Cherries

Thomas had a bowl of cherries thawing on the counter. He was brewing a kriek, my favorite beer, and needed to add blended cherries to the mixture. This will be ready to drink in about 8 months.
I thought this pose was just adorable -- I love it when she puts her foot up like this:I think she was mostly eating the ice crystals off of the cherries as she showed no interest in eating one on a stand (Stella, on the other hand, devoured a cherry).

Bananas

Saturday morning, Thomas had a banana. Of course, he had to share this with the avian members of our house. That's Calypso in the top left of this picture; Beeps is towards the bottom. The greys kind of look like a two-headed monster. Rocky got his on a different perch and Daphne does not like banana.
After she finished the piece Thomas gave her, Max decided to help herself to some more. Notice how he's also holding the banana for Stella, who typically does not like to let her feet get dirty:
I think it's been years since we've had an entire piece of fruit to ourselves!

Calypso

Calypso is doing a lot better, though he's still in the hot box instead of his cage. When we're home, he is out. He's on top in this picture; Beeps is below.
If you look closely, in this picture from Friday evening, Calypso's back foot is slightly red from his mutilation. He has not mutilated at all since Thursday (I would have found blood in the hot box) and his toe has almost healed. He's still hormonal, though, and I worry about having him go to his cage too soon which might trigger more mutilation.

On Friday evening, he started being extremely clingy. He wants to be on me all of the time. Since he's not allowed on my shoulder, he likes to sit in the crook of my arm, near my elbow, and snuggle against my upper arm. I don't let him do this as often as he'd like -- I'm walking a fine line between comforting him and making him more hormonal.

Here's a picture of Beeps, just because:Beeps is hormonal as well; this weekend he started digging and trying to nest in his food dish. He also bit Thomas, though not severely. And Thomas knows better -- he was trying to sneak a quick nap on the couch. That risks a Beeps bite even when hormones are not rampant!

Parrots and yoga

Doing yoga in a home with parrots is not as peaceful as it would be in a home without them!

I was doing a 40 minute session yesterday, and for at least half of that time, the greys were whistling, singing, talking... Good thing I'm doing this mostly for the physical and not mental benefits!

However, it was still better than the time when I was doing yoga upstairs and Rocky walked in the door! Thomas had let him out and then didn't supervise very well -- Rocky made it up the stairs unnoticed. Luckily he started laughing when he got close to me so I was able to extricate myself from a potentially sticky situation in a safe manner.

In a similar vein, after I got home from work yesterday I had to go outside to shovel. It was strangely peaceful. No snowblowers, nobody else outside; only the distant hum of traffic on the highway...and near-constant beeping from Beeps that I could clearly hear outside, through our closed house. Luckily that lasted for only 5 minutes until peace returned. Does he always beep for 5 minutes after we leave the house? Or did he know that I was still within hearing distance?

More hormones

Hormones are raging at our house! Obviously, there was the caique attack of last Monday. Both caiques have been slightly picking their leg feathers (almost unnoticeable), Beeps has a shorter trigger, Max has been regurgitating for me, Stella keeps flying to Thomas and pecking him, and Rocky is seeking out dark spaces in which to shred newspaper.Perhaps worst of all, Calypso has decided that he needs to mutilate his foot. We've been through this with him before -- mutilation due to hormones -- though not for several years. We'd been hoping this was in the past, and we're not sure why it's resurfaced this year.

In any case, this is what he's done to his foot:
It's very hard to see, but he's slightly mutilating one of his back toes on his left foot, close to the nail. Incidentally, it was his right foot that was injured in the caique fight, so he's not just picking at and irritating a wound -- he inflicted new damage (and his right foot has completely healed from the attack).

Wednesday night/Thursday morning, he woke us up at 3 in the morning by thrashing around his cage. I went downstairs to see what the problem was to find a caique with blood on his beak, white chest, and toe. (By the way, here is a link to a discussion on mutilation by a vet -- highly recommended reading if your bird is mutilating).

When we went through this a few years ago, he had a very thorough vet visit done and nothing was found to be the physical cause of the mutilation. He healed up, and as I said earlier, we thought this problem was behind us.

