Chaos

Last night, I got home before Thomas. My goal was to have dinner ready when he got home from work, but I was delayed by all of the parrots.

I hadn't been home the past two evenings due to a meeting (Monday) and a yoga class (Tuesday). I saw the parrots only briefly, so I guess they were making up for lost time last night!

Max flew over and started destroying the recipe I'd printed off to make roasted kohlrabi:She just got the margins, so I will still be making this over the weekend!

Beeps was very needy and wanted to spend time perched on my hand/arm. This would have been fine, except that Max saw this and decided that she needed to be on me as well. Therefore, I was unable to do anything to advance dinner preparations since both hands were occupied with parrots. Things got really hairy when Stella also wanted to be picked up. I only have two hands!

I tossed the greys back to their stand and got Beeps to perch on my side so I could get started and show Thomas some progress when he got home! (It was hard to get a good picture of this since he was so close to me -- out of focus!)
Rocky ran over and decided to go through my purse. I managed to get him away before he'd done any damage.
Finally, I got Rocky situation in Thomas's flannel with some wood pieces and the rest of the parrots on stands, so I could start getting the greens ready. Max kept saying "want some!" and she did:
Calypso also enjoyed the lettuce:
As did Stella, who required that I hold it for her.
Rocky and Beeps were given some, but they destroyed it before I could get a picture. I don't think they actually ate any!

Miscellany

Last night, Thomas was eating raw garlic. As I've mentioned before, this is one of Max's favorite foods, though we limit how much she can eat. He said since she couldn't have any more, he would bond with her by allowing her to be near him after he'd eaten some garlic. And she did try to step up on his face!*************************
Over the weekend, Thomas was alone with the parrots. The camera was with me. Rocky was nesting in Thomas's flannel (I am not supposed to call it a housecoat!) He somehow managed to burrow into a sleeve. Thomas said it took him about 10 minutes to work his way to freedom; he was able to get his body all the way through the sleeve, but it took some work. I would have loved to have seen that!

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When I was alone with the parrots last week, waiting for Thomas to get home from work, Rocky started to get really irritating. He was upset (possibly because Thomas wasn't home). Instead of playing with his toys or doing something else to pass the time, he decided to walk into the kitchen and start screaming. Again. I guess he felt I needed to know how upset he was!

Trying to salvage a bit of humor from the situation, I found an old CD from when I used to listen to country music in high school and played Travis Tritt's "Here's a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares" to him. Pretty soon we were all singing and dancing, and I found out that the parrots love country music!

Thomas was not pleased with this development...

Cranberry surprise

This morning, Stella flew to the counter and started exploring the container in which we keep our dried cranberries. She attempted to eat the berries through the plastic, then she tried to destroy the container, and finally she started throwing the container around.It was obvious she wanted some, though neither of our greys have ever eaten any dried fruit. Thomas kept telling her that she doesn't like them, so he didn't want to get up to give her some. But she was persistent, so he gave in, to prove her wrong.And wouldn't you know it, she ate cranberries as though they were her favorite food ever! Thomas complained she was doing this just to spite him, but I don't ascribe sinister motives to her. He does tend to think the greys are out to get him, though I think that might just be for comedic value.

He allowed her access to the container after a few minutes; I had to remove the container from her sight after she'd had enough.
Max still wasn't interested in dried fruit, though we did try after seeing the success with Stella.

Vacation birding

Here are some photos from our vacation birding a couple of weeks ago. Although "birding" might be too formal a term for what we did since we didn't even have binoculars! (We do now.) We went out hiking with the hopes of seeing birds and identifying them.

