Léa and the leather knot

Happy Hatchday Shade!

Shade turns 9 today!

Happy hatchday Shade! 

Petey

His head is a little out of focus, but I really liked this picture so I decided to post it - and given the size it gets displayed on the blog, you can hardly notice the fact that it is a little out of focus!

Looking outside

And he appears to have spotted something interesting!

Do I have something on my face?

This morning's blackberry received approval from Shade. The mess was also mostly contained to her face and her (previously white) bowl.

The look of surprise with the blackberry beard just kills me.

Photobombing, Poi style

Was focusing to get a picture of Shade and Zuri decided to get into the picture as well...

*chirp*

OPC meeting - March 22, 2015

Tonight I attended the first Parrot Club meeting of 2015 (there are no meetings in January and February because of the cold).

I helped out with member registration, so couldn't really walk around before the presentation to take pictures and had to try to do so discreetly once everyone was sitting down.

Here are a few pictures from the evening (none of these are my birds).

The look of indifference

What?

Pixel

Wet-bellied Meyer's

Went in the birdroom and notice both Meyer's had taken a bath. And it appears they take their baths in a similar fashion as they were both wet in the same spot!

Skewer refilling time

I think it's been quite some time since I had an entry about homemade or purchased toys. I know there have been two orders that I never got around taking pictures of before I handed the toys to the birds and I haven't really been in a toy-making kind of mind lately.

However, last week-end I sat down and did prepare some toys; I simply refilled most of my skewers with pine slats/blocks, beads and natural wood toys. The easiest homemade toys ever.

While these don't look fancy, they are always a success with the flock and I really don't have an excuse to not prepare them, as it does not take long. There is also no rope to knot, which, if you do work with poly rope, can be irritating after a while.

These skewers also allow me to reuse some of the materials that weren't completely chewed off in their previous incarnation, so it helps to avoid waste.

I have a variety of skewers; I love the small corkscrew skewer for the smaller Pois and I have a large one for Léa (although this particular one won't be shown below as it still was in Léa's cage with stuff to chew on). I also have skewers from Expandable Habitats in a number of sizes; from two huge ones, quite a few large ones and a number of small ones.

The (small) corkscrew skewers:

(The one with red balls will go to Joey and Pixel; the one with the pink ball to Shade and the one with the yellow ball to Zuri. Petey's skewer was still in his cage with wood to chew)

The huge Expandable Habitats skewer:

 

(Only one pictured, as the other one was still full and in use in one of the spare cages in the orange room)

The large Expandable Habitats skewers:

The small Expandable Habitats skewers:

The wood used to fill the skewers came from a number of places. Most of the blocks on the huge skewers are from Mother Pluckin' Bird Toys. There was some balsa blocs too, that came from Things for Wings. The natural wood coins were also from Things for Wings. The wooden beads were mostly from Woodworks. finally, the pine slats were either cut by me or were ordered from Crystal's Bird Toys when the store closed down.

And because I don't feel like starting a new post just for these, here are two pictures of toys I've made at one point over this past winter.