The Welcome Wagon

Two quite funny things happened yesterday; however, I wasn't able to get either of them on camera.

I got home first after work, and Max, Stella, and Calypso were with me in the kitchen as I went through the mail and started getting ready for dinner. Beeps was playing with some new toys on his cage, and Rocky was under his cage, ringing a bell.

As soon as the garage door started to open, signaling Thomas's return, Beeps flew in, happily beeping, and Rocky ran in as fast as he could, making happy gibberish sounds.

I tried to get Rocky to come over to the door that goes into our garage so that he'd be right there to welcome his mate, but instead he ran over to the sliding patio door and started saying Thomas's name. Smart guy -- it turns out that Thomas had gone out back to harvest a tomato instead of coming right in.

Rocky really follows Thomas around like a little dog. He had gone upstairs to change out of his work clothes, and look at how fast Rocky follows! He didn't even stop to threaten me with how big he is, like he usually does when I try to film him on the stairs.

Stella's flying continues to improve. I am seriously doubting whether she was fledged as her landing skills are very poor. Her in-flight skills are also not fantastic as it seems to take her a lot of effort to propel herself forward. Despite that, she is really enjoying flying and doing much more volitionally. Yesterday, for the first time, she took off from a stand in the kitchen and landed on her cage. Previously, she'd only flown when she was in the same room with her target destination.

But her landing definitely needs improvement, which brings us to the funny story. She had taken off from one stand in the kitchen and wanted to go to the other stand. She did a lap around the room, and came in for the landing. Unfortunately, Calypso was perched on the stand, and she tried to land right on him! He took off, just in the nick of time. I'm still not sure whether this was intentional or not (given her poor landing skills, I don't think so) but it was funny to watch! The entire stand was open, and she tries to land on the caique.

One of her favorite places to land in the kitchen is on the side of the sink. Yesterday, during one flight, she ended up in the sink itself.

Here she is, on the stand (and pretty much the exact location) where she tried to land on Calypso. As usual, that's Beeps hanging out on the metal stand in the corner. Poor guy -- everyone picks on him! He'll be going to the vet in the next month or so as I want to make sure he's not hiding an illness that's making everyone try to drive him out of the flock.Max is going through a molt, so her chest has been looking a little scraggly. Given our past experiences with her plucking, I get a bit concerned when I see copious amounts of feathers on the bottom of her cage. However, when she feather destructs, she bites the feathers off at the shaft, so I could tell that these were molted.

This picture turned out a bit blurry, but she had this feather on her head for a few seconds before she realized it was on there and preened herself back to normal.

We leave tomorrow, and the parrots don't seem to realize that anything unusual is happening. We'll be doing a bit of extra cleaning tonight (always nice to come home to a clean house!) as well as packing, so they'll probably figure it out.

We have told them that we're leaving, but their behavior hasn't changed on account of that. I'm expecting Beeps to try to bite one or both of us, so I've been on caique watch the past few days.

Corn!

Corn is a big hit in our house. With the exception of Daphne, who eats very little human food despite my best efforts, all of the parrots love corn! Here's Max with a chunk.

A few weeks back, I posted a picture of my favorite bird at the rescue, a greenwing macaw. He was adopted, so this blue-and-gold had the opportunity to capture my fancy. Isn't he absolutely gorgeous? He wasn't handled for quite some time, so we're teaching him how people can be fun! He loves to exercise, so one thing we do together is I cup him under his chest and run around, with him flapping -- assisted flying.I had a surprise when I went to the rescue last Saturday -- one of my favorite birds of all time (he'd been adopted out several years ago) had been returned. This just breaks my heart -- the disposable mentality so many people have with their pets. But I don't need to get started on that again!

This dusky lory has such a fantastic personality! He reminds me very much of the caiques. When he was here last time, one of his very favorite things to do was curl up in the hood of Thomas's sweatshirt! He is so incredibly tame and funny. I have a hard time understanding how he's found himself homeless at least twice in his young life.

This is a video I took over the weekend. Thomas was playing video games, and had found a terry cloth belt. Knowing it would drive Rocky nuts, he wrapped it around his neck as a scarf. Rocky enjoyed playing with and attacking it!

At the farmers' market today, one of the vendors offered me her amazon. This is just getting ridiculous. I really need to stay strong in order to keep our flock at its current level. So hard not to take everyone home!

