Muse

Your birds and your interactions with them always make me smile.

We ate out for Thanksgiving (the humans) but we prepared a lavish feast for the fids and other critters. Funny how I hate to cook but enjoy spending hours in the kitchen preparing food for them. LOL

Is that a recent video? He's just a baby. He may well get over the biting thing. Megan used to bite me every chance she got when she was that age. It took lots of work, but I am stubborn. Far more stubborn than 450 grams of feathered attitude. She is crazy for pine nuts. She'll do anything to get one. So I became the only person who was allowed to give them to her. She figured out really quickly if she made me want to stay away (by biting) that the pine nuts stayed away also. She still bites me on occasion but nothing compared to what she did when she was a baby. It looks like you have an incredibly smart bird there. I'd recommend hanging in there and just working patiently. He will come around. The smarter ones tend to be more willful, but once they realize that has negative consequences, they back off. Best of luck to you, your wife and your lovely Grey.

I am just thanking God we have the playroom. Even then, for a few days it was too cold in there at night (which is when the budgies go in there). I didn't want to put the (bird safe Holmes) electric quartz heater in there, because of hot surface (bar on the front of heater and grille) and because of the risk of them chewing the cord. I am going to build a bird-safe enclosure that also encloses the outlet so the entire thing including cord is completely inaccessible, but my "engineer" is not available for design consultation. He's been gone THREE weeks this time (including weekends). So my interim solution was to take an old cage, put the heater in the cage. The tray is on the play top so they can't poop into the heater (just imagining the smell was enough to make me take great precaution to see that didn't happen). The heater is locked in the cage so they can't get to it, and I wound the cord around a perch so no excess is hanging down, and what little bit is hanging out goes right out the back and into the plug, both of which are hidden by the bottom solid frame of the cage which is pushed against the wall so they can't even get to it. This allows me to turn it on and warm the room up enough that we can still use it after dark.

I am currently using the live traps. I was taking them outside, but they found their way back rather easily. >.< So now they go to mousey jail, until spring. Not to worry, they get fresh food daily along with a dry mix (aka bird leftovers) and they have a nice gym (exercise wheel) so they are well ahead of US jail standards. The only thing I don't have for them is a law library, and the first time one of them can ask me for that, I will get them one. Also, I wash them in the dishwasher between uses so they don't smell like "scared mouse". My catch rate is not bad, except for a few days to get the hang of how much peanut butter is too much or not enough for baiting. I'm sitting here right now listening to the chip-chip-chip-chip of the wheel going. I advise NOT using D-Con. We had a cockatiel that got out and got into some and we lost her, years ago. I have not had D-Con in my house since. EDIT - The Tomcat brand traps seem to have a lot of bait loss with no catch. We are moving to Hav-a-Hart traps instead. I will let you know how that works out. In the meantime, here's Bianca, the baby mouse, enjoying her Thanksgiving feast.

Two bites this week, one from Peck and one from Rasa. Peck was on the stick, being carried back to the kitchen from flying in to the entry way where Jack was out of his cage. He'd flown off the play stand so I thought maybe I'd offer him to get on his high perch, atop the fridge. He didn't step off, so I moved the perch and tried the second time. The second attempt earned a bite to my fingertip. Rasa was on the play stand in the playroom, immediately after he and Megan got a shower. I think he was irritated because I was "torturing" his woman (she HATES showers). I was offering both a treat, a tiny 'thread' of shredded cheese which is a rare, rare, rare thing here but Megan loves it so I figured it would get me back in her good graces after thoroughly soaking her. I offered him the first one and he took but dropped it. I thought maybe it was an accident, but no, the second offering got me a bite to the same fingertip. Neither really hurt. Neither left a bruise nor broke skin. Did I suddenly develop some kind of super-powered armor on my fingers? No. What I think is going on is they are training me. I suspect that neither of them wanted to hurt me (except Peck when I have Jack on my shoulder, ugh... jealousy!!!). I think they were just giving me a gentle correction. I wasn't catching on to their "no thank you, that's not what I want right now." So they had to go one step further and reinforce the "NO thank you". They are both good teachers. And I hope I am being a good learner.

Where are you sitting them? And make sure you are washing your hands thoroughly, rinsing the mix thoroughly, and make sure the sprouter is clean. The smell is caused by bacteria. Maybe rinse them more often? I need to send you some Blessings. It's very easy to sprout.

Sophie may love having a little sister.

Peck was with me in the kitchen tonight, and I stepped into the other room for a moment. He's normally not much of a talker - never had been according to his first family. All of a sudden I hear him say, plain as anything, "Hey, there, Pecker."

That sounds SOOOO cute!

