Claudia, Claudia, and Cookies

Just a note about the large funky-looking toy in the last post- Claudia has demolished the colored slats on it! Interestingly to note, she went immediately for the natural slats, tested several, made a few dents, but then tried the colored ones and just didn't look back! She has since tried the natural ones again a few times, but they are a different kind of wood and she just doesn't seem to get into them. I got the slats as a free gift during a sale from here; now to get them un-dyed! I can get that from the couple that makes them, but she is recovering from surgery so there is currently a 3-4 week wait. Worth it, after seeing Claudia go for this wood!

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In another story about Claudia (hasn't she been busy this week?) she has once again shown that however "slow" she may be compared to my other birds and indeed other ekkies, she is still, as the saying goes "not stupid!" Few of us are, really, but that is another subject....

I regularly rotate the foraging toys Claudia has in her cage. Several of those foraging toys are these. This week, I put one of those toys in her cage; one that looks like this one:

(Just as a note, NEVER give this toy to smaller parrots that can fit their head in the track where the rings slide. They can hang themselves)

I know Claudia has not seen this toy in at least two and a half years. Still, when I hung it up, with the treat already in it, it took her under 8 seconds from "launch" to get the treat out. No messing around! She went straight from her perch, across the ceiling of her cage and, hanging upside down since I don't make my foraging toys easy to get to, she immediately grabbed the bottom ring, turned until it dropped, and then repeated with the top ring. She must have even remembered what position the handles are in when the notch is lined up so it will drop, since mine sticks (clean, just doesn't meet right or something) and you have to tug (or push if you are operating bat-like) it at that moment to get it to drop. She wasted no time, no mistakes, absolutely flawless, and all from memory! Now I can't say that competes with an elephant's memory yet, but ask me in another 50 years!

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As my final story, I will answer the question I am sure you are all wondering, or if you aren't, you may start wondering now: what exactly was in that snack rack that Claudia wanted so badly? It was the parrots' new obsession, the thing they will currently defend to death from any number of creatures, including all the eagles, ospreys, hawks, owls, coyotes (you get the picture) outside. Seriously.

They are lovely pink mish-mash cookies!

My own invention, and I am ever so proud of them! I have never made anything so well and universally liked! I desperately wanted a pic of Linus, or at least Ava, eating these, to show that even they adore them, but they weren't co-operating. I did try for a while, really! No luck, so just take my word for it.

Unfortunately, I did not measure a thing, which is how I usually cook and even bake. I thought it would be like my usual "creations"- liked some, but not something you need to remember how to make ex-act-ly-as-it-was. So as soon as I realized what a gold mine I had hit upon, I sat down to try and remember what and how much I put in. Fortunately I have a pretty good picture memory, but since much of the stuff was added in little piles, not even each ingredient all together in one big pile, it was hard. Still, I think I am pretty close, and I will definitely be measuring next time, so I can work towards getting the exact measurements for perfection! And in case anyone is interested in trying for themselves, here is the recipe as I think it was!

Oh, and just to add the extra caramel sauce (or whatever your favorite topping is) these cookies smell absolutely beyond fantastic!! Seriously. Really. Good. They left the kitchen perfumed for the rest of the day, and now, after a few days in the fridge, they still smell amazing every time I open the container!


Notes:
- I made this recipe to use up a couple different kinds of dried foods I had. They were dehydrated low-temperature, so essentially raw before cooking, at least.
- I tore my mango into pieces roughly 1/4' square, perhaps a bit bigger at times, and the sweet potato I crushed, so size varied.
- ALL ingredients are guesstimates, and your guess is as good as mine as to whether the actual amount was that, or a bit more or less.
- the rice flakes are similiar to oatmeal, but drier, but oatmeal would make a fine substitute
- The dough should be similar to oatmeal cookie dough, but barely sticky at all, and if anything, er on the drier side. Hopefully the last mixing step won't be needed in the future!

