Ohh, the Winter Wind!

Had a fair amount of snow here this winter, not ever an accumulation over a few inches, but it has snowed fairly often. And gotten quite cold, not into the twenties many days, I think I even had a day or two with a wind chill below zero- which is something for me, so if you are in Minnesota, don't laugh! Having not been here but a year and a half, I can't say whether it is very normal for here. Then again, it probably isn't, since climate change has insured no one gets the weather quite as expected.

The parrots do not seem to mind the winter if you ignore the fact they do not get outside that often. I do not keep my house that warm in the winter, and even the "free as air" (ehem) set in their brief feather attire have not shown any sign of caring. The only ones that do have a problem is the ekkies, and that seems to be related to how dry it is rather than the temperature. It is hard every year when the plucking gets worse, not that I can blame them. My lungs do not care for really dry air either. I hang wet towels and boil water for moisture, but really need to look into a new humidifier, since the plastic-whatever used to make my old one has broken down over the years and I am now not entirely sure of how safe it is now. I wonder if anyone makes a glass/metal one????

The past month has been fairly monotonous, lots of knitting and cleaning and parrot cleaning. Yes, they get separate categories, although I should probably change it to dog cleaning and parrot cleaning, since Alasdair creates most of the rest of the mess. In between, though, I have gotten some nice pictures!

 And the Chickies!! 

Chester- the Good, the Bad, the Unknown

Awww, Chester on a good day. My little buddy!

Chester is my little buddy. So sweet, so empathetic, rather cautious but always eager to see what's up and hang out with me. On the other hand, sometimes Chester has bad days. Days were he does not wish to cooperative on any level, and should he actually decide to, say, step-up, you should put him down as soon as possible. From experience, I can safely say he will NOT be satisfied on your hand for much longer than 3.5 seconds. His Maori yell, as I call it, is usually used extensively during these days, most often accompanied by beak charging and/or banging. Sometimes these bad days last for weeks or even a month or two. Sometimes not. Hard to say.

I would like to point out, though, that both of my ekkies are extremely polite about biting. Chester screams, beak bangs, even beak bangs with his beak open, and occasionally does a quick dose of beak pressure, but I have only once, ONCE! ever been actually bitten. That would be the day Clementine came home. Clearly  he knew something was up, though he obviously had not been anyway near her at that point- and I have to wonder is he thinks he overreacted, since he is know friends with her. Anyway. Chester really amazes me with how polite he is. If he does not want you, he will lean so far back he hangs upside down from his perch, or fly off with such force and speed he inevitably rams into something (not good), but he just does not favor biting.

I am not complaining- who likes being bitten? As is only polite on my part, I do my best to avoid irritating him any further than he already is with..... well, whatever it is that irritates him during these times. This means during his bad days I may never pick him up (though I always give the option), instead I just offer the occasionally treat (sometimes even that he does not want) and open his cage door so he can come out to play on his cage if he so chooses. Talk to him, but not too close. Just let him be, and give him what I can.

When Chester is having a good day, he can be very sweet. Not to everyone, but to me and a few other select people he has learned over time to trust. After many weeks of not sweet, he has become sweet again this December. I am thinking of it as an early Christmas gift. So nice to have back my friendly feathered beaver! And as a last note, speaking of feathers: his improve each year- month by month there are ups and downs, but year by year they are better and better. He is quite green now, and I am still holding out hope for a fully green boy in the future, at least for part of the year. Already many of these pictures look fully green, since it his just his lower belly where down still shows. So he is what I call "Facebook fully-feathered." And that is better than nothing!

Chester: a bird with a mission.

To the top!

The view! Ah, the view!

Such a lovely place to fluff and relax.

My work is done.

Dr. Guess-Who-Clementine!

Guess who you should not ask to help

with Christmas cards?

Clementine is doing very well, now a year since I adopted her. Her diet was about average when I got her, but she has slowly become a much better eater, not just with new foods but with new ways of preparing them and, therefore, new food textures. She no longer shuns mushy food, which has greatly increased her sweet potato, cooked mash, and squash intake! She was fairly well adjusted when I got her, and has remained so. Very rarely, or rather never, is she in a bad mood, and shows her age less than Lola and Miss Patty. Yes, she has some joint inflammation and a bit of plucking under one of her wings, but quite good really. All in all, Clementine is still just as fabulous as ever. My sanity, eh, not so much. Clementine is a talented mimic. Really talented. So talented, in fact, that she has become my resident household ghost.

