The thievery is getting bolder

This morning, Thomas was eating breakfast at the kitchen table. The greys were roaming around, foraging as much as they could. Then, Stella pulled her boldest move yet. Thomas was reading the paper as he ate, so perhaps not watching things as closely as he should have been, when she stole his remaining toast right out of his hand!
She's so proud of herself! We would never give her a piece of toast this big!Even Max can't believe the audacity. I hope she wasn't taking notes for similar escapades in the future:
Thomas did get the toast away from her after only a few bites. He was kind enough to wait until I got these pictures.

Squirrels

These four squirrels were having so much fun running around our yard yesterday. They were so active and fun to watch! This continued on for quite a long time; they eventually moved to another tree and also chased each other around and wrestled on the ground.

Kale

We also got some kale in our CSA box. I'm not a huge fan, but it's so healthy that I force myself to eat it. Given Max's penchant for preferring cheese and nuts, I suspect she was just curious about the unusual texture and didn't actually eat any:Not sure about Rocky, if he actually ate some or just pretended to. He'd climbed up on Thomas's shoulder, and he let him stay for a few minutes.
I had a feeling Beeps would do this. He's not actually eating the kale; just destroying it. Then, he starts posturing as I have the camera on him and that's one of the things that sets him off. Notice how his eyes flash red, he's puffed up his feathers (especially his green back feathers), the deliberate steps he takes, and the strange head-snaking motions. If I were to attempt to have him step up, I would receive a bite for sure.

Chipster

I've mentioned many times how Rocky loves to chip wood, preferably while in Thomas's pants. Usually, Thomas cuts the wood pretty thin, but last time he did a few that were thicker, and Rocky loves it! It's really funny to see him trying to maneuver a giant block of wood.

Thomas didn't have his foot on the floor, so Rocky couldn't climb in his pants. I really don't think this larger wood would fit in his pants anyway. In any case, Rocky wasn't deterred and quickly adapted:Yes, that is the beginning of a shoe nest:
In a stunning display of recycling, Max has been hanging around during this chipping and then chips Rocky's chips into even smaller chips.

Squash

More photographic proof that Max has to forage around our house as we don't feed her enough:As if this blog isn't filled with such proof already!

Houseguest: Basil

For the next couple of months, we are hosting a houseguest. Here he is in his travel cage:Basil (pronounced like Basil Fawlty, not the herb) is a blue-front amazon. I have mentioned him before on the blog, though never by name. He is one of the two blue-front amazons that are willed to us. He will stay with us while one of his owners recovers from surgery.
When his owners were saying goodbye to him, he was very animated, talking and making tons of noise. As soon as they left, he quieted down and we didn't hear a peep out of him the rest of the evening. He'll be OK once he acclimates; it's just very scary for him right now.

Here he is, on top of his cage, soaking in his new environment:
Inside his cage, he sat like this the entire evening and he was here when I uncovered him this morning. I suspect he slept in this uncomfortable position even though he had plenty of perches to choose from.
Amazons tend to be quite resilient so I'm expecting Basil to come out of his shell and start enjoying life with us soon. How happy he'll be to see his family again! This is a great opportunity for him to get to know us better should he outlive his owners, to help make that transition easier on him.

Sprouts and fake eating

We got some sprouts in our CSA box. These are really healthy for parrots and people; unfortunately our parrots are not big fans. Maybe someday! The lizards love them, so they will have a happy week.

Max had to investigate the sprouts, but did not partake:Thomas was munching on them, so Beeps flew over to investigate as well:
Like Max, he did not actually eat any, but did throw some around (you can see where some rest on Thonas's wrist):But the funniest reaction came from Rocky. I've mentioned before his fake eating behavior. There are two instances where we normally see this:

1. If we're eating something he wants, he'll sometimes do this as a way to draw our attention to him and give him some.

2. If we offer him something he has never seen before (as is the case here). He'll pretend to take a bite and eat it. There's even a slightly different noise between him "taking a bite" and then "chewing" the food. We are totally anthropomorphizing here, but tell ourselves that he doesn't want to hurt our feelings so he tries to trick us into thinking he's eating it when he isn't. Like the Seinfeld episode with the mutton, only Rocky doesn't use napkins, just vocal trickery.

Winter birding

We did a bit of very cold winter birding over the weekend. First, though, as I was driving to the rescue last week, I saw a flock of 20-30 turkeys on the side of the road! I pulled over to take a picture; unfortunately by the time I took it, you can only see 10 of them -- the rest had fled to the safety of the woods. I left as quickly as I could and apologized for disturbing them.On Saturday we went to a local nature preserve. We could not believe how many robins we saw. Aren't they supposed to fly south? Growing up, one of the first signs of spring was a robin sighting. That's a robin in this tree; he had dozens of friends in other trees:
One of the things I love about snow covering is seeing the tracks of the animals. We saw this turkey, but when she saw us, she ran to safety. She was doing some weird stuff around that tree -- wish we could have seen it!
It was so gorgeous! We didn't get a picture, but spent several minutes watching an opossum walking around. There was a flock of mallards down this stream:
We watched this downy woodpecker for several minutes; she allowed us to get quite close to her, so much so that we didn't need to use our binoculars. Earlier, we'd seen a hairy woodpecker -- first time we've seen both in the same trip.
We realized that we need to start dressing warmer for our birding trips since we tend to stop a lot to watch the birds -- it's not like running where we're constantly moving and keeping warm!

But, that reminds me of our run Saturday morning. We could hear two owl hooting back and forth, so we stopped on the path to see if we could locate them in the trees, and one of them flew off to land in another tree. What a treat during an otherwise cold, windy, and unpleasant run!

Max was missing

Last night, Max went missing. I couldn't find her in any of the usual spots. (As "round up the usual suspects!" was playing through my head.)

After a few minutes, I found her on this chair (which had been pushed in to the table at the time, so really it wasn't quite that obvious where she was.):
She was very happy to see me, but apparently not enough to announce her presence as I was yelling, "Max!" all over the house.

Evening antics

Last night, I came home from work a little early, and Thomas got home quite late, which meant the parrots had several hours of time alone with me. They really prefer it when we're all together, but as long as they get out of their cages, they're relatively happy.

Of course, the greys immediately flew into the kitchen to be with me:
You can tell she'd recently eaten a clementine by the little pieces left on her stand after beak-wiping!

Surprisingly, since he doesn't like me, Rocky also came in for the entire evening. Perhaps he needed to keep an eye on me?But then he'd do his weird hormonal stuff and not care about what I was doing:Neither caique must have been feeling very social, as they stayed in the living room -- with frequent checks to make sure they weren't fighting and that Beeps wasn't eating the lizards' electrical cords:Beeps is on the far left side of this picture on Stella's cage door; Calypso is on his cage top on the far right side.

Stella was hanging out with the shoes and Rocky came over to see what the fuss was about. Apparently not much as he walked back over to his kitchen cage shortly after this.
Everyone was a little sad that Thomas wasn't there, so we decided to have a little dance party. We somehow figured out that Rocky loves country music. Maybe that's what he listened to in his first home, or maybe he just loves the beat? In any case, I have a few CDs from high school 15 years ago, so I put one in just for him. He loves it!

When he looks up, that's because Max flew right behind my head. He also then has to lift his wings to show her how big and scary he is. Max is not as big of a fan of country music, though she does dance on demand.