A Petey photoshoot

And my favorite..

Alert / Calm

Pixel demonstrating some Poicephalus body language for alert and calm.

Alert - look at her stance and the very alert eyes.


Calm - Much more relaxed pose and feathers and how she's now looking elsewhere.

Not exactly as planned

Zuri was nicely perched on the net.
I figured I'd take a picture.

By the time the flash was ready to go and the focus was set and I go to press the shutter, Zuri had other ideas.



This is the resulting picture.

At least one bird is enjoying the cube..

..most of them are still rather skeptical about it's use and don't dare go on it.

Actually, all of them but Zuri - well I guess that's a lie, I haven't tried Petey yet as the cube is very close to where I normally sit when they are out in the living room with me and I am not yet willing to put Petey within reach of me.

Anyways, some pictures of Zuri and the cube.

Post # 250 - A Piper post

I was actually thinking I'd keep this one for something more grandiose than this..but this will be a poo story.

You read that right.

Piper was sitting on my head for the longest time and then flew off. A bit worried that he would try to fly close to Petey I turned around to watch where he was going. He landed on the tree, let out this pretty large poop (for it not being a morning one) and flew back to me.

This is not the first time it's happened. The last few days he's favorite spot has been the top of my head and he's been consistently flying away to do his business.

No training on my part involved - he learned this one on his own!

King Floofyhead and his beads

Shade doing what Shade does best

Eating that is.

Mmmm Nuriberry..


What do you want?..


This 'berry is MINE!

Hi!

Doesn't it just look like that is what he's thinking?

Piper rarely lets me take pictures, he would rather be "behind the camera" with me, standing on my head or my shoulder.

A few odds and ends

A few more pictures from today that don't really fit in any category.

I love this one of Shade.








No Pixel picture - the previous sulky pictures are what I got from her today.
No Petey picture - he didn't want to cooperate for pictures today.

Fish eyes

Pictures of birds from front on crack me up!

Sulky Pixel

I think Pixel was a bit crossed with me..see how she's either decisively looking away from me or glaring at me when she does start looking my way..



Prior to these pictures having been taken, she had jumped on Shade and was probably wanting to start a fight - however I had intervene and just scooped up Pixel and put her in her cage for a few minutes.
The pictures were taken after she came back out, seemingly upset with me.



It's now an hour or so later and she's now trying to get my attention once more with her cute little sounds. I guess all is forgiven.

About to take flight...

This is why I can't take flight pictures.

I want to go over there!..


Oh you're taking pictures...


In that case I'll just stay here and preen.

A Meyer's close-up

Care to venture to guess which one it is?

Another money spending moment

Avian Avenue, one of the forums on which I'm more active, is having it's Semi-Annual Sidewalk Sale. What does this mean? It means that some of the vendors that happen to be members offer deals for a limited time. Past ones have been for a day, this one is on for TWO days. It has started today and keeps on going until the end of the day tomorrow.

I've done my spending.

With a friend (sharing shipping costs is fun!), I've ordered from Mother Plucking Bird Toys (MPBT) and California Bird Nerds (CABirdNerds).

From MPBT I've got a few refill kits with different types of woods, specially the mini maze munchers. The regular size have been a success so far, I can only imagine how a smaller and easier to hold version will be even more accepted by the boids.

From CABirdNerds I have ordered a large amounts of different types of wood as well as some paper rope and some leather rope to string them up.

I have also ordered from Pet Products By Nature (PPBN) - this is a first. I have got some natural wood coins in the past from Things for Wings, since they were sold in smaller quantities there and Things for Wings also happens to be a Canadian store (easier on shipping). Well, seeing how loved the cottonwood and willow coins were by my flock, I decided it was time to order large quantities so with PPBN I went!

And speaking of Things for Wings, I did also order a few custom toys seeing how all the other custom toys I've seen Danita make have been thoroughly awesome, I figured why not offer more awesome toys to my guys?

Hopefully this load of wood/toys will last me a while...

Wheee!

It was one of the cutest things ever!

