Stella update plus a few videos

I took this picture of Stella yesterday in order to compare her feather growth since her first day with us. Obviously in these past two months all of her mutilation sores and residual blood are gone. Her feather quality has greatly improved, and she's filling in more. I've found downy feathers in the bottom of her cage, but I'm not sure if they are due to plucking or normal molting. It's hard to tell from this picture, but the feathers near her vent are growing in nicely.

I don't know if she'll ever be fully feathered. She's only 5, so there's a good chance that she can be. As long as she's happy, it doesn't really matter.

She's taken a few flights, usually when something scares her, and she's managed to navigate around corners and land relatively well. Her outermost flight feather on both wings is in the process of growing in, so once they are in, we'll start concentrating on flight training.

Here she is, this morning. I placed her on the table, and she found one of my chapsticks -- a girl after my own heart!Now that strawberry season is pretty much over, I can move on to my next fruit obsession: peaches! A local company brings truckloads in from Georgia, and it's something I look forward to every summer. Delicious!Thomas was attempting to do the crossword puzzle in the paper yesterday afternoon. Having been up for 36 hours straight, he was a bit punchy and having trouble with the clues. He started drumming his pen on the table, and Rocky started jamming.

As I do every Wednesday, I went to the local farmers' market yesterday. Thomas was able to come along, and when he's there, we buy more. Our fridge is stuffed with vegetables -- bok choy, baby bok choy, salad mix, arugula, onions, carrots, dill, basil, potatoes, wild berries, and more I'm forgetting.

I've been able to buy the lizards' food here for the past few months, which means they get local, organic food that I'm sure tastes better than their normal store-bought diet. I was cleaning the swiss chard I'd bought, when my greens monster had to come over for a little destroying. I still don't get what Max finds so enticing about greens!!!

The world's most beautiful hand-dryer

Another talent Calypso possesses is that he is the world's most beautiful hand-dryer. If I pick him up after recently washing (but not completely drying) my hands, he gently licks the water off. It has become a treasured bonding ritual, and I often will intentionally pick him up with semi-wet hands.

Name change

We picked a new name for Kika: Stella. It maintains two syllables, ends in an "a" and reminds me of my favorite plainchant, "Ave Maris Stella" which I can sing to her. (If you want to hear it, here is a copy on youtube).

Here she is, enjoying peas we got from our CSA last week.
While all the parrots enjoyed the peas, they seemed to be a particular favorite of the greys. Max:Last night, Thomas was trying to get a picture of Beeps playing with one of the new toys on the playstand. But every time he'd aim the camera at Beeps, he's stop playing with his toys and start making threatening postures towards the camera, like here.

Stephanie may be right, in that it's his puffy cheeks that make him so adorable to me. I was looking at my parrots last night, and his do seem more pronounced than those of anyone else.

In the end, Thomas crouched behind our counter and used the zoom to get this picture. But once Beeps heard the "click," the game was up, so this is the best we were able to get. I'm just amazed at how flexible they are -- his right foot is so high up on the toy!

Over the weekend, we made zucchini bread with vegetables from our CSA (I guess we're not making entirely healthy foods with everything!) I cut a few pieces for us for dessert, and of course Max was right there, helping herself.

This picture didn't turn out the best, but I wanted to include it because her eyes are pinned to a pretty great degree. She loves food like this!And then a couple of pictures from this morning. I had washed my daily apple and set it on the counter while I finished the rest of my breakfast. Max will not eat apples. I've tried daily for years to offer her some, but I am rebuffed. Once she ate a small piece and I had hope that we'd turned the corner, but that was months ago now, and there has been no further apple interest.

Anyway, this morning she was tonguing (is that even a word?) my apple, just like she had the strawberries! I had never noticed this before. After I cut up the apple, I offered her some, but she was still not interested.She noticed me taking pictures of her (see above), and started looking at me quizzically. There was something about her posture that made me include this picture on the blog. It seems to capture her inquisitive personality!

Visitors & the long weekend

Hope everyone had a nice long weekend!

