He's grinding his beak!

What an unusual title some might say, as birds do regularly grind their beak.

Why get so excited?

Well, back in 2008, Piper had a little face-to-face altercation with Petey, a thing that lasted mere seconds, but which had the end result of Piper suffering a small beak injury. He was lucky - a few millimeters to the side and the whole thing might have been more severe! He ended up having a dent on the low portion of his lower mandible. It never really came out and slowly, as his beak was growing, the dent made it's way up. Right now, 4 years later, and it's all the way up and causing a few issues. Because of how it comes in, it's throwing Piper's beak a little out of whack, which means that every month I need to bring him to the vet so that she can trim his lower mandible, on the opposite side of the injury, down. As well, the vet says there is some adjustments to make on the inside portion of the top mandible since Piper doesn't do a good enough job at the moment. This is generally something birds take care of when they grind their beak and, if I'm honest, I don't really recall Piper grinding his beak since February, which is when I noticed the beak starting to grow long on the one side. So I take this return to old habits as a good sign and I do hope he keeps up with it!