In general, she leaves actual talking to the other parrots. No, Clementine specializes in those subtle noises that generally accompany having someone else in the house- distance voices that are incredibly realistic, cars driving up, doors creaking, even people walking around. She will do this if you are standing next to her, or if you are in the next room or upstairs, so she is certainly not a closet talker  She just has a deep appreciate for the subtle. One that might, in fact, drive me insane as I check the door for the 5th time thinking it is Gwen whining to come in. Or jump once again when she uses her most human of voices at a moment you are least expecting. I think she likes making me jump. She must. Because while I cannot fully describe why her ghost talking is so much more, well, rattling, than any of my other parrots- trust me, it is. And she practices a lot. So she is only getting better.

Really, what was wrong with a simple, loud and clear, hello? Or the telephone ringing? Or even the dogs barking,as Alasdair is doing outside in the above picture. Nice, loud, simple noises. Conversations like frank. Basic stuff.

Jokes aside, to (for once) be perfectly honest, Clementine's noises get very little reaction from me, hardly any, aside from the door checking, which rarely works any more. They do make me notice, but usually when I am not in the room, and only because of how good they are, rather than because I think robbers have actually broken into the basement- my dogs are way to bark happy to miss an event like that, it is all they live for, that and dinner anyway. And I do not think looking up from my knitting counts as enough of a reaction, either. So I think she has just developed a fascination with sounding as good as she can for her own interest, rather than mine. Although it does thoroughly confuse the occasional guest I get, which is very frustrating for them, not being as sedate as I am when it comes to odd noises from parrots. But then, I enjoy that quite a bit too, so I guess we are just both terrible.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A little late.......

The chickens are grateful for the compost. 

Accidentally got them in this photo, but you have to look hard.

(lower middle-left, bits of white)

(ok, so they are hidden well- does not change their love for compost!)

If you visit, Kipperkites will steal your stuff 

(like the hat she is on) for her naps.

She will pretty much ignore you otherwise. 

Except to try and steal your food if she is awake.

The dogs can only nap after you leave, though.

They are always so excited to have new people.

You would think I just ignored them all the time,

for how excited they are over guests.

It leaves them exhausted when the guests depart.

The Lean-n-Greens

So after those last two violin-music-ending-with-big-crescendo posts, I move on to the Ambassadors of Cuteness, the quakers. Alternately, they are my fighter pilots, but as they have been very polite lately I will let them be the former today. Frank even serenaded me with a lovely song while I cleaned his cage yesterday-although the lyrics were not entirely translatable being more like mumbling to music. Cute, though!

Miss Lola is doing pretty well. Yes, she is showing her age, but she has not lost her personality, just some of her energy and more of her feathers. Overall though she is doing well. Still adorable. And very protective of Frank. As you can see, she does not even like the paparazzi getting to him without her protection. Or possibly she just likes being in every shot, hard to say.

She is always happy to see me or anyone else, and comes to the front of the cage, or to the closest point on whatever cage top or gym she is on, to see you. Her favorite "game" has always been kissing and nodding. Which, for those of you perhaps not familiar with this, means you move your head exactly like a bobble doll, simultaneously turning it from side to side as well as making little kissing noises. And Miss Lola is exceedingly good at getting almost anyone to join her in this little dance. Possibly the attraction for her is that she makes a bunch of humans look really ridiculous. Again hard to say.

I have also been looking after my Mom's Nanday occasionally, which works out quite well since he is good friends with the quakers. He also considerably raises the volume in the room, even taking in to account the quakers normal raucous playing. But he is a sweet fellow, and only Chester really minds having him here to visit. But Chester is like that.

So overall, all is well with the South American parrots!

Linus is a new man! (er, parrot)

When I got Linus back several years ago, he had liver damage, his preen gland was malfunctioning, and he had started plucking. He also was extremely anxious. Since then, he has improved, thanks in no small part to his adopted mother Ava, but he still was a very anxious fellow. Rarely did he look relaxed- if ever I saw a parrot with an anxiety disorder, it was him. After Ava passed away this past Spring, I moved Linus into my bedroom, away from the other parrots. That helped, certainly, since I was with him a fair amount, he was in a very calm environment, but more importantly (as I did spend a lot of time with him in the bird room, too) he was with me when I was relaxing and/or sleeping, and relaxation is catchy. A bit like yawning, I suppose. But still he was extremely jumpy almost all the time.

