cage by a certain severe macaw.

One thing I've mentioned before is how we try to involve the parrots in our activities, in a parrot-safe way. We were opening bottles of apple juice for the cider, so gave one of the caps to Max. She loved it!In fact, after he'd finished his work, Thomas decided to take a quick shower -- guess who followed him into the bathroom, with her toy?
Sorry for a posting delay. I didn't take many pictures over the weekend as I was not really in the mood. Thomas and I helped with an intake of over 40 abused/neglected parrots at the rescue where we volunteer. I went home and cried over the poor condition these birds had been living. My focus was then on spending time with my parrots and making them feel loved, rather then documenting their antics. Thomas almost took home a neglected lovebird ("He can go in Daphne's cage! We have the room!") but sanity (aka Me) prevailed.

One exciting thing that did happen is our pleco came out for a visit! This picture isn't the best, but you can see her eyes flashing a bit.We have gone over 14 months without seeing her, until we found her hiding place. Now, we check on her about once a week to make sure she's still there; however, during these checks, we can normally just see her bristles -- never her whole body like this!

An aquarium mystery

Thomas really pruned down the plants in our aquarium during one of the cleanings last year. He left some hiding places for the smaller tetras, but the rainbowfish prefer open space to swim. Therefore, we can almost always see our fish as they don't have that many places to hide any more. However, our smallest clown loach has found a place, somewhere.

Last week, Thomas and I each spent over 30 minutes looking for her. We'd finally decided she must have died and the other fish ate her body. But, the next day, she'd reappeared! Since then, she's been doing the disappearing/reappearing act several times a day.

I suspect she may be preparing a nest (but where?); however, it's likely that none of the babies will survive since there aren't many hiding places for them to stay until they're too large to be eaten. Off to the far right in this picture, you can see the two larger clown loaches. The small one? Nowhere to be seen!*************************
Last night, Beeps was very needy, so I attempted to make dinner one-handed as he demanded to be on me. Obviously, this was not ideal, so I placed him on the sink while I did tasks that required both hands. And he started licking the drops of water on the sink!!! I offered him a drink of water out of a cup, but he preferred his water foraging method.************************
This morning, Max again bit into Thomas's banana after he'd placed it on the counter for later consumption.
He was not happy about that!

Aquarium photos

It's been a few months since my last aquarium update. We haven't added any fish in years, so there typically aren't many updates! However, since I had time yesterday, I watched them for quite a long time and decided to take some pictures.

I know I'm just kidding myself, but I think my fish like me. Thomas tells me it's just that the associate me with food, but it still makes me happy when they see me and get all excited. They don't get excited when they see him!

If you look at the bottom left, you can see the tail of one of our clown loaches. They all hang out under a piece of wood we have in our tank.
I think that two of these Australian Rainbowfish are the babies that hatched in our tank. They're as big as everyone else!
Sometimes the two larger clown loaches hang out together and appear to shun the smaller one. They're all about the same age, for whatever reason, one is significantly smaller than the others. However, more and more frequently, all 3 will hang out together, like here. It makes me so happy when they're inclusive!
And here is a photo of our red skirts schooling together:
They are all around 4 years old, so I'm shocked they're still doing so well! The last time we added any fish to our aquarium was September 1, 2007, so we've been at a nice balance for a couple of years now.

The main reason we got the fish tank was to add humidity to the house when Max started plucking, and to give the parrots some entertainment. However, the parrots don't really seem to care about the fish, with the occasional exception of Calypso.

Not cooperating

Max was doing some funny things last night, but every time I tried to take a picture of it, she stopped and started shoving her face into the camera instead. So just a boring Max picture:
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The fish all gather on the right side of the aquarium when they know it's feeding time. For some reason, yesterday they were all hanging out together even after dinner. There should be 9 Australian rainbowfish; I could count 7 here. And of course one clown loach and a few glowlight tetras in the background.*************************
Last night, when I was in a semi-sleep/semi-awake state, I had a horrible dream. Thomas opened the front door and Stella flew outside. I remember thinking, "this is just a dream -- have her turn around and fly back to you," but that didn't happen. It was very scary and she got extra hugs this morning.

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This morning, I showered with just the greys. After I finished, I was doing some things in the bathroom to get ready for the day and Max kept flying to my head. I couldn't get anything done like this, so finally I tossed her into the hallway (one of the benefits of a flighted bird although if she were clipped she wouldn't have flown to my head in the first place) and she went to her stand in the kitchen.

