Parrot Burrito

I'm not putting this disclaimer on the following video for people who've kept up with the goings on at our house. It's for anyone who may stumble upon this and decide to try similar things with their parrots. Please don't! You will likely make your parrot angry and possibly receive a bite.

Rocky is very strange and loves stuff like this. He and Thomas did this several times last night and then I decided to film one. We would not do this with any of our other parrots, and I would never do this with Rocky -- only Thomas can!

More Max Mischief

Our community has a farmers' market on Wednesdays, and we've been taking advantage of that. Since it's early, all that's been available so far have been greens, asparagus, and edible flowers. Yesterday I also purchased some basil so that we could make our own pesto (which turned out quite nicely!)

Thomas placed the cleaned basil leaves in a bowl in preparation to make the pesto. I'm not sure what it is about bowls of greens, but Max is enthralled. As soon as she sees this, she has to fly over and start emptying the bowl. (Notice the greens on the counter. Those were all in the bowl before Max arrived).
Here is a video of her emptying the leaves on the counter. You can hear Beeps beeping in the background. We stopped her and rewashed the basil after taking this video!

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.

I guess I misunderestimated* him

Thomas frequently tells me that he thinks I baby Calypso too much. And after an experience last night, I think he may be on to something.

Calypso is the parrot in our house who suffered the most psychological damage from his previous mistreatment. I don't even believe that he was the one who received the worst treatment -- he's just the one that has the most trouble overcoming his past.

As a consequence of that, I have low expectations for him. All of the other parrots must step up on my hand (or a stick, in Rocky's case) to come out of their cages, while I open Calypso's cage and allow him to decide when he wants to exit. I always offer my hand to him, but if he declines, I leave his cage door open. I go to extreme lengths to make sure that he gets the largest cashews (his favorite treat). The other parrots have to do a trick before receiving favorite treats (they've got to earn it!) I treated him differently when it came to clicker training (which is really what this post is about). I've come to realize that I've been enabling him!

Last night, I was doing extended clicker training sessions with the parrots, specifically Max and Beeps. Daphne is not interested in training, but she was off to the side, watching what we were doing. Rocky was in the living room, playing and waiting for Thomas to arrive home. The rest of the parrots (caiques and greys) were in the kitchen with me.

I always train Max first. She was in a wonderful training mood and we quickly went through her entire routine, including working on her latest trick (doing a quick head-first dive off of the seed cup holder). Calypso was very interested, so I did a few targets with him (more on this later, but it's the first step in clicker training).

In the past, I used a different, smaller, target stick for Calypso because he seemed afraid of the larger one I use for everyone else. Last night, he eagerly used the larger stick. In the past, I eschewed the clicker and used a marker word ("bon" -- the French word for "good") because he seemed afraid of the click. Last night, he reveled in the clicker. Why did I allow my preconceptions of him to derail our training?

He was absolutely fantastic! He was a master targeter, never once getting confused. He repeated his one known trick -- shaking my hand -- and started working an another -- shaking his head. He made amazing progress and I am reenergized to work with him.

Shannon had asked in the comments for me to talk a little bit about clicker training. I first found out about it about two years ago when I was doing research into ways that I could make Max happier. Here is a good article explaining what clicker training is. I learned how to do it by joining this yahoo group (it's free) and reading through the files. Clickers can be picked up for about $1 at most pet stores.

Basically, it's a fantastic way to communicate with your parrots. Most parrots love the one-on-one interaction and learning that takes place. When Max sees the clicker, she starts saying "want some!" and flies to her training perch.

The first step is to figure out what food (or other reward) will motivate your bird -- what will they think of as an adequate reward for what you're asking them to do? Ideally, it should be something small that is quickly eaten. If you use a full almond, for example, the bird will quickly fill up so training is truncated, and the long time it takes the bird to eat the treat will affect the flow of training. I use safflower seeds for the greys and caiques. Thomas uses sunflower seeds for Rocky. I use praise for Rocky because he'd rather bite me than nicely take food from my hand. (Yes, I've tried using favorite treats like peanut butter on a spoon to put a barrier between his beak and my hand. He ignores the treat and pulls the spoon closer to his beak to try to bite. He's determined).

The second step is to make the bird understand that click=treat. Going forward, every time you click a bird, give her a treat. Even if you didn't mean to click. It's a contract, and you don't want to break your parrot's trust! To do this, have a treat ready, and then make the click and give the bird the treat as quickly as you can. You only have to do this step when training a new bird. From my experience, I usually have to do this between 5-20 times (depends on the bird) for them to understand. Pretty soon, when you click, you'll see the bird make a move to get a treat. That's when you know they understand.

