4 years ago

That's right, it is time to "kick-off" the "gotcha" and "hatchday" celebrations of 2013!

And the first one up is Zuri, who, 4 years ago today, joined the flock.

The last year with him had it's own set of challenges for a few weeks when he got into trouble with Petey and ended up with that injury on his foot, which prompted him to chew it and end up with a slightly amputated toe and quite some time in a collar and bandage.

But he got all better and is back to his old self! As well, lately he's been very cuddly, relishing any opportunities to get his head scratched as he has a lot of pin feathers growing in - and that yellow on his forehead keeps expanding!

Here's to many more years together (and hopefully severe incident free years)!

Perches from Things for Wings

A few weeks ago, Danita at Things for Wings had a sale - buy 5 perches, get a sixth for free. Seeing how I had recently depleted my perch stock (figuring some needed to be "retired"), I took advantage of the sale.



From left to right:
-Cajeput perch
-2 Ribbonwood perches
-2 Ocotillow perches

The cajeput perch is just fantastic! Given it's as wide as it is, it will be going to Léa who will have a lot of fun peeling away the many layers of bark.



Danita also recently started to carry some flagstone perches from Birds on the Rock. The perch that is pictured is the perch you buy; I find it a great approach, these perches are the type of things you want to see before buying, as they vary so much. I got one to replace the one in Joey's cage, which I have always been a little iffy about.



It wasn't a huge haul, but these 6 perches are welcome additions!

On top of these 6 perches, I also ordered 200 willow coins since they were part of a "special" sale - seeing how hard they are to come by, I took the opportunity to stock up! Didn't take pictures as I didn't want to remove them from their bags quite yet (I want to finish my current stock before I use the new coins).

Léa!

This was told to me by the Boy, as he had Léa with him this morning while I was with the Littles.

Apparently, she had been very well behaved all morning and when he asked her to step up to bring her upstairs (they are in the basement in the morning), he told her how good she had been and she answered with a very enthusiastic "Léa" as if she was self-praising.

How adorable!

Matching colours

She chose the string of beads which colours matched hers the most!

Léa last night

More "dunk head in water bowl" action happened...





But I do love those feathers that stick up in the air when wet!

Avian Stainless

There is a new parrot toy website that has "opened" recently - Avian Stainless!

The store is managed by the fabulous Doris who is also the person behind one of my favorite parrot food stores, Avian Organics.

The website, which catalogue will still be growing, specializes in stainless steel toys, which are made by Doris' husband who has been a certified welder for over 40 years.

I haven't yet ordered, as I have met my allotted "bird supply" budget this month, but will probably indulge in February - there are a few toys which I think might be to Petey's liking (he likes to beat up his toys and make noise) and I also have my eye on something for Léa, as she is quite meticulous and I think she will like of these items too!

Avian Stainless - http://www.avianstainless.com/index.php

Avian Organics - http://www.avianorganics.com/

Little Piper

An old picture, back from our apartment days.
I recently stumbled across it once more and found Piper too adorable to pass!

Zuri

I think these might just be the first non-Instagram bird pictures since the New Year!
Taken with natural light too!

Zuri has such gorgeous colours!

Recent homemade toys

Most of these were done yesterday, except for the batch of foot toys.

Given that Joey, Shade and (recently) Zuri have been on a toy destruction binge, I figured I needed to try and keep up with them by making toys to replace the ones they destroyed. The easiest way to do this, partially at least, is to replenish their toy skewers when they have destroyed everything that was on there.

Since I mostly felt forced to do these, as opposed to wanting to and feeling creative about it, the toys aren't as original as they probably could have been.

The skewer toys -





The following one was made using cotton rope, pine squares and slats, natural willow and cottonwood coins and small barrel beads - definitively will be going to one of the smaller guys!



Finally, the pile of foot toys I made sometime in December but never posted about as I meant to do more of them but never got around to it. And since I'll want to hand these out sooner than later, might as well share them now!

Recent orders - part 2

At the end of December, Mother Pluckin' Bird Toys was having a sale on their toys, and this included skewers.

As I was in need of an additonal small corkscrew skewer for one of the small Pois as well as a slightly larger one for Léa, I figured it was the time to order. Generally, when I've participated in Mother Pluckin' sales, it was for 10% off - this time, the rebate was 15%! I just couldn't pass.

To save on shipping, I made a joint order with Crystal (from Crystal's Bird Toys).

Today, I went top pick-up my skewers.



The small skewers comes pre-filled with some wood pieces but obviously not the medium. However, the medium has a nice swivel piece. While the height of the smaller one would probably be ok for Léa, I felt safer ordering the medium as the ball at the end is larger and will probably be more complicated for her to undo (doubt the smaller one would be a challenge).

On top of this joint order, Crystal and I also ordered some wooden parts at Woodworks together. I got a few hundred hardwood beads to fill up my bin - I'm sure the birds will be happy about this, at least once I start making more foot toys and regular toys!

Recent orders - part 1

My lack of blogging of late has put me behind in updating about recent bird-related purchases.