(Just a note, this picture was not taken when he was upset-

that would not be the time to shove a camera in his face.

It does show how I often found him, though.)

This summer I did another round of herbal treatments for his liver, and this time, instead of just helping his liver, they also almost totally stopped the anxiety. Really,  about a two weeks in I noticed some improvement, and a week later it was very obvious to everyone. His panic attack moments are quite rare now, and he is now showing more of his personality, playing, eating better, and demanding attention! Instead of thrashing around when I put the food dish in (even though he has outside access doors and was in other ways semi-tame) he would just wait for me to finish, and dive in. No more slamming into the bars when the door to the room opened. And plenty of time spent relaxed, with his cheek feathers fluffed out, his crest at "half mast", and singing softly. Or loudly. He does love making noise. Seriously a lot of noise.

Now, when he is afraid of something, or wary, instead of becoming what can only be described as hysterical, he visibly makes a decision to abort, by leaning back, backing away slowly, or as a last resort flying off, or even occasionally stand his ground and hiss.

I am really amazed at his progress, up until now I just wondered if he would ever be relaxed and happy, let alone really tame. I suppose his amygdala (part of the brain that handles stress response) finally decided he was healthy enough to calm down! I have felt rather guilty about him for quite a long time, since he came back in fact; as it would be for any parrot caretaker, it was upsetting for me not to be able to help him more. I could rarely even take him to another room, or even outside in a carrier, something he did very much seem to enjoy, as he loves sitting in the sun. I really had to catch him on a very good day to do much with him. And living with that can be hard, you have to remind yourself often you are not a failure, and just keep trying everyday. While Linus might have seemed like a"difficult" parrot, much too hard for a first time caretaker, in actuality, anxiety aside, he was quite easy to tame and make friends with. That is why I say what you need most when taking on a rehome is patience and some good parrot books to help you through, not necessarily a degree in parrot wrangling. 

He is even brave enough to admit his well-loved 

cage cover is bright pink with monkey faces. 

And after all that, I now have a little buddy- happy, calm, and a (sometimes annoying) attention hog!

Miss Claudia with a bit less

Two things: one, don't worry, the white rope is much to big to choke her,

and Two, Claudia loves her platform from 

Things for Wings you see in the background! It has really helped her chronic foot issues.

When I adopted Miss Claudia she was fully feathered, and beautifully so. Since her case of asper 2 years ago, though, which started an intense bout of plucking, her plumage has taken quite a beating. At times she has had all of her feathers save for those on her neck, which she keeps bare, and at times she has been much closer to nude. Right now she is somewhere in the middle. it is a bit harder than, say, Chester, who goes through similar ups and downs (he is doing fairly well now, incidentally) as he started plucking long before I got him. Despite her current appearance, though, I really feel pretty good about Claudia right now, mostly because she seems to feel really good herself!

Claudia has never been very healthy, and was quite thin when I got her, having been force weaned and not in a home that noticed the problem, rather, they just assumed she was boring and stand-offish. Likely owing to those problems, while she is confident in many ways, she is also quite a fragile bird, so it takes quite a long time after an "incident" or illness to get her back on track: playing, foraging, exploring and flying- even eating enough on her own. So I admit I was always a bit worried she was a "good candidate", if there is such a thing, for plucking or feather destruction, and just hoped I could prevent it. Not that I thought about that too often, since a happy and healthy Claudia could easily be confused with a caique on growth hormones that fell in a paint pot. Seriously. Compare that to when she is not doing well, and just sits, or sits and begs, very little else. And with an apparently weak immune system, she can get sick rather easily.

This past Spring, she was doing pretty well, then this summer she took a down turn, and late summer starting plucking again. However, I think the plucking may have stopped again now, or at least very much slowed, but more importantly, she is eating well, everything and a lot of it, and is playful, friendly, game for just about anything, and back to her toy-destructive self. So I am thrilled!