The click is a marker. It's a way for you to communicate to your bird. You're saying, "What you did when I clicked -- that's what I like and I'm giving you a treat. If you do it again, you'll get another treat!"

The first "trick" to teach is targeting. You want the bird to bite softly on the end of a stick (I use a straw). When the bird does this, click and treat. When this becomes easy, move it off to the left so the bird has to lean. Then the right, up, and down. Continue working, in small steps, until the bird has to take several steps to get the straw. Incidentally, this can be a great way for a perch potato to get exercise -- make them walk all over to target.

I'm skimming over some things (the yahoo group I linked is really a fantastic resource!). I think the two main things to remember are:

1. This is supposed to be fun for you and your bird! Watch her and stop on a positive note before she gets bored. My training sessions are generally less than 5 minutes per bird per day. Stop if you feel yourself getting frustrated!

2. Many people feel self-conscious when they start doing this. They feel silly and don't know what they're doing. Who cares? Your bird doesn't know any better and will love the training sessions anyway! I'm certainly not an expert trainer, but in the past year and a half or so, my parrots have learned quite a few tricks and, most importantly, our bond has strengthened and we've had fun along the way!

I'll try to update more regularly on our training progress and hopefully get some videos and pictures demonstrating what I'm talking about.

*I know this isn't really a word, but I'm taking it from my favorite TV show, Arrested Development (which took it from the previously linked source).

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!!!

Favorite Rocky moments

Below is a video that captures something that happens pretty much every day at our house, generally several times a night. I think it is so adorable and it's one of my favorite things he does.

We keep bins with 2X4 wood slices in several areas of our house. Rocky loves to chew wood, and he knows what is acceptable for him to chew and what isn't. However, if the urge strikes him and there's no acceptable wood around, he takes a chunk out of whatever's available. For that reason, we make sure there's plenty of acceptable wood around!

In the beginning of the video, you see him grab a piece of wood out of a bin, and then he takes it around to chip it up in his favorite place.

Also, let me reiterate that parrots are messy! Our floor had just recently been swept, so please don't think we're living in squalor. It only takes about 10 minutes for the living room to look like a disaster area once the parrots are out.

In case anyone is wondering, we were listening to Mason Jennings. It comes out much louder on the video I took than it seemed to when we were listening!

Rocky is a very hands-on bird (with Thomas, not me!) and demands head pets. We sometimes call it, "getting the business," as in Thomas will ask him, "Do you want the business?" and Rocky gets excited and runs over, often flipping on his back. He's strange.

This time, he had a nosy observer, Beeps, who had flown over to get some attention of his own.

Of course, Thomas was only too happy to oblige:When Thomas doesn't lie on the floor, offering Rocky easy access to go inside his clothes, he makes do with chipping wood near his feet:One thing we work on with our parrots, especially Rocky, is the notion of personal responsibility. We give our parrots enormous amounts of freedom, so if something is making them unhappy, they need to do something about it in order to improve their lives instead of screaming about it. I think I'll do a separate post on that concept someday; however, one of the ways we do that is by giving them as many choices as possible so that they get used to making decisions that impact their lives.

Here, Thomas is eating some dried fruit. He went around and offered the bowl to everyone so they could take their favorite piece. Rocky climbed up on the couch for seconds:

This is what I have to be alert for whenever Rocky is out:The sneak attack! He often likes to hang around corners, hoping to ensnare me in his trap. I am wise to his games, and rarely go anywhere without my stick (onto which he steps up), but he still tries.

This doesn't have anything to do with the parrots, but I saw this as I was driving to work this morning. I hope that's a sign I'll have a great weekend, and I hope everyone reading this does, too!

Devilcake

Beeps is probably the parrot who spends the most time talking in our house. Since he only knows three words (pretty, baby, cake), however, the conversation is less than scintillating. He refers to himself as Babycake, since that is what he was called in a previous home. We sometimes call him that, too, and he realizes that "Beeps" and "Babycake" both refer to him.

But Babycake connotes a sweet, loving compliant parrot, and when Beeps's mood changes, he is anything but! Thomas I and joke that Devilcake is a more appropriate name for him in these moments (which are, thankfully, rare).

The way the light is reflecting off of his eyes in this picture makes me wonder if he really isn't possessed. That would explain so much...

Max's feather plucking odyssey

I have mentioned briefly before about Max being a recovering feather picker. It's evident in some of her pictures, specifically those from last year. This post will attempt to chronicle her feather picking and what we did about it, in the hopes that it might help someone in a similar situation.