More vignettes

The way Thomas's residency is set up, he has some months where he works 80+ hours per week and has to spend nights at the hospital, and other months where he does a rotation in a clinic, which means that he more or less works a normal week of around 40 hours and has weekends off.

August is one of the latter months, and the parrots, especially Rocky, are happy to have him around more! This relaxed schedule means Thomas has had more time to play video games. I'm not sure how he maintains his ability to play when he has a macaw on his arm!

Or on his lap...

I was working on organizing our back bedroom over the weekend. Rocky loves the back bedroom; probably because he's not really allowed to go in there. We keep the door shut at almost all times. I had the door open so I could hear the radio during my organizing. Of course my nemesis/stalker had to come in. He walked right on to the bookshelf as though he owned the place.

I wrote last month that Max was, with greater frequency, chasing Beeps into a corner stand we have in our kitchen. This morning, Calypso also chased Beeps into the corner! You can see that Beeps doesn't seem too distressed by this as he's chipping a wood piece. But we have been carefully monitoring all interactions as we don't want any injuries to occur.

After this incident, they both got another lecture about how they are both caiques and should be friends!This was Max, a few days ago, licking water off of the cherry tomatoes. I think it's great when she perches on the bowls like this.Thomas called to say he'd be a bit late coming home from work, so I had dinner ready instead of waiting until he got home so we could prepare dinner together. With Stella's new found love of flying and getting into trouble on the counter, this was more challenging than it would have been a week ago.

I was on the other side of the kitchen, when I looked up and noticed her throwing lettuce out of Thomas's salad! Then she ate some cheese and, as you can see in this picture, one of his walnuts! Luckily Thomas got home soon after, so we were able to tag team our mischievous parrots.

Also, let me apologize that I haven't had time to go around and visit everyone's blogs recently. I really hope to be able to do so this week. My time has been spent trying to plan our vacation, for which we leave on Saturday. The date has really snuck up on us and we've not done much planning. Eek! I want to make sure we don't miss anything, so I've been spending most of my blog time investigating Washington DC.

Coming out of her shell

Under the heading of "be careful what you wish for" is the recent behavior of Stella. She has really come out of her shell (even more) lately and really started flying with volition over the weekend.

She made several flights over to the couch while we were watching the Olympics, and this morning she made several flights over to the table and counters. We have a lot of work to do with her on which places are and are not acceptable to explore (for example she is really drawn to the stove and I don't want her hanging out there, even when it's off).

Here she is nibbling away on some zucchini bread that Thomas made (and you thought that grey parrots eating was the province of Max on this blog!)
I snapped this picture of her on our counter this morning. I just love the expression on her face. So wide-eyed, innocent, and beautiful!
Thomas called me over to watch a game he and Stella have been playing recently. These balls are such a huge hit at our house, but I've been having trouble finding more to buy. It will put my Internet searching skills to the test!


It's not just parrots that are testing my resolve of no more pets. This adorable iguana was left, abandoned, in an apartment after her owner was evicted. Who does that? She is incredibly sweet and looking for a new home. She was happy to sit on my lap for quite some time.
Over the weekend, Thomas informed me that he's changed his mind about what specialty he wishes to pursue after his residency is finished, and that this may necessitate a move on our part. He's willing to stay here, but he truly would be selling himself short (which is also what the program director for that specialty told him). He already sold himself short on the caliber of the medical school and residency program he chose because I didn't want to move, and I don't think it's fair to him to insist that we stay, yet again.

If we do relocate, possibly across the country, we have to worry about moving and finding housing for the 6 parrots, 2 lizards, and fishtank that we already have. We really can't be adding any more animals. But I'm trying not to think or worry too much about that until it becomes a certainty!

No pictures today

I did not take any pictures yesterday, so this will just be a wordy post.

I have realized that I may have a mini attention issue. I am in the process of reading about 10 books. Some of those have been put to the side, but there are 4 that I am actively reading (in that I am reading at least a chapter every other day).

In case anyone cares, these are my 4 active books:

• The Affair of the Poisons by: Anne Somerset
• Europe 101 by: Rick Steves
• Notes From a Small Island by: Bill Bryson
• 60 Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong by: Nadeau & Barlow

I am trying to finish at least two of these books over the weekend to bring my in-process books to a more reasonable level. Which meant that I did a lot of reading last night and not so much picture-taking!