One of the ways I encourage her to get back to playing is through foraging. I know she likes simple chippable items and things easily shredded, at least when she is in the mood to play. Right now, I could hang a toy on the moon and she would fly up there just to show it who is boss. When she is not interested, though, I make sure all of her toys are as enticing as I can, and place them almost in her way by her favorite perching spots. I also make sure all of them have a way to hide or place treats in/on them. Once she is reliably getting the treats, I starting hiding them in the toys more thoroughly, making them harder to reach. Eventually, as is the case now, she remembers how much fun destroying a toy "just because" is, and will go to town destroying them, even dropping some of the treat in the process. In fact, just taking out one of the treat containers is enough to get her to go to her toys and start destroying. And as anyone with parrots can tell you, very little is as satisfactory as coming into the room to find piles of wood chips and shreds of toys lining the cage bottom!

Currently, Claudia's favorite toy, for foraging and otherwise, is this coconut head by Planet Pleasures. You can slip nuts in the holes the ropes come out of, although by now several of the holes have no ropes in them, or even coconut fiber around them to dig through. Pretty soon, there will be nothing but a shell left!

Oh, and just to note, I did finish my to-do list from the other day! Yay!

Why, hello, how are you?

Sometimes it is good to take a break, I am not sure why this is so, but it is. At least for me anyway. I am happy to see that this blog is still getting plenty of traffic, despite my absence, and I like to think it is helping someone with their parrot-related problem! I am doing better and better in my new house, health-wise and in general, a little over a year since I moved here and finally got a place that was "safe" MCS-wise for me. The parrots are likewise doing well, with any luck updates will follow, as are the dogs and cat. Also the four chickens I got last spring, that may or may not have been posted about on here before. I got them because I love chickens, and because I wanted a source of really good eggs, but it turns out if you name your chickens and give them the run of the yard to do as they please all day, they will come when you call and enjoy being petted and held, but will not be overly eager to start laying eggs. I remain hopeful.

Since I was sick this past week with a fever (with some virus I must have contracted from the mail man, since I had not seen anyone else, rather irritating) I decided this morning, as I was feeling much better, to make myself and the birds some pancakes. I love dense cakes/breads, filled with fruit or veggies and spices, and pancakes are no different, so these had chopped apple, grated carrot, oatmeal, raisins and pumpkin seeds added to the regular batter, along with a touch of clove, nutmeg and ginger. They were delicious, in my opinion anyway, a fact with which the birds mostly definitely concur! There are no pictures to prove this, however, since it was very early in the morning and as I am not a dedicated photographer like Natacha, I was not getting the camera out. Sad but true- my tea was calling, not my camera.

So now I am off to get back to work knitting for an upcoming art fair, and hopefully to finish my list of to-dos for the day: washing Gwen, re-doing Clementine's cage with fresh perches, and making up a new batch of dry mix, as well as mash for the next several days. Including the knitting that must be done, there is only a 70% chance I will finish this list. So I need to get going!

Clean Up!

The EWG has released their Toxic Cleaners Hall of Fame list, which I thought worth posting here. I suppose to some it can seem as though you should not use anything around your parrot, but really, you should just not use anything that is toxic to both of you. And yes, that does still leave an awful lot you can use!

Go HERE for the list, with info on a variety of cleaners, laundry detergents, and air fresheners.

Foraging Bite

Today's work! The dry mix foraging bundles for the week. Brown thick paper for the big birds, brown tissue paper for the tiels, and white paper for the quakers. They are all filled withe appropriate amount and mix of my dry stuff- grain mix, big birds dry mix, seeds, nuts, etc. Just put one somewhere in the cage, and it is not only an "instant" meal but great foraging.

As you can see, I start with a rectangular piece of paper, (although this one was a bit too fat and not quite long enough to be optimum).....

then fold in the two long sides, before twisting the ends tightly around......

and wrapping them to one side and loosely knotting.

Done!

Foraging with fresh food is a bit harder, but it does not need to be. For example, why not get several of these mugs from My Safe Bird Store.

(Go HERE for the mugs)

or for large parrots/those not safe with plastic, these mini stainless steel pails from The Bird Safe Store.

(Go HERE for pails)

Distribute your fresh food, be it mash or whatever, among the mungs, and hang them, just alone by themselves with a hook on the handle, around the cage. Easy! Fill 3, 4, 5, however many, and just hang wherever, from the middle of the top bars, on the side bars, from a toy, top to bottom, all over. Start slow, and keep moving them to harder places to reach. Trust me, your parrots will figure it out, they do not need everything handed to them! It may take encouragement in the beginning, but it will be wonderful when they get the hang of it, just like we feel better after we take control of our own life and start doing things more for ourselves, moving around, exploring. And climbing all over for each little bit, hanging upside down, going to the cage bottom, that is all foraging, not to mention a bit of exercise. Plus, it is really not any harder than dishing the food all in to one or two dishes.