I was bringing Pixel from the birdroom to the living room on a perch and started to bounce her up and down and she let's out a "Wheeee" in the cutest girliest possible voice.

Just adorable!

Some goodies I bought at the CPC

Here are a few of the goodies I brought back from the CPC.

These are made by the owners of Birds-n-stuff. I had bought some last year and they were a raging success so I knew I had to get more. An absolute favorite with my guys - it's a long birdie bagel filled with all sorts of goodies and they are very reasonably priced.



The following was the "hot item" of the year (I find there is always one item that is particularly popular each year). Unfortunately, only one of the vendors had any and he had only one of each size (small - medium - large). This is the small - I had wanted the medium for my mom but it was already sold...very early Saturday morning.



These aren't toys but I just love them. (Fridge) magnets. I got one for each parrot species I own and while I know that the female Red-bellied looks different enough from the male to warrant her own magnet - I'm not sure the person who made them ever made one of those...They were from Tickle Tickle Designs.

CPC - More pictures

These pictures have their own post since they were taken by someone else...since I'm on them. My boyfriend was nice enough to handle the camera while I held a few of the birds.

First off, Shorty. So hilarious. Would go to anyone and say "Oui oui oui oui" when asked if he spoke French (in French of course).


The next two are of Jazz and I. Jazz was the female Hyacinth Macaw. She was on me for a good half hour. We started with her on my arm and she got her head scratched for quite a bit.



Not sure if the picture truly shows how much she just laid her head in my hand. At one point she did wrap her beak around my hand, which had me a bit nervous, but she was very gentle and quickly just went back at resting her head in my hand.

Eventually though..she decided to go up my arm and rest on my shoulder. I NEVER had a macaw on my shoulder before - and this was rather intimidating. Not being a fan of having birds I don't know up there, much less some how hold that much power in their beak...I do have to say I relaxed a bit when it was obvious that she was just perching there with no other intent.

The Canadian Parrot Conference - the Aftermath

Last week-end, as mentioned in previous posts, I was at the Canadian Parrot Conference. I had gone the two previous years and had always enjoyed myself. This year was also interesting.

The biggest draw this year was Dr. Irene Pepperberg. I believe anyone who remotely starts plunging in the parrot world knows who she is, or at least knows who Alex the African Grey is. Out of all the talks I attended this year, hers were the most interesting and I barely saw both 45 minutes session go by. Her seminars were about Number Concepts in Grey Parrots and Speech Production in Grey Parrots.

And while I enjoyed Sally Blanchard's seminar entitled "Winning the Trust of a Rehome Parrot", and laughed wholeheartedly at all her stories about Bongo-Marie, a African Grey she once owned, I would have enjoyed it a bit more had there been more information about the actual topic.

As far as the Tradeshow portion of it...compared to the previous years there wasn't much. The room itself in which the Tradeshow is held was cut by half (the other half serving as the conference room) and there were really only two vendors that had a wider selection of toys and the more interesting ones were sold (really) early on. I won't dwell on it, but let's say I didn't spend nearly as much on stuff as I did last year.

There were also a few birds present, amongst them two Hyacinth Macaws that seem to be the biggest draw for the crowd.

Here are a few pictures of the birds present.


The Caique on the sign happened to be this one...


His name was Shorty, he belonged to the couple who owned the Hyacinth Macaws, as well as a Moluccan Cockatoo. Shorty said "Piggy piggy" in the cutest voice. He was also the best behaved Caique I've met in person.


A Brown-head parrot - the only Poi I saw at the Conference.


Parrotlet


Greenwing Macaw


Yellow collard Macaw

And everyone is back home!

As I've mentioned before, I was gone this week-end at the Canadian Parrot Conference, which meant my birds were being watched by other people. I brought them over on Thursday and I have to say it was weird not having them around later that evening nor on the Friday morning. The apartment was definitively lacking something.

We came back last night so went to get the birds today. We've been all reunited for about 20 minutes and I have to say I enjoy having everyone together again.

Posts with pictures from the Conference will follow..

Meet Lucy!