We had visitors on Thursday -- three bird-loving people that I knew from phone conversations and the Internet, but had never met before.

My parrots are not used to strangers, and it showed! Luckily, they tend to accept people after meeting them a few times; unfortunately, it will be a long time before they see these people again since they were from rather far away. Actually, Daphne, Kika, Rocky, Calypso, and Beeps were well-behaved. Max was pretty good, but she wouldn't step up on anyone else -- she'd fly away.

I tried to do a short clicker training demonstration, but Max was more interested in dancing than performing her tricks! We only had a short time at my house, but it was good for them to meet new people.

Here's a picture of Max, with her foot up because she wants me to pick her up.

I got home from work on Thursday, and Beeps had bathed in his water dish. What a mess he makes! He is so adorable when he's wet, though...

Here's another picture of Beeps, on alert. I could just eat this guy up! I know everyone thinks their parrots are adorable, but there is something special that draws me to this guy!I had done laundry, but placed the clean clothes at the bottom of the stairs instead of taking them immediately up to our bedroom. Rocky decided to take advantage of this. He climbed up my laundry basket, pulled out a clean pair of shorts, and brought them into the bathroom where Thomas was showering. He played with them for quite some time!I tried to get a video of him playing with my shorts (it would have been very similar to videos I've posted where he's playing with a towel), but he decided to run around with his beak on the floor instead:

Thomas had to mow the lawn over the weekend, which meant his two partners-in-crime had to keep tabs on him through the patio door that's just at their level:

In the background, you can see the one flower that I've managed to grow. I will probably pick it soon and see if the lizards will eat it!

Speaking of toys (Rocky with my shorts), we got our orders from Grey Feather Toys and from TNT Bird Toys, so the parrots have been very happy! I'll be posting more pictures of their toys in the upcoming weeks.

Here's a video of me introducing a new toy to Max. This is the large GFTC stainless steel bell. Right now, it's hanging in Kika's cage.

Here's Beeps, playing with one of his new toys. Caiques tend to be amazing toy players, and the two I own are no exception. They tend to particularly like toys that make noise when they bang them, and toys from which they can hang.

To the left is Beeps with his new Skadaddle. It has quickly become a new favorite!

Unfortunately, this picture turned out kind of blurry. But it's the best one I've been able to take of Calypso that captures the essence of how he plays. He's hanging onto his Birdy Bella.

He loves to hang off of his toys and shake them, which means he shakes in the process since he isn't holding onto the cage at all. One of his favorite things to do, which we call "the monkey," is to make his way around his cage using just his toys, with frequent stops for toy shaking and banging. I've tried to capture this on video, but when he sees me with the camera, he stops and comes over for me to pick him up!

Sometimes he'll have one foot on two different toys, and he tries to attack them both at the same time. I can spend (and have spent) a long time, just watching him play.

Our fish are still doing well. The two tiny babies are now the size of the larger baby when I first saw them last Sunday. They've been exploring different parts of the tank. Our old green cory cat also made an appearance over the weekend -- I hadn't seen him for months and assumed him dead. It never ceases to amaze me how these guys can be such great hiders!

When I called Thomas in to see the green cory cat, he remarked on the number of amazing aquarium happenings that have taken place in our house recently.

Parrot relationships

I answered, in a rambling way, a question posed to me in the comments of a previous entry by Sonja, and thought I should expand my answer a bit.

Bird-on-bird aggression is a real problem, and can have severe or even fatal consequences. As I wrote in the comments, I know several birds who have had their top beaks removed by another bird, many birds whose toes have been removed, and at least two that have been killed by other birds.

We are extremely cautious in our house when it comes to Daphne, as she is so much smaller than everyone else and could easily be harmed. When she comes with us into the kitchen, I have her perch in a place where the other parrots can't access her. She is never allowed out of her cage unsupervised, not even for 30 seconds if I have to grab something in another room. If any of the parrots had ever shown aggression towards her, we would implement even stricter policies to ensure her safety.