Almost as soon as Max was gone, Stella, who had thus far been perfectly content to sit on the shower curtain and watch me, decided that she needed to keep flying to my head as well! It's pretty hard to get ready one-handed, which is what I attempted to do after having her step up on my hand from my head.

After I got ready, I went into the kitchen and couldn't find Max. She had flown to the counter island in our kitchen and was perched on our fruit bowl, currently containing onions. Although I didn't see her in action, the evidence left behind suggests she was peeling the onions a bit. Parrots are not supposed to eat onion. I guess we'll have to find a different place for them! Later on in the morning, we noticed that she had taken quite a few bites out of a $20 bill that was on the counter. She's tried to eat money in the past, and apparently I didn't learn my lesson. It's still spendable, but it might be a little embarrassing to use. Maybe I'll pay cash at the parrot rescue next time I buy food -- they'll understand!

Aquarium update

It's been several months since I've posted any aquarium photos. Nothing too exciting has been going on. Really the only change has been our rainbowfish babies growing up!

I'm pretty sure the smaller fish in the foreground is one of the babies. They're indistiguishable from the larger fish after a year.Thomas was taking a bunch of different pictures; it's almost like this guy is trying to communicate with us:
Here is one of our glow-light tetras. These guys have been in our tank since it was set-up a little over three years ago. From this angle, it looks like she has neon eyebrows.
A rare sighting of all three clown loaches in the same area. The smaller one still has not caught up, size-wise, to the others (he's off to the left; they seem to isolate him):
The two larger clown loaches were swimming around in a way that makes me think they were doing pre-mating rituals. Any babies would most likely get eaten by the tank inhabitants, but I will keep an eye out to see if any hardy souls make it, like the rainbowfish last year.
A close-up; I love how you can see his barbels so closely:

Squash mouth

The non-avian members of our house, neglected by this blog, are doing well. Andreas has been out of his hide every day for more than two months now, I believe. Here he is, basking:Elsa is brumating, which is a type of hibernation. She'll sometimes spend more than a week inside her hide, but surprised us all over the weekend by coming out for a bask. I offered her a bit of butternut squash and she, unlike Andreas, gobbled it up. The parrots aren't the only ones with squash mouth!The fish were apparently very hungry over the weekend, even though their feeding schedules hadn't changed. They normally eat around 5 pm, when I get home from work. Around 3 pm on Saturday, they kept following me (as best they could, since they are in a tank) as I passed in front of their cage, begging to be fed.

In this video, you can see how the right side of the tank is pretty much empty, and how they all come over when they realize it's feeding time. There are two smaller fish -- in the beginning, one is in the upper center part of the frame and towards the end, one is at the bottom right -- those are the babies that hatched in the tank earlier in the year.

On the cooking front, of which I've also been remiss on the blog lately, Thomas made granola yesterday. It is quite delicious! I think we'll be trying many different variations of this in the months to come:
Since it was so cold and icy and we were pretty much stuck inside all day, I also made some banana bread and banana muffins (had a bunch of old bananas to use!)

I couldn't believe how icy it was! I tried running with my group of friends for our weekly run; every single one of us almost slipped exiting our cars, so we drove to a local indoor track instead and ran there. The scenery left much to be desired, but at least we didn't break any bones! Upon returning home, I found that my car could not make it into the garage due to the ice -- my wheels just kept spinning. So I parked my car on the side of the road and tried to walk up the driveway -- I couldn't make it and kept sliding down! Our driveway is not that steep, either. I finally made it home by walking on the snow instead.

The parrots did not have to worry about the weather, confined as they are to our house.

Rocky was the only one I photographed over the weekend. When he gets in the hallway by the bathroom, he will bite even Thomas if he tried to have him step up. He didn't have a stick nearby, so he scooped Rocky into his arm, thereby avoiding a bite:
Later, Rocky was hanging out on a plant:After I took this picture, he hurried over to hang out with Thomas's foot:We still don't get his fascination with feet!

Aquarium photos

Thomas also took pictures of the aquarium last night. Unfortunately, he didn't clean off the outside of the tank before taking this one, but I like it so much that I'm posting it anyway. These two large clown loaches hang out together pretty frequently. The third, smaller, guy is still around, but the three are rarely seen together.And here's a close-up of one of the larger clown loaches:Similarly, here's a group of Australian Rainbowfish:
And a close-up of one of them:
Only two of the three Australian Rainbowfish babies survived, and they are now quite large -- bigger than some of the others when we bought them.