We purchased Max as a baby and had always heard that timnehs were less prone to feather plucking than congos (although I doubt that, given my experiences at the bird rescue where we volunteer -- surrendered timnehs seems just as likely to feather destruct as surrendered congos). Since we don't neglect or abuse Max, we always assumed that feather destruction was not an issue we'd have to deal with.

But we were wrong!

In early January 2006, we returned home and found over 20 feathers on the bottom of Max's cage, and a spot on her lower belly with missing feathers. We hoped it was a one-time thing; perhaps something had scared her outside. Over the next few days, she continued to bite her feathers off at the shaft, leaving only down feathers. Pretty soon she had removed all of the outside feathers on her chest, legs, and back, leaving only her wings and head untouched.

Unfortunately, I don't have many good pictures from this time as our camera was barely working. But here is a picture of Max from Feb 2006. You can see the down feathers on her upper chest showing where they should be hidden by feathers. That's what her whole body looked like!
As I tend to be a perfectionist anyway and of course want to provide the best care possible for my animals, I was devastated. How could Max be so unhappy? We were providing her with a wonderful life, n'est-ce pas? I started doing immense amounts of research into what we could do to improve her situation, and we experimented with many different things. Since we tried so many different things at once, I can't say for sure what stopped her picking, but I have a pretty good idea.

Another component to her picking is that she didn't pluck feathers out -- she bit them off at the shaft at skin level. When a feather is plucked, a new feather will start growing in place. In Max's case, her body didn't know to start growing a new feather because the shaft was still there. So we had to wait until the shaft molted naturally for a new feather to grow. In my mind, there are positive and negative aspects to her style of plucking. It was bad because it took longer for her feathers to regrow, and made it more difficult for us to pinpoint what made her improve. But it was good because she wasn't damaging the feather follicle and could easily regrow the feather. Also, when I saw feathers on the bottom of her cage, I could tell whether she had resumed plucking (no shaft) or was just molting (shaft).

She was examined by a vet and no physical reason could be found for the plucking. Let the experimenting begin!

Here is Max in March 2006, a few months after the picking started:
Among the many articles I read, I found this one, by Pamela Clark, to be the most helpful. Here is a partial list of things we did:

• Installed a 75-gallon aquarium, in the hopes that it would add moisture to the living room and provide Max with entertainment.
• Switched Max from fruity Zupreem pellets to Harrison's High Potency Coarse which is mostly organic and does not contain artificial colors.
• Began clicker training to keep her mind active.
• Allowed her flight feathers to grow in and encourage flying to keep her body active.
• Added Bach flower essences to her drinking water.
• Removed her food dish so that she had to forage for pellets hidden around her cage.
• Stopped worrying about her because parrots pick up on our emotions (this is much easier said than done!)
• Got her DNA-tested, in which we were shocked to find out she was female!
• Installed an in-room humidifier when the aquarium failed to provide adequate moisture.
• Increased the frequency of baths she received.
• Brought her into the bathroom during showers at least 7 times per week.
• Increased the quantity of destructible toys in her cage to keep her busy destroying toys and not herself.

I'm sure there are other things I'm forgetting right now. I think the hardest thing for me was to come to the realization that I wasn't a bad bird owner because I had a plucker. Parrots are wild animals!

Here's a picture of Max from April 2007, still a bit plucked:For about the past month, I'd say that Max has been fully feathered again. What was the cause of her plucking? I'm pretty sure it relates to the humidity in our home. I had read that birds who bite their feathers off at the shaft (as opposed to plucking the entire feather) often do so due to lack of humidity. It's after reading that article that we added the humidifier in the living room. We saw an improvement after that, and she'd start to pick again when we stopped using the humidifier, so it will be in constant operation in our house.

Her plucking started about 6 weeks after we started using the furnace in the home we recently moved into, which lends support to my theory -- our old house wasn't so dry, perhaps.

In any case, I think her picking may have been a blessing in disguise. Although it caused me stress and some sleepless nights, it also propelled me to research ways in which I could improve her life and, by extension, the lives of the other parrots living with us. Had this not happened, would they be clicker trained, flying, and on a better diet? While I like to think the answer would be yes, I really don't know whether it would be!

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.

That's not Rocky!

We stopped in at the bird rescue where we volunteer last Saturday. I really think my husband might be half-macaw. Over the years, he has interacted with scores of macaws, and I honestly can't think of one that didn't like him. A few minutes after meeting him, the Illiger's macaw in the picture above is putty in his hands.

A few years back there were 4-5 female blue and gold macaws all up for adoption at the same time. They would start calling for him as soon as they heard his voice in the shelter. He'd let them out, and they'd blush and vie for his attention. At the time, he joked about leaving me for his harem of ladies.

Rocky would be pretty jealous if he knew what was going on behind his back!