We are careful when it comes to our other birds as well, but not to the same degree as we are with Daphne. They are similar size so the threat of serious harm is less (although certainly not eliminated). Beeps, Max, and Calypso all can fly to avoid a confrontation, and Kika will be there soon. We know their personalities and feel comfortable with the risks that we take. Rocky has never made any sort of aggressive move towards another bird (towards me -- that's another matter!)

Calypso and Max are allowed to go on each others' cages. They've worked out a system that works well for them, and have been doing this for over four years. Usually Max flies over to Calypso's cage and either plays with his toys or eats his food. When Calypso has had enough of this, he takes a few steps towards Max, and she flies back to her cage.

Any other parrot that goes on another's cage is immediately removed, and they rarely do that anymore as they know it's not allowed.

Max and Beeps will occasionally get into a little tussle, but this appears to be play-related, and I intervene if it lasts more than a second or so. They take turns instigating, so one isn't stressing out the other.

When Kika first came to live with us, Max buzzed her, but this stopped after a few weeks, and hasn't happened for months. Max also will occasionally buzz Rocky, but usually only if he's on Thomas's shoulder, as she knows that's generally not allowed. This happens about twice a year.

There are no friendly interactions between my parrots. Even though I tell the caiques it would feel better if they'd allow their fellow caique to preen the pin feathers they can't reach, they don't listen and they're stuck with my human fingers trying to do the job.

I guess the point of this is to explain how things are in our house, and to reveal some of the thinking behind what we do. I would hate for anyone to stumble across this blog, or the pictures, and think it's ok to allow a bunch of flighted parrots to roam their house unsupervised. Serious damage can occur, and these wild animals depend on the humans in their house to keep them safe.

In updates on other things I've written about lately, we have finished all 9+ pounds of strawberries. Yum! I was able to find all three of the baby fish this morning. I feel even more certain that they are Australian Rainbowfish, and that the largest will survive. The two smaller ones probably will survive also, but I'll feel more confident of that in a week or so when they're a bit larger! And we still haven't made a decision about Kika's name. Maybe we'll just keep it because I can't find one that I love.

We're having visitors in a few hours, so I'll be back in a few days with posts about how the parrots behaved. I'm hoping Max will do her clicker routine, but sometimes she doesn't like to do it in front of people.

Kika name dilemma

Of our six parrots, four of them came with names. For the most part, we've continued calling them what they've known in the past -- Rocky, Calypso, and Kika. We changed Beeps's name, but still often refer to him as "Babycake" which is what he was known as for the first few years of his life, and how he sometimes refers to himself.

Since we got Max from a breeder, we got to choose her name (we thought she was male when we did) and Daphne, intended as a breeder, was unnamed.

I've been seriously thinking about changing Kika's name, however. Every time I say her name, I think of the racial slur that is one letter away from her name. Even though it's not pronounced the same -- we say "kee-kah" -- it disturbs me. She's only 5, so we'll probably spend the next 25-45 years with her, and that's a long time to be distressed be her name!

Thomas is not being helpful in this process. He keeps suggesting other names that are one letter away from racial slurs or dictators (i.e. "let's call her Stalit!") He thinks he's being funny, and I have to admit that he does make me laugh, which only encourages him.

I've been thinking a lot about this, especially when I'm running and have time to think, and came up with what I thought was the perfect name -- Roxy. Excited, I told Thomas, and he reminded me how close that name is to Rocky. How did I miss that?

Right now, the names on my short list are: Cassia, Fausta, Livia, Silvia, Helena, Ava, and Karla. But none of them seem quite right.

I need to make a decision soon since I think the longer we call her "Kika," the more confusing it will be when we make the switch.

Yet another strawberry story

Lately it seems like I should rename this the strawberry blog! But I took a video of what Max does to the strawberries, so I thought I would share it, partly because it's so strange.

She spent at least 10 minutes yesterday, licking the water off of the strawberries. She wouldn't eat the berries at all. There's no possible way she could have been thirsty, either.

After about 10 minutes, she threw a strawberry on the counter. I told her she shouldn't waste them because they're so good, washed it, and put it back in the bowl. This started a game for her, where she kept throwing strawberries out, so she had to go back to her stand for a while.