Lucy is a female Red-bellied parrot who happens to be Joey and Pixel's sister.
No I did not add to my flock...Lucy lives in Guelph with Laura, someone I met on a bird forum. Laura and Lucy are in Guelph and since I was there over the week-end for the Canadian Parrot Conference, I got to meet Lucy, as well as Laura's Senegal, Jessie, and Meyer's, Kylie.

The three of them were a little shy, but I got Lucy to dance with me and eventually she came out of her cage. Jessie and Kylie didn't want to come out, but I still got to convince Jessie that I can do a good job at scratching a bird's head and got the privilege to scratch his, which apparently is a feat done by few so I do feel a honoured that he let me do it.

I got a few pictures of Lucy while she was out of her cage...

Zoom zoom zoom!

Today I get to spend my day with the birds, since it's a government holiday.

So, unlike most other week days, they are out of the cages and hanging out with us in the middle of the afternoon.

How are they choosing to spend their time right now? Zooming around the apartment, flying from one play gym to another (and occasionally landing some places they shouldn't (on curtains or on top of the fridge or even on top of the cupboard in the kitchen - which in itself is quite a feat since there's barely no landing space..)).

It's amusing seeing them fly, even little Pixel who doesn't quite have all her flight feathers in but who is still making some progress.

Beads, beads, beads!

So I succumbed to the latest trend of buying beads to make foot toys for my birds.
Beads have always been a favorite here, when being offered a new toy with beads on it it's generally the first thing my guys go and chomp off.

After shopping around, it seems like the best deal I could find were the beads available at "Les Jouets Rosie". Nice vivid beads that have been proved to be a definite favorite here (one of their Rosie swing used to have beads on it and the always appreciated "Balsa en Folie" also comes with some of them).

I ordered 500. Somehow, when I received my package yesterday I was somewhat underwhelmed at how very little 500 wooden beads ended up being...(which I think is because I had a mental image of it being much more...)



I also started stringing up a few foot toys together yesterday night. Shade, looking intrigued, was offered one...



..before dropping it. But what is rejected by one bird gets quickly picked up by another..





Here are a few of the foot toys I've made - paulie rope isn't always easy to tie up.



This particular one I call the "Joey model" - while in most cases all I did was string up beads one after the other, for the ones I'll give Joey I added extra knots in between each bead since he enjoys undoing knots so much.

Would you mess with this bird?...

...apparently I don't learn and keep doing it which, for the second time, resulted in full camera attack - this was just before he jumped/flew.

It probably doesn't help that I'm holding the camera - pretty sure he'd stay still for B.

Mind you, he's been pretty fine in the past with me taking his picture, he would even pose, but ever since his flight feathers grew in, it's been rather iffy..

You can't change a Shade... with pictures!

A little earlier this week, I posted about how Shade had a peculiar habit of chewing wood over her pellet bowl and how i had purchased a different bowl just to hold her wood pieces and how I moved her pellet bowl on the other side of her cage.

The end result being that she just lugged a rather large piece of wood (such as a regular size Mother Pluckin' wood block) from one side of her cage to the other.

Well. Turns out MP wood blocks aren't the only things getting this "treatment".

Last Sunday this is what I came home to...



While I know that this is by far not the best picture I ever took, look at what is coming out of the bowl..and this would be her pellet bowl.

Yes, it's a piece of wood. A piece that had been taken off another toy but which still had plenty of opportunities to be chewed down do a pulp.

Just to give you a better grasp of the size of it..



The end result? Look at the mix of pellets and wood. (The pellets are Zupreem Avian Entrées Wild and Spicy..there was some Roudybush in there at one point, got all eaten I guess.)



The following is one of the things I came to last night - her pellet bowl having suffered the same treatment as before and all the pellets were now eaten...



..it was also a night of first. For the first time, she did this to her seed bowl.



This bowl also happens to be on the other side of the cage from where the wood bowl is, but unlike the pellet bowl which is situated about the same height as the wood bowl, this one is situated much further down in the cage.

Anyone want to venture a guess as to why she is doing this??