Unusual

Every now and then something out of the ordinary happens here. Actually, out of the ordinary happens all the time as I am not sure exactly what "ordinary" should be, so I have no idea why I said that. Still, one thing I certainly was not expecting yesterday was to find a tiny baby skink in Claudia's cage. No pictures, as those little guys scurry fast and he would have been long gone by the time I got the camera. This little fellow was only about an inch long, very adorable, and apparently no bother to Claudia. Should there be any budding ant issue on the horizon, I have a feeling he will not only be the first to notice it, but he may also make sure he is the last to notice- by eating them all before the rest of us see them. I briefly considered what negative side affects there could be from having a skink running around the floor of the bird room, and not coming up with anything immediate, combined with the fact he was very small and who knows where just a few seconds after I saw him, I decided not to worry about it.

I borrowed this picture from online here. Gorgeous fellows there are, five-lined skink. Just picture this guy, but all tiny!

Finally!

Oh, to be back! Been a while. I lost internet about 2 weeks ago after a severe sudden thunderstorm (ever been caught covered in soap mid-shower during a thunderstorm? Awkward. Definitely.) And then on Friday I lost power after those severe storms. Thankfully most of the food I eat is not overly perishable (fresh vegetables and fruits) and the neighbors, while a good hike away, have a generator so I could get water. The parrot room is on the first floor/basement (split level house) so that stayed cooler, and I covered the large front windows with quilts. Needless to say, they were not too happy about the seemingly endless solar eclipse. The strong winds did blow down tons of pine cones along with trees, though, so they did get to have, and are still having, a real pine cone fiesta! Little bits of pine cone everywhere, they do make great toys. These had little pine nuts in them, too, for an extra treat.

So for several days the parrots had nothing but their dry mix and some cut up apple and squash. Thankfully, my freezer was so full of the parrot food I recently made, plus some frozen bottles of water I leave to help it work less, that that food was still ok even after several days, unlike that in the fridge. Again needless to say, they were really very bored with dry mix by today, so I made up their fresh mash, slightly leaner on the veggie side after spoilage, granted, but still good, as well as some delicious spice/fruit pone.

Appetizing, right? Better than it looks, I think. My mash base, with shredded summer squash, shredded yellow beet, and mashed sweet potato, plus powdered greens, flax meal, and a bit of powdered hibiscus for some added flavor, and a tablespoon or so of applesauce to help it stick together.

Basic bird bread, made like corn pone. I started with the water from cooking the sweet potato- I steam/boil them with just 1" water in the bottom of the pot, some bottom layer boiled, the rest steamed. Then I mixed that with some blueberry juice, a bit of red palm oil to prevent sticking, clove and ginger, and blackberry and apple powder. I mixed that with some oatmeal and sorghum flour, and was good to go!

I have not been totally lazy in my absence from the blog even before the internet went out, though. I finally got my business up and running online, yay! A new website as well as Etsy store. I also got my first custom order, and it was one I was not expecting at all, certainly not this early on, but one which I was thrilled to receive- female Black Capped Vireo on a pink baby blanket. After all, I love a good challenge, and making a female Black Capped Vireo certainly qualifies as such. I am thrilled with the way it turned out, true to size, with some shin oak leaves I added on as that is what Black Capped Vireos most often nest in.

And as further excitement, the millions of wild blackberries really started ripening, so both the parrots and myself have been enjoying them no end! My parrots are pretty good eaters, but I find that even with parrots I could normally never entice to eat a frozen or fresh store bought blackberry will go crazy for fresh picked. The same seems to be true for so many foods. Parrots, I think, are natural born foodies. Granted, some will be stubborn even if you let them pick the food themselves, but for one that will eat something besides seeds or pellets, often having something really fresh, maybe even still dripping after you wash it, can really change their minds. Another plug for growing it yourself! And for parrots, you could grow a single plant in a pot in the windowsill, since they really do not eat that much, obviously.

So now, I am off to the internet to get caught up on all the happenings!