Fast forward to today. He's recently had a full vet visit and clean bill of health; however, if he's still mutilating next week, he'll be going back to the vet. The reason we didn't take him immediately to the vet is that we've been through this before and we don't want to cause him additional stress in case it goes away on its own, like last time. However, if your bird is mutilating for the first time, please take him/her to the vet immediately.

Also, the mutilation is not severe. Here he is yesterday, holding a clementine with his bad foot:He's able to perch normally and is otherwise behaving like usual. If there were other warning signs (couldn't perch, stopped playing with toys, was lethargic, etc.) we also would have taken him in right away. Once again, if you found this entry because your bird is mutilating, please take him/her to an experienced avian vet. That's what we did the first time, and what we'll do if it doesn't clear up like it did last time.

The system we worked out with our vet last time is that he seems to settle down when placed in an incubator. Here's what we use, nicknamed the Hot Box (which always leads to singing songs from Guys and Dolls):It's a 20 gallon long aquarium. We have an under tank heating pad which brings the temperature into the mid-70s. The top heater can bring the temps into the mid-80s, but we only use that for a short time when we can observe him.

Already, he seems to be getting better. He didn't pick at his foot at all this morning during breakfast, whereas he'd been picking at it regularly Thursday morning.

It just breaks my heart that he has to live in captivity.

Toweling Calypso

Here is some proof as to how easy it is to towel Calypso. Most birds are not so accommodating.

Actually, in this video, he wasn't too accommodating as he decided to fly away instead of being toweled!



But this is what usually happens:



Sorry for the poor picture quality and the back-lit environment. I needed both hands to towel him so I had to place the camera ahead of time.

He just sits there while I towel him, and I don't have to worry about controlling his head to avoid a bite or anything. This is not typical parrot behavior!

Troublemakers

Just by looking at them, you'd never guess that these were the two biggest troublemakers in our house last night. Looks can be deceiving.

Parrot protector

I've mentioned before how Rocky has fashioned himself into some kind of parrot protector. This is very strange to us as normally he does not interact at all with the other parrots. We think he thinks he's more human than parrot. However, his parrot instincts kick in when he senses another parrot is in trouble from one of the humans in the house.

I've talked about this before, here. He immediately runs over and starts to attack Thomas in an attempt to save his parrot counterpart.

Last night, Thomas had to give Beeps his medication. Since he wasn't wearing a housecoat, he was going to towel Beeps instead. He was saying, "I've laid a trap for you, Beeps, and I'm going to get you!" as he stalked Beeps with the towel behind his back.

Before he knew it, he'd trapped a different parrot!
Despite his best efforts, Rocky could not prevent Thomas from administering medication to Beeps:In order to avoid these types of problems, I take Calypso into the bathroom and close the door so as to not upset Rocky. I think Thomas may enjoy the chaos he creates, though.

Pizza decisions

Last night, Thomas placed his dinner on the couch for a minute and then ran back into the kitchen to retrieve something. Seeing an opportunity, Rocky ran down his cage and up the couch. He loves pizza!

But then I came in the room -- what a decision he had to make. Should he eat the pizza or threaten me? You can almost see the wheels turning in his head...
And anyone who's read this blog more than once or twice probably guessed what Rocky did...That's right -- he would rather threaten me than eat pizza. Look how big and scary he is!

Playing cards

We spent New Year's Eve at my parents' house. This made our parrots a little sad since they had to ring in the new year alone, but they quickly got over their sadness when we returned!

Almost 2 years ago my parents adopted a cockatiel from the rescue where Thomas and I volunteer. It was intended to be a hospice situation. He was at least 25 and in very bad shape. His wings were damaged in a way that could only have been cause by abuse. He was very weak. We needed to find him a quiet home where he could live out his final weeks in peace -- that's about how long the vet guessed he would live.

It's hard to find a home for a bird like that -- who would adopt a bird knowing they have such a short time with him? Luckily my parents stepped up and brought him home, expecting to have him less than a year.

Under their care, his health has made an amazing recovery. He no longer looks like a sickly old man. He's brought so much joy into their lives, and while they know they won't have a long time with him, any time they do have is a bonus.

We play a lot of cards in my family, and their cockatiel was invited to join in the fun. We accused my dad of having him mark the cards:Wandering around; disrupting play:
He walked over and climbed up Thomas's arm:
He does get tired out quickly, so after a few hands of this, he went on my dad's shoulder where he took a nap.