These black-capped chickadees were the first birds we saw. They were building a nest on top of the tree:There were two cedar waxwings working on building a nest. You can see this one on top of some string:Here is a dark eyed junco. He (she?) was singing beautifully. At this location, there were some large binoculars attached to the boardwalk, so we were able to get a closer look:
At first, we thought these mergansers were mallard ducks. There was a pair of mallard ducks who approached us when we were on the dock (probably hoping, in vain, for a handout). These guys stayed far away. We noticed them diving (and therefore knew they were not mallards), so we walked around the lake and took more pictures. Comparing the pictures to our field guides, we could identify them:
This spruce grouse represented our scariest birding moment to date (though we have only been birding for a short period of time!) We had freaked ourselves out a bit by investigating a scary, abandoned house in the middle of the trail. Just as we reentered the trail, about 6 baby spruce grouses (grice? grouse?) shot out right in front of us, followed by this female.

She started displaying and making a horrible sound. Thomas and I screamed. We later found out she was likely pretending to be injured so our attention would be diverted from her chicks. I quickly snapped this picture, then we got out of there as quickly as possible as we felt bad about stressing her out and wanted her to be able to collect all of her babies.

I was worried about her, though there was nothing we could do at that point. How would she be able to collect all of her babies? How does she even know how many she has? Some of them seemed to go quite high -- what if they landed in trees? Thomas assured me everything would be fine, so that's what I'm choosing to believe.
Driving along the road, we saw this turkey, so Thomas turned around and I was able to get a picture before she disappeared in the forest:
Finally, a white-throated sparrow on a branch:
We saw quite a few additional birds, some which we could positively identify and put on our life list (yellow-bellied sapsucker, white-breasted nuthatch), and others which will remain mysterious, like this one:And many other that we couldn't photograph, including some mostly-black birds that sounded like bike horns! And quite a few birds of prey.

More wildlife

We had a great weekend. Surprisingly, I didn't take any pictures of the parrots! All is well, though there will be some interesting parrot developments coming out of our house in the next week or so...

We went to a nearby river to do some bird-watching, now that we have our binoculars. We're just getting used to using them and working on how to indicate to each other where to look. We've made decent progress, but know that practice will help even more!

Along the river, we saw a point where there were hundreds of tadpoles (you have to look closely to see them, but then they're everywhere!):And there was a mother mallard with her juvenile chicks (we were looking down on them from a bridge):
On our patio, we saw the fattest squirrel ever. He was eating the seeds from our maple tree:
A little rabbit came up behind him, but they existed peacefully together:
We also have two fledgling robins in our yard. It has been so much fun watching the parents feed them and teach them how to forage. Most of this watching has been done with binoculars and not a camera, though I did get a picture of one of the fledglings. He'd been eating ants from an anthill after watching his parents do the same thing earlier:
Another weekend that flew by way too quickly. I can't believe it's already the summer solstice!

Up to her old tricks

In the vein of be careful what you wish for, Max is occasionally a retrieving maniac. I've shown some of this before, like here.

I was chopping strawberries for our salads last night. Somehow, Max grabbed one and then placed it in a coffee cup. I was completely oblivious to this, until Thomas asked me what kind of weird coffee drink I was planning:
I didn't understand what he was talking about until I realized what Max must have done!

More nesting

This guys spends more time with Thomas's shoes than Thomas does!Action shot:
I cannot even begin to understand why shoes would trigger such a reaction!

Rocky

Rocky bit through the stem of my plant today, leaving me with over 6 feet of unattached leaves! I placed them in a vase of water and we'll see what happens.Since he had so much extra energy, he got a drenching in the shower with Thomas this morning.
It calmed him down a bit as he expends so much energy dancing and singing while showering.

Max and Rocky

The weirdness continues. Here is a video showing Rocky playing with his nest, which Max watches. She had previously been playing in his nest at the same time, which he tolerated, as long as she didn't get too close. Thomas had left his pants in the hall, but Rocky brought the shoes in from the living room.



Then she starts imitating him and he starts doing his weird thing when he walks around dragging his beak on the ground. Sadly, he didn't make the sounds like the Picture Pages pen this time.

Resting

More flock behavior from the greys, despite the fact that they do not physically interact at all. This morning, Stella kept moving from the seat of the chair to the top, and Max followed her lead.I've stepped up my talks with them about how much better their lives would be if they became friendly and preened each other, but they are still not listening to me!