Pink Mish-Mash Cookies!
- 3/4 c chopped dried mango
- 1/2 c dried sweet potato
- slightly packed 1/2 c goji berries
- 2 cups pure no sugar cranberry juice

- 1/2 cup minced broccoli stem
- 1/2 c coconut
- a tablespoon at least dried ground ginger

-3/4 cup flour, half corn, half rice
- heaping c of rice flakes

- red palm oil from sustainable sources that do not endanger people, forests, or orangutans (I get mine form Tropical Traditions) OR other oil for coating pans


Mix together the mango, sweet potato, and goji berries. Bring the cranberry juice to a boil and pour over fruit (it should nearly cover it). Cover fruit and allow to sit for at least 15 minutes.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

After fruit has reconstituted, add the broccoli, coconut, and ginger and mix. Add dried ingredients and mix well. Adjust dry or liquid as needed and mix again.

Coat pans very well with oil. Make dough into patties about 1/3" thick and 3" across, or any diameter you like as long as they are all the same. Bake until they are ever so slightly brown and look fairly dry, or drier anyway. For 3" cookies, this was aorund 12-15 minutes in my oven. Allow to cool slightly on pan before transferring to rack to cool completely.

Enjoy the wonderful, wonderful aroma in your kitchen!

First Attempt at Eating Pics

Spring toys! So pretty. I don't often have dyed wood.
The beads were sent dyed by mistake and the slats were a free gift.
As you can see, I utilize pieces from old toys often; the bases of the smaller toys are pre-chewed.

As per my discovery in a previous post of my addiction to bird bath pics, I am working on taking a wider variety of pic types to break from my previous affinity. To start, here is a quick sampling of (not great quality) eating pics.

Chester and Claudia, practicing to be Hanging Parrots for Halloween.
Yes, they start practicing early, just in case they miscalculated the number
of days left to go.

Chester and Claudia enjoying a more sedentary form
of foraging in one of their toy buckets.

Frank, enjoying a very rare bit of fruit, a cherry.
He gets sugar highs quickly,
so anything with a lot of sugar is quite limited for him.

Ava and Yo-yo enjoying a piece of millet.
And just so you appreciate my sacrifices to capture these
mediocre photos, I had to stand on a chair to get this one,
even with my natural height. It turns out when you hold
a camera above your head in what you are nearly positive
is the right direction... it usually isn't.

Yo-yo, enjoying some mash.
He is so good at sharing, notice how he has
so graciously allowed the wall, the cage, and,
un-pictured, me to enjoy some of his food with him.

Yummy goji berry, Yo-yo loves them.

I sometimes feel I am doing New Orleans a disservice
by keeping Yo-yo from them-
just imagine how his fling would help the Mardi Gras parade!

Intelligence

Measuring intelligence in animals is a tricky thing. For one thing, we often measure how intelligent an animal is based on how much they can act like us and how well they can please us. I have a feeling if we applied that same measure to our children, geniuses would fall to the bottom of the pile! Which brings me to another interesting observation- if the one or two individuals from a species test well, they are exceptions, if they test poorly, the whole species is doomed to the dunce cap. Does that really make sense?

Border Collies are listed as the most intelligent dog, and having grown up with them, I hate to argue! However, while Gwen, a chihuahua is not as trainable as most Border Collies (she does it on her time only), I certainly don't get the feeling there is any less going on up there. In applying this to parrots you can very easily substitute Border Collie with African Grey. I can't say how many times I have seen someone ask whether x species of parrot could possibly be as intelligent as African Greys, or say that no other species of parrot is as intelligent as African Greys. This, I firmly believe, is untrue. You can have very smart and very, er, not so smart, African Greys just as you can with any other species of parrot, and just as you do with people.

This inevitably brings me around to Alex. Dr. Pepperburg took care to make sure Alex was random, so people would not think he was exceptional. And looking at what many other people's greys can do without the intense training Alex had, I think it is very likely he was not. What I also think should be said, though, is that just because Dr. Pepperburg was able to show how intelligent African Greys are does not mean other species are not as smart. One thing that does set greys apart is their love of language and their learning style. My budgies can do and learn amazing things, and just because they have much shorter attention spans, does that make them necessarily that much less intelligent? In fact, Dr. Pepperburg said herself that she chose greys for their language abilities, but she does not think that means they are heads and tails smarter. She even mentioned budgies, but said their shorter attention spans and shorter lifespans rule them out as good subjects. She went on to mention the different (generalized) learning styles of a few species, saying others could do things that Alex did not. Personally, and this just came to me now, I think ekkies would make fantastic subjects as well. They have both the language and intense, long attention spans. Or some of them anyway, Claudia loves to talk like any diva, but as for intense learning........