Stella on the floor

Stella has shown a great desire to be on the floor, of late. We are not encouraging this, as it appears to be nesting behavior. I do not want to deal with egg-binding, so we're trying to not stimulate her. But of course I had to take a video!

Our cabinets and dishwasher do go all the way to the ground, so her attempts to squish herself under them (and into a dark, enclosed space) are futile.

Thomas, the good sport that he is, agreed to partially stage this video. Stella had been on the floor, trying to attack his feet, but she'd stopped the attacks before I could get my camera ready. Notice how he provocatively wiggles his toes at her at one point :)

Once again, we are not encouraging this (well, except so I could film this video) and have been proactively keeping her off of the floor.

I can't believe it's the weekend already! Tomorrow is my longest run in training. We're supposed to do between 20-22 miles. My running partner and I have agreed to do 20 and we'll see if we're feeling up to adding a couple of more at the end. My inclination is to stop at 20, but he can be a bit of a taskmaster! The weather is supposed to be beautiful -- I can only hope! I have been drinking water like crazy in an attempt to pre-hydrate a bit.

In sad aquarium news, I think one of my baby rainbowfish has died. It's been about a week since I've seen all three of them. I hope he's just been hiding somewhere. I'll try to do a more comprehensive search for him tonight.

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend! Since it's been cooling down, I think we'll be able to go for a hike again! Also, I haven't even picked up knitting needles since before our vacation and I was really hoping to have this scarf done before cooler weather arrives. It will be Monday before I know it!

Apparently I was camera crazy last night. Also, perhaps I should have purchased a video camera with all of the films I've been making lately.

We've been listening to the ipod lately, and Thomas made a comment last night which made me think of one of my favorite "best of craiglist" comments: My ipod shuffle thinks I'm gay. Wednesday night, it kept playing metal songs. We have a lot of songs that the ipod could choose from, but it was heavily playing the less than 1% of them that are metal.


Then, last night, he was happy that it seemed to be in sync with his mood. After playing one Queen song, he switched it from a shuffle of all songs, to a shuffle of Queen songs. Beeps, perhaps not surprisingly, is a huge Queen fan. I tried to get a video of him dancing because he is the funniest dancer I have ever seen (and so different from any other parrot), but he stopped as soon as the camera came out. So you may hear a lot of Queen in the many videos to follow!


One of the finds at Wednesday's farmers' market were these parrot-sized squash. Apparently they are called patty pan squash.
This is the first time we've served them, and Max was a big fan. The rest of the parrots were not so sure, but perhaps once they've been exposed to them more often they'll change their minds!

My intention was to show some of the cooking we've been doing this summer, but I often forget. We've been eating a lot of salads. Our favorite farmer sells these fantastic greens mixes, of which we buy several pounds every week. Then we add different vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and cheese. Yesterday's looked particularly appetizing, I thought. To the greens, we added tomatoes, currants, cheddar goat cheese, and walnuts.Upon returning home, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the order I'd placed with Grey Feather Toys had arrived. None of the parrots got any of the new toys, yet. We're leaving on vacation in a few weeks and I want them to have new things when we're gone to keep them occupied. But, the toys arrived wrapped in purple tissue paper. I stuffed this into Beeps's cage, and it was a huge hit!This first video is from when he first was given some of the paper (you can hear one of the greys demanding "up!" at around 13, 15, and 24 seconds):

The paper had been on his cage for several hours at this point. He had been dancing most of the evening, and I was trying to capture this on video. Of course, he did not cooperate and instead started showing off. I particularly love how he marches around, stomping over anything in his path.

I wish I would have continued taping for another few seconds because right after I hit "stop," he lost his balance and fell over on his back, with the bowl covering him. He took this in stride.

All of the baby rainbowfish have been swimming with the school of larger fish, which makes me happy. When I get home from work, the fish are very active, begging for food. In the background of this video, you can hear one of the greys (probably Stella) imitating my sneeze at around 9 seconds. Stella has picked up pretty much everything Max says, and it's gotten to the point where I can't tell who's talking if I'm in a different room.

I'm not sure if I've talked about this before, but Max has been hanging out on the stairs lately. This isn't really allowed since I don't want her pooping on the carpet -- that's why we have hard floors on our lower level! Also, that encourages Rocky to hang out on the stairs, and he has a habit of chewing on the carpet. Since we replaced it just three years ago, I'd like for it to remain relatively nice!