I am also in the middle of three knitting projects, which may not sound like a lot, but since I am not a fast knitter, these three projects are likely to last me until the end of the year. And I bought more yarn last week!

Yesterday I offered a container of trail mix to the greys and caiques, allowing them to pick their favorite morsel. Based on previous experience, I expected the selection to go as follows:

Max: cashew, Calypso: raisin, Beeps: filbert, Stella: almond

Thomas's guess was:

Max: cashew, Calypso: filbert, Beeps: filbert, Stella: almond

It appears we know our greys but not our caiques! Or perhaps the greys are just more predictable. Their actual selections were as follows:

Max: cashew, Calypso: walnut, Beeps: walnut, Stella: almond.

Walnuts! The caiques have NEVER chosen walnuts before! And they chose them on the same day, when neither saw what the other one selected. It was very strange and I'm going to have to pay better attention to see if the caiques often pick the same item.

Hope everyone has a good weekend! We're volunteering at the bird rescue again, which means I get to spend time with my new boyfriend, a blue and gold macaw. I will try to take pictures of him so you can see how handsome he is! My old boyfriend, the greenwing macaw, was adopted so I had to move on!

Potato Eater

Thomas made a new kind of stirfry last night with different vegetables we got from the farmers' market. Rocky had to come over and investigate:
He grabbed out a piece of potato and settled in to eat it:
Later on, Thomas offered him another bite of potato, which he gladly accepted:
Later on in the evening, we were all in the living room, with the exception of Max who had flown into the kitchen to hang out by herself for a bit. I heard some strange noises and went in to investigate.

I found her exploring an empty glass that had been left on the counter.

I took a video of what she was doing with the glass. Was she angry that there wasn't anything in there for her to drink? Or did she just enjoy the sounds it made? In any case, we'll have to be more careful about leaving glasses around since I would have not been happy had she broken it by pushing the glass off of the counter!

In my pants. Are you jealous?

I took this picture of Stella last night. It's so hard to get good pictures of her, and I really liked this one. All of my parrots like unwrapping things, and she is certainly no exception!

We had another mini harvest from our tomato plants. The red one is a celebrity and the green one (and the one cut up) is a black krim. It was pretty tasty. We have many more out on the vine, so should have a decent harvest soon. I'm hoping to make tomato sauce, but I'll have to stop myself from eating them all first!First, let me say again that we had swept the entire living room when we got home from work, and the parrots had been out for a couple of hours chipping wood and shredding newspaper before I made the following videos. Despite our parrots' best efforts, we do not constantly live in squalor. I must say that I truly didn't understand how messy parrots were until Rocky and Stella joined forces in wood chipping!

As I've mentioned before, I always have to keep a close eye on where Rocky is, especially if I'm going to be walking around. I have to protect myself from the sneak attack! I wanted to get up to refill my glass of water, so I asked Thomas if he knew where Rocky was since I couldn't see him. "In my pants. Are you jealous?" came the response.

Rocky loves chipping wood while hanging out in Thomas's clothes. As it's been a warm summer, he often goes shirtless, so Rocky had to get creative about where he chips.

I was trying to get a video of Rocky emerging from Thomas's shorts, but he knew I was there and refused to go back in. Instead, he had to chip while standing close to Thomas's shorts. The main reason I'm including this video is because of Ms. Nosy hanging out. Of course she had to see what was going on.

Rocky was in fine form last night. Within the past week, we've started playing a new game. Last week, the water bottle was on the floor, and I said to him as he passed by, "don't attack the water bottle!" Of course, he had to go over and attack it immediately. This made me laugh, which made Rocky laugh, and it's something we've done pretty much every night since then. It's all in good fun as he actually doesn't do any harm to the water bottle. Watch how he circles around it with his beak running along the floor and then does a sneak attack.

And this is one of my favorite things that he does. He'll grab a ball or other toy (this is a small plastic top) and throw it around, playing fetch with himself. Sometimes he plays fetch with us, but often he plays by himself, and we occasionally join in, like when Thomas makes the top spin here.

Days like this one make me amazed that he was able to withstand at least 6 years confined to a small cage. He's been with us almost two years (he came to live with us on August 17, 2006) and I am blown away by the personality changes that we've seen during that time.

Rocky Freakouts

I did not use my camera much last night, so this should be a (relatively) short post.