We have barely scratched the surface of the intelligence of the cephlapods, such as octopus and cuttlefish. The things we know they can do are sometimes even far beyond what we can. And yet, if you show them a mirror, they don't recognize themselves. Both elephants and dolphins have been proven to recognize themselves in mirrors. This is part of being self-aware. I am really not sure whether my parrots can do this or not, and I know no one has proven that other parrots can. I know Chester doesn't recognize himself, and on the others I am unsure. Until I can think of a way to test that (they put an x on the elephant's face, and he tried to get it off himself, not the elephant in the mirror) I will just have to leave it at that!

The point? I am always fascinated by animal intelligence research and findings. What you conclude from them, though, will vary a great deal with your "definition" of intelligence. One thing for sure, though, is that intelligence is not a linear scale, with ourselves at the top and the sponge (for example, nothing against sponges) at the bottom, and little marks along the way showing what abilities are required before you reach the next level.

Quick Thoughts

Which really should be several long posts, but I am letting life get in the way of that, whether I should or not.

Good news with Lola! She has slowly been re-growing her feathers in the years I have had her. She has had a few set-backs, but that is to be expected. I was never sure how many of her feathers would grow back,as the follicles had clearly been very damaged. Still, they have recovered slowly, a few at a time. The first time a few of them really started to recover, and grow sickly little yellow or black structures that in no way resembled feathers, Lola clearly had a lot of pain, and began mutilating herself again. Those follicles eventually, and much later, produced real, if weak, feathers, and later follicles followed similar patterns, although I did learn ways to help with the pain, and therefore mutilating, so that was not always repeated. It really is amazing. I keep thinking she might have reached as many feathers as she will get after it has been a while with no new growth, and then she surprises me again with a sudden feather spurt! I have learned several things that help, supplements that boost her, etc., so they are offered in cycles. I am still holding out hope, even though she has been through a lot and is showing her age (or more than her age, rather), that she will one day be fully feathered!

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Just for the sheer cuteness of it, I thought I would post these pics of a squirrel that finally succeeded in getting the suet bell all for himself! And for anyone that says wild animals don't play with toys, this suet bell was well wrapped in a wicker shell. After getting the wicker part off, the squirrel did not immediately take his prize, but instead played with the wicker for a bit, and destroyed most of it alternately chewing, tossing, and waving it around. I got that on a vid, but unfortunately am unable to get that on the computer here with the slow internet! Very frustrating.

The prize, fresh down from the tree.

Taking the prize away! It was at least half the size of the squirrel;
he looked so funny running off with it!
He even tried to get up a tree, and failed, before going out of my view.
I am not sure what he ended up dong with it, though nosy me would love to know.

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The parrots are all well, all up to their usual antics, both sweet and not. I will leave it up to you to decide which parrots weigh most heavily on which side of that spectrum!

Ava in her favorite "secret playhouse"
between the two Aussie cages.

Yo-yo in the hospital (or maternity) cage,
sitting up on his perch after Miss Patty hissed
him off the floor for the last time.

Miss Patty, featuring a (well-deserved) angelic aura
around her thanks to the camera, while giving her toy what-for.
And in answer to the caption from Yo-yo's pic, despite
a few very close calls, she still lays a few eggs every couple of months,
whatever I do to convince her otherwise.

Linus, who likes is baths form the floor of the shower
for some reason. He really does love them, though.

Frank in the shower, clearly about to say something,
though I have no memory what.

Lola again, because she is so special,
this time after a bath and getting a bit sleepy.

Claudia, a bit blurry, who would a walking go,
now begging to be picked up.

Chester, playing peek-a-boo after a bath.

(Apparently I have an obsession with taking bath pics,
as that is the4th one.Maybe I should get help,
and learn to take eating pics or something!)

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On a sadder note, you never know what is going on in someone's life until you have been there; it seems mine just keeps getting more and more complicated. For those without MCS, finding a home that is safe for them to breathe in, where they can heal and thrive, may not seem too difficult, but I sometimes think I might never get that.

P.S. So much snow this winter!!