I'll be back tomorrow with a non-strawberry post!

As for the fish, Thomas claims to have seen all 3 babies yesterday, but I could only find one of the smaller ones, and the same thing this morning. They're pretty good at hiding, which is probably how they've survived this long! Also, we have tons of plants and other hiding places, which is how we went 14 months without seeing our pleco.

Another eventful weekend: new arrivals at our house and my new love

As I said in my title, another eventful weekend at our house!

Friday, we picked up our vegetables from our CSA farmer: scallions, zucchini, lettuce, strawberries, and 2 kinds of peas. We've eaten about half and should eat the rest before our next box arrives! So far, we've only not eaten a small amount of spinach from the first week, and that's because I stored it improperly in the fridge, so it was bad by the time we went to eat it.

Friday night, Thomas was playing video games and I was reading on the couch. Rocky decided he wasn't getting enough attention, so he was adorable, as he so often is. He climbed on his cage, right at Thomas's eye level, and hung off, swaying and repeating, "Hi Rock!" until he got what he wanted: attention.
Beeps, my newspaper destroyer, decided to hang out on the outside of his cage, pull the newspaper through, and shred it. He is so messy!
Saturday I volunteered at the rescue, where I got to hang out with my new love. Don't tell Thomas or Max! This guy is so special and whoever adopts him will be one lucky person. I know I can't take everyone home, and birds like this amazing greenwing macaw make that difficult.
My backyard wildlife sighting are nowhere near as fun and exotic as those of Shannon, but I make do with what I get! We've had quite a few bunnies outside lately, which has been fun to watch. This guy was eating the weeds growing in our brick patio, so he was doing us a favor. Bring some friends! We have lots of weeds!
Sunday, Thomas and I went strawberry picking, and ended up with a little over 9 pounds of strawberries. I just love this time of year, for precisely this reason. Fresh picked strawberries are so much tastier than anything I've been able to find in the store (and much cheaper!) I've been eating them pretty much nonstop and brought a bunch to work today for lunch. We may try to make some strawberry food items, if we don't eat them all first!As for the new arrivals at our house, they are incredibly difficult to capture on camera. Yesterday, I was watching our aquarium and noticed a tiny fish swimming up towards the top. We haven't added anything to our tank since September 1, 2007 -- 10 months -- so I knew this guy hadn't snuck in on some plants or with other fish. Our fish had babies!

We think he's an Australian Rainbowfish, but he's so tiny yet that he could be a Glowlight Tetra. Last evening, we then saw 2 more extremely tiny fish babies -- they were pretty much just an eye with a tiny amount of see-through body hanging off the back. This morning, I could only find one of the tiny babies and couldn't find any right before I had to leave for work.

The largest fry had grown measurably in the 24 hours I'd been monitoring him, and I think he's big enough to survive in our tank. The tiny guys might get eaten by the other fish in our tank, but we have so many plants in there they should be able to find hiding places.

What's kind of funny about this is that our tank really needs to be cleaned, and I'd hoped to do that before we have visitors on Thursday. But now, I'm too worried about disturbing the water quality and hiding places of the babies, so tank maintenance will be put on hold until these guys are much bigger.

In this video, you can see the largest baby swimming around. I hope to get better pictures of him once we can clean the algae off of the glass (apparently my otos and pleco are on strike) which won't be until they get bigger.

Possibly my longest entry ever

I'm not sure why I have so many pictures and videos from yesterday. There are a bunch I'm not even posting because this will be long enough!