Rocky does these freakouts occasionally, which really make me wonder about his past. Did he live with people who moaned, groaned, and freaked out? Or is this some sort of strange severe macaw behavior that he'd engage in anyway?

I'll try to get a really good freakout on camera some time -- he usually stops once he realizes he has an audience.

I was trying to zoom in on him here, which ended up making the entire video fuzzy. However, the audio on this video is better than the other one. He often says words during these freakouts, but we rarely can understand them.

Love Bites

Another full weekend at our house!

Friday night did not start out well. I was sitting on the couch, reading a book, when Beeps flew over at me, totally unprovoked, and bit me on my shoulder! It was a bit past their bedtime, so we put everyone to bed and went upstairs. The next morning, I was eating breakfast, when Beeps flew over and bit me on the shoulder again!

I'm still not sure what his problem was, but it's been 48 hours since the last bite so I hope this won't be repeated! My battle scars:
As you can see, the bites were not severe, but the second one was right where my sports bra lays when I run, and I had a race the next day! Luckily, I just put Aquaphor all over the wound, so the fabric wouldn't rub against it.

Speaking of the race, thanks to those of you who wished me well! I had a fantastic run. It was a 10 mile race. I beat Thomas by a little over 7 minutes, ran a personal best, and even took first place in my age division. That has never happened to me before! We went out for hot chocolate to celebrate. Thomas also ran quite well and was pleased with his finish.

Late last week I got an e-mail from a person who has become a friend: the lady that saved Beeps from being released outside to his certain death. She does animal rescue on the side, and asked it I knew anyone that might be interested in an injured pigeon that had been brought to her. I looked at this picture and thought it was a dove, so I told her that the bird rescue where I volunteer could take her in and find her a home.
My eyes deceived me since this was, indeed, a pigeon! Thomas and I have volunteered at a wildlife rescue center for almost 6 years so you'd think I would have known that! In any case, he looked the pigeon over (his medical training comes in handy even though it's with people and not birds) and realized that she wasn't injured at all. We released her back outside, and it was so gratifying to see her flying outside, free again. We sat there and watched her flying for about 10 minutes; even when she was just a speck in the sky.

We had our first non-pepper harvest over the weekend. It's a type of tomato called "mortgage lifter" since the person who created the hybrid was able to pay off his mortgage by selling the plants. I hope it will be tasty -- we've sure been enjoying the tomatoes from our farmers!One herb available at the farmers' market is mint, and Thomas bought some a few weeks ago. Since then, I've had to go to the market alone, and he always hopes that I've bought more (sometimes they're out). I did buy some last week, and he made his mint concoction. It's actually not that tasty. He just takes mint leaves, blends them up, adds water, and refrigerates. Max seemed to like it, but I don't understand why.
One of the toy pieces I ordered from Grey Feather Toys were these accordion tubes. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with them, and had a few on the kitchen table in the hopes that inspiration would hit. Thomas picked it up and started blowing into it, making a rather irritating noise. Of course, the parrots loved the noise! I'm not sure I've seen Max dance so fast before! Warning: the high pitched noise is really irritating, so if you'd have sensitive hearing, I'd recommend turning your volume down or skipping this video!

Last night I heard more raucous laughter coming from Rocky in the living room. Of course, I had to investigate. He was lying on Thomas's chest, and Thomas was giving him the business.After my weekly floor washing, I must have placed Stella's and Rocky's cages a little closer to each other than they were before. Here is Stella with one foot on each cage:And here she is, getting ready to chew up his wood toy, even though she has exact replicas in her own cage:Even though Rocky has never shown any parrot aggression, we removed her back to her own cage -- we don't want to take any chances!

Since I'm on a Stella roll, here she is unwrapping some parrot candy that we got from The Parrot Asylum. It's a small piece of wood wrapped up in colored paper.

Everyone in our house loves them! Here is Beeps. He'd already removed one side of the wrapper!
And, finally, another video that comes with a warning. I have mentioned that Beeps is one of the strangest, funniest, dancers we have ever seen. He also will not dance if he knows the camera is pointed at him. I had to place the camera on the counter in the hopes he'd ignore it. Unfortunately, while he sometimes will dance just with music, he much prefers dancing when Thomas and/or I sing. And we have bad voices. Warning: really bad singing to follow. I would recommend turning the volume off before you watch this video!

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!