Back in December (I think?), we needed to order some pellets so we turned to "Les Jouets Rosie". They luckily happened to be having a sale on food related items, which is always good. We initially ordered a 4lbs bag of TOPs (pellets) and the owner emailed back, saying she had one 10lbs bag left, with an expiry date in April, and offered it to us at a very very good price. Given we just recently purchased a chest freezer and would have plenty of space to store this bag, we went with that option.

Initially this was only meant to be a food order, but I noticed that the store now had listed a shower perch I had wanted to try out for some time. It seemed to be reasonably priced so we ordered one.



As well, given that Léa had made a mess of one of her pumice perch and that washing it would lead to the sandy coating on it to be removed and making it pointless (and I don't believe in just handing Léa a plastic perch with no purpose), we bought a new one.



This type of perch has done wonders about keeping her nails nice and trim. It's not placed in the cage in a location where she would be perched on it all the time as to avoid foot sores.

We haven't yet tried the shower perch but do want to do so sooner than later! I might just report back on how that went!

Bad timing

What should a bird not do *just* before night time, especially in the winter when things are a bit cooler?



Take a bath..well dunk your head at least.

And although she looks like she was done on the picture above, as she is not close to the water bowl, she went back for more.



Silly, silly Léa!

Oh yeah, that's the spot!

Being silly

She's giving me many reasons to post today it seems!

Although we are done with our "Where's Léa" game, she decided to remain in a playful mood. She's being rather silly on the computer desk in front of me, playing with a toy, either flipping on her side or on her back, hiding her head underneath her wing..

It's all very cute and it's a nice thing to see once again - it's been a while since she last did this on the desk right in front of me!

And now she just climbed on the pillow I keep in front of me (out of habit, mostly to use as protection when Petey is out and wants to attack) and insisted on getting beak kisses. So very cute!

She loves to play peek-a-boo!

Well, really I think we could call it "where's Léa?" as that is what I tell her.

Whether it be when she's in her cage (and I'll hide behind a toy and get her to peek at me from either side - she has to move) or playing with her on the computer desk with my hiding behind a pillow and again, getting her to go on either side (I also move where I am) to find me, she just loves it.

We just played the out of cage version and every time she "found" me, she came for a kiss. Which was nice!

It also seems like I need to pick up the whole blogging thing. Between being really busy and sick, it's just not been a priority. Looks like I'll need another "project" to keep me going!

Yes/No with Joey and the Boy

This *just* happened.

Joey seemingly has a tiny spot of dried poop on the top of his beak - not sure how it got there.

The Boy just asked him if he could try and get it off, to which Joey shook his head "no".

He then asked him if he liked it that way, to which Joey shook his head "yes".

Both times, he shook his head a large number of times.

Probably purely coincidental but very very funny!

Head scratch monster!

He could honestly live all day in the palm of my hand, getting his head scratched!

What??

Look into my eyes!

As always, Joey showcasing his crazy eyes (which is generally achieved whenever he looks at us head on) makes me laugh!

Silly Cape Parrot

She sometimes selects very awkward and random perches.

Stainless steel + circular shape = slippery!

Instagram - what was posted in December

I say "posted" as opposed to "taken" as not every picture I posted on there last month was taken in December. I had actually revisited older pictures I took on my phone but had done nothing to them until then.







The pictures above were all taken at our previous apartment - in fact, Léa is only a few months old on that picture (and had been starting to lose all the baby colours on her head).

These pictures were actually taken in December.

December/January's "Cooking for the birds"

This is the first time since I started this series of post that I don't have a picture of the pile of fresh food I was going to use.

And while the title seems to make one believe it took me two months to complete, it's really that I didn't start until very late in December and since most of the food will be used in January and I didn't get around posting this until now, it felt right to include both.

It was another huge batch of food and like last time, I did the whole thing over a few days (cooked some grains on the first day, some legumes on another and finally chopped the vegetables on a third one.)



What went in it?

Grains & legumes
-Quinoa
-French lentils
-Brown rice
-Chickpeas (I think Léa and Zuri would be very sad if these weren't included)

Vegetables & fruit
-Swiss chard (stem and leaf)
-Broccoli
-Carrots
-Cauliflower
-Sweet peas
-Red bell pepper
-Pomegranate

I think that was it. I generally like to include sweet potatoes but had forgotten to get one before hand this time around.


Close up of the food

As I  mentioned above, the grains and legumes were cooked before going in the mix. I also gave all the veggies, except for the peas which were initially frozen and thawed before adding to the mix, a quick blanch before tossing them in the mix.



Once the food was all bagged up into dinner size portion (one bag feeds all seven birds for one evening), I got 34 portions. Add to this that I had fed the birds for 4 evenings before actually going through the bagging process, the whole mix gave me food for 38 days.

Not bad!

What?

What?


I like looking outside!

Hi Lélé!

The first spoken greeting from any of the birds of 2013 (also the first time she has said "Hi Lélé!").

Made me smile.

But now she's making things difficult for the Boy (as in not cooperating) and taunting him with a nice long "Léééééa" and more "Hi Léa!".

I'm still finding it all rather cute!