Pixel - Day 3 (June 13th, 2010)

Bribery, thy name is almonds!

I was still looking for a favorite food which could act as some type of bribery item to get Pixie to come closer to us. I think I found it in the form of an almond. When presented to her, her eyes pinned in what looked like thrilled expectations, there was no question that this was indeed an edible item. She took it with no hesitation and destroyed it in mere seconds. For the second one, I tried to have her actually move towards me (whereas the first one was offered right to her) and she was a bit more reluctant to get it, but ultimately decided that it was well worth the effort.

I forgot to mention that this happened out of her cage. Another big positive which happened today was that she willingly stepped up on my finger from inside her cage without any hesitation. Up until today she wanted nothing to do with it, choosing to come out by her own means when she truly felt like it.

Also, she has a few toys to her disposition in the cage, mostly things to destroy but made of different materials. I also have a bucket of foot toys and I took one out, a shreaddable item, for her to play with. She seemed quite interested, although the actual play time was rather brief. I do have hope that she has some idea on how to play with things so getting her to actively play with more toys shouldn’t be too difficult.

Finally, once the other birds went in for the night and I devoted an hour or so to her. Since she was still somewhat shy, I went to my usual post when spending time around her which is on my bed, reading. The boy came and joined me and read as well. During that last half hour, she started making cooing noises, all rather cute. She came closer to us, as she’s been doing for a bit, but each time we move to get closer, she moves away. You see that she wants to be close but doesn’t quite know how close and how to achieve this yet. Well, during the last 15 minutes of her time out, she started turning her head and scratching it on the edge of the cage. I couldn’t help it anymore, I got up to scratch her head. She went up the ladder of the playtop portion of her cage, but still presented her head to me so for 15 minutes I stood there scratching her head and was she ever so sweet about it. Then it was time to go in and once I put her on a perch, I went to get a final almond to give her and she stepped right back up (ignored the almond) and did the head gesture wanting to feed me.

I guess she’s finally starting to settle in.

All in all, a good day of progress.