First, I realized why Andreas has been sort of crabby lately: he's going through a major molt. This isn't the best picture, but you can see how the red skin is flaking off, particularly near his head. I found a piece of skin in his tank that was about the size of his belly. When I help him with the skin that's around his fingers, the skin retains the cylinder shape. I'm hoping that soon he will no longer have remnants from the colored sand they had him on in the pet store, but his tail has a long way to go yet.
We often give our empty food boxes to the parrots to destroy. This one had been on the bottom of a stand for several weeks, and yesterday Beeps decided to go down and shred it.
Here is Rocky, looking for Thomas to come home. You can see our ill-fated attempt to grow edible flowers for the lizards on the other side of the glass. Right now, it appears as though we're growing some mini maple trees!
I know I've been posting a lot of Max/lettuce pictures lately. I wish I would have caught what she did last night on video. She knows she's not supposed to go near our salads-in-progress, since she just takes the leaves and throws them on the floor. Last night, she snuck over there when my back was turned, grabbed a leaf, and ran as fast as she could to the other side of the counter. I thought she was going to throw it in the garbage, which is something she often does with things she finds on the counter, but instead she started eating the leaf.
While the humans of the house were eating dinner, the parrots of the house got busy chipping wood. I wish there were some sort of market for these tiny pieces of wood!

Rocky with a piece I thought was too thick for him (he showed me wrong):
He insists on chipping wood either on Thomas or on a towel.

Here's Beeps, chipping away. In the background is one of my favorite parrot toys. It's sucker sticks embedded in a piece of wood. This can be used as a perch or as a cage topper. Each of my parrots has at least one in their cage. Beeps has chewed away all but one stick, so I'll get him another one this weekend!
We've been doing our parrots' grooming in shifts. Part of this is due to the fact that their nails need to be trimmed at different times, and part is due to the fact that our Dremel battery does not keep its charge very long (I would have loved to get Calypso done last night). But it was Beeps and Kika who were trimmed yesterday.

Kika, in the middle of her trim:
And Beeps, right after, still in Thomas's lap. Unfortunately, the flash made him look very bright, but he'd flipped back over by the time I tried to take another picture.
After dinner, I was assembling toys to donate to the shelter where we volunteer. Even though Thomas was playing video games on the floor, Rocky climbed up on the couch next to me and played with a towel.


Then, Thomas put the video game away and we ate some strawberries for dessert. Even though Rocky spurned them the day before when I had offered them to everyone, he ate it when it came from Thomas. Of the remaining five parrots, once again only Calypso ate some.

This video was taken this morning as we were eating breakfast. We had swept up and changed the newspapers last night. However, Beeps is going through a stage where he does not want any newspaper in the tray on the stand. So, he works to throw all of the newspaper on the floor. This can be funny to watch because he's pretty small in comparison to the size of the paper, so it really takes some maneuvering on his part!

Rocky decided to take advantage of the paper on the floor to cover himself with the paper and walk around. I started calling his name towards the end of the video so that you could see him. Otherwise, it just looks like a moving piece of newspaper! Towards the middle of the video, you see Beeps walking over on the edge of the tray.

Caiques

Yesterday was my weekly trip to the farmers' market, and once again, my favorite farmer was selling strawberries. What a treat! As I was cutting them up to put on our salads last night, all of the parrots were begging. I can understand why -- strawberries are delicious! But when I went around to distribute the strawberries, everyone threw theirs on the ground, with the exception of Calypso. I don't think this guy has met a fruit (fresh or dried) that he doesn't love!

As I was changing the parrots' water dishes this morning, I came back to find a little goofball perched on the place where his water dish goes. He is just so curious, and makes me laugh. I don't even know how it's possible for him to be so adorable!
Beeps has been rather attacky lately, so we've had some discussions about impulse control (I don't think he understood them, though!) He launched at me three times last night when I was spraying other parrots with the water bottle, and launched at me the night before when I was clicker training Kika. Since he's a rather slow and noisy flyer, I was able to duck out of his way. For a few days, at least, he's going to have to go in his cage when I spray or train the other parrots.

One of the things that I love best about caiques is their fiery personality. I was reading an article about recovering parrots that were outside in a tree (I can't find it again or I'd link to it), and the author said to never bring out people or objects that the bird hates, with the exception of caiques. The best way to recover a caique in a tree, according to this article, is to bring out the object(s) of their derision and they'll get so angry at the object that they'll come down to attack and you can bring the caique to safety.

While I've been lucky enough to not have to test this, and am doing everything possible to make sure that remains the case, I think there may be some sense to that! All I'd have to do is show Beeps some technology or a broom and he'd come right to me!