She usually hangs out, about 6 or 7 steps up, occasionally ordering us around ("Up!" "Come here!") or commenting on what's going on (laughing or sneezing). In this video, I was taping her walking up the stairs. Out of the corner of my ear, I heard Rocky coming over to join in the fun. Isn't it amazing how quickly he can climb the stairs? He doesn't even use his beak to go up. When I pan to Max, it's because she's dancing. I guess everyone likes Queen!

I'm ending today's post with a picture from this morning. Thomas showered with Rocky, and then after he left for work, Rocky stayed in the bathroom, drying off. I went in to check on him regularly, and noticed that he was drying in a strange manner. The left side of his head apparently did not get as wet as the rest of him! I thought he looked pretty goofy, and it shows how different his green feathers look when they're wet!

Hope everyone has a good weekend. I am running a race, and Thomas has also entered. He's going to try to beat me, and I don't want that to happen, so the pressure is on!

3 year anniversary of the worst day of my life

Today marks the 3-year anniversary of the worst day of my life, when Max flew away, even though her wings were clipped. I blogged about that experience here, if anyone wants to revisit the details.


Even now, three years later, I beat myself up over the fact that I allowed this to happen. I should have known better! Luckily this experience did not have a permanent negative impact on her life (at least as far as we can tell) and we recovered her, albeit after a harrowing 34 hours.


It definitely made me more appreciative of her. Every single day since then, I've given her a few extra head pets and told her how lucky we were to find her, how much we love her, and how we'll always protect her. It's made us much more cautious in our daily lives, especially now that many of our parrots (including Max) can fly.


On to happier thoughts, the baby Australian Rainbowfish were finally big enough for us to clean the tank and do a partial water change. The larger Australian Rainbowfish had been enjoying swimming through the inflow of water, which is what I'm showing here. After each bucket of water was removed, we had to make sure that the three babies were still in the tank!

I bought some cherries at the store the other day. I love cherries, but hate having to deal with the pits. I had a bit of extra time on my hands yesterday, so I removed all of the pits and placed the cherries in a bowl for us to easily eat.

Curious Max came over and started doing that weird thing she's been doing with fruit lately -- licking it. She probably did this for about 10 minutes.

I went around and offered cherries to the rest of the parrots, and imagine my surprise when I came back to see that Max had moved from just licking the cherries to picking them up with her feet and eating them!

Cherries were a big hit in our house. All of the larger parrots (that is, everyone but Daphne) enjoyed them. We're still working with Stella on using her feet to help her eat -- she really likes it when we hold the food up to her beak for her. When I won't do that, she either has to use her feet or figure something else out, like here:

This was Stella's water dish on Sunday. I had given the parrots their new water and food in the morning, then I left to go running. I returned about two hours later and saw that Stella had been busy with chipping up her wood toy.

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!

Clown loaches

I narrowly avoided either old-fashioned hilarity or a potentially injurious fall upon exiting Thomas's car to go to lunch yesterday.
Seriously? Who leaves a banana peel in the parking lot? I thought that was the myth of cartoons and old British comedy.

The most exciting news in parrotland, although I don't have any pictures, is that Stella is flying well. She still doesn't voluntarily take flight, but she must have flown in a previous home, or at least fledged, as she knows how to navigate and land. This makes my life easier, as I can launch her from the kitchen and tell her "go to your cage" and she does, saving me a trip.

If you were in our living room right around dinner time, you'd think I had some sort of parrot cannon as I launch Beeps, Max, and Stella into the living room, keeping my hands free for bringing in dinner or the non-flying parrots.

I've read about the supposed stress-relieving benefits of aquariums, but mine can be stress-inducing. I worry all the time about providing the best possible home for all of the animals in my care, including the finned ones.

Last August and September, we decided to add some clown loaches to our tank. We purchased three from the most expensive fish store in town, but two died soon thereafter. These guys need to be in groups of at least three, so we went to another store and bought two more. They've all survived, but the two from the chain store pal around and often leave the one from the fancy store alone. Additionally, although they were all about the same size when we got them, the two from the chain store have grown considerably and are now more than twice the size of the little guy.

Yesterday was a rare sighting of all three out at the same time. The little guy is on the bottom of this picture, just to the left of center. The larger, silver fish are some of our Australian Rainbowfish -- the ones who had babies. The three babies are still doing well!

Here is a little video of them swimming around. It really can be nice to sit and watch, but I have to be careful to not stress out about their interpersonal relationships!