My baby boy's name was Marden David, and our girl's name is Megan Brigid. After he died, we adopted Peck (his name was "Pecker" but I can't bring myself to call him that). All CAG.

Gorgeous!!! What lucky birds. You did a fantastic job. I love the basket and the 'fort'!

She obviously doesn't trust you with the power tools. You can see she's keeping a very close eye on you while you are using them. LOL

I do remember back when I had a boa, the UV light did not produce heat, I had to have a second "basking" bulb for that. The full spectrum UV was a long tube and the basking bulb was in one of those 'clamp lamp' fixtures. He didn't really need either as he was out of the cage most of the time and he 'basked' in the water bed. >.<

THAT is so adorable. I hope Peck someday gets to that point. He's now letting me gently give head scritches. Sometimes he makes his "I'm scared, don't hurt me" 'chip' sound, but mostly he's been making this purring kind of sound. The trust is coming. Slowly. I can't wait for the time when he will step up on ME and not the stick. It's odd, anything I might have to say to him, I do. I speak to him just like he's human, and I swear he understands. Most of the time it goes something like this: "You know I love you. I want you to trust me. This trust thing has to go both ways. Every time you bite, it makes it hard for me to trust you. I would never bite you or hurt you in any way. Please learn to be gentle and learn to trust me, and I will be gentle with you and learn to trust you. I see the jealousy in your eyes when Jack is on my shoulder. I have two shoulders, you know. One could be yours. Maybe someday it will be. Just remember I love you. That's the most important thing."

It is hard to share space with pets when your own space is small. We Americans often take our huge houses and big yards for granted sometimes. If the birds get lots of out of cage time, they won't be as restricted by the smaller cage. Sleeping cages are often very small for this reason - the bird is not in there for that long a time period. I hope you can find it. Acrylic (like Plexiglas) may be another option but I am totally unfamiliar with it's properties as far as off-gassing.

It does not sound like it is an issue of caring for pets. I do know that we were taught in nursing school that the Japanese culture is used to a much smaller 'personal space' because they often live in very small quarters. It only makes sense that they would adjust pet housing down to a proportion of their available space. It sounds like just a difference in cultures. I think the heated perch (if you can use it) would be your best option, as the bird does regulate their temperature via the feet. I see where this could be a problem: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2225.html It does say "especially equipment involving heating (e.g. hair dryers), may not work properly or even get damaged." Perhaps for the enclosure you might consider polycarbonate, such as is used for making greenhouses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate The greenhouse panels are what the aviaries at Project Perry are constructed of (the sections that are heated in the winter). Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Polycarbonate-Panel-8mm-Clear-wide/dp/B007ZTKCIE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413701550&sr=8-1&keywords=Polycarbonate+Panels (not available at this link but the pictures are excellent at showing the item). It has insulating properties because of the channels and double-walled design. Hope this is helpful to you.

I miss that. Mar let me kiss him everywhere. I called his 'wing pits' the "soft spot" (as the feathers are SO INCREDIBLY soft there). The only one who lets me kiss soft spots now is Alex. The rest of them would eat my face off if I tried that.

I swear Megan has a grinding stone in that cage somewhere and hones hers to the sharpest possible point......

Uh oh. I have a butterfly bush here. It *supposedly* was supposed to be okay in this zone to live through the winter. Time will tell. I'll let you know. Crape myrtles can take a SERIOUS cutting back. You can clean the bare branches with water and a natural soap then give them a good rinse before transplanting. I'd wait for them to go dormant (drop leaves) give them a good hack job as far back as possible. If you look here: http://www.crapemyrtle.com/pruning.html you can see how severe the pruning can be. I'd then take a soft brush and some natural soap to any remaining bark with black on it to remove the mold that is left, then keep the aphids at bay. Ladybugs are great aphid control to prevent recurrence. I bring crape myrtle in as a natural foraging toy for the birds, and I just scrub it off in the sink or pick off the leaves if it is stubborn (it's the flowers they want).

Megan learned "peek a boo" from watching Marnie on YouTube. However, the family also has a cockatoo that says "Whee bee" and Megan picked up the "Whee!" So she started saying "weekaboo". She still says that. She doesn't do the popping up though. Her newest thing is bobbing her head to music and going "Dance! Dance!" LOL

Good luck! I hope Miss Marco wins!

Hand-raised means nothing. My sweetest birds are my parent-raised grandbabies. Perhaps you can try to figure out what is precipitating the bite. How old is Kilaya? Could this be hormonal behavior? If so, the sweet bird comes right back once the hormones go away. There are many ways to work around this. Please don't give up on the bird just yet. Try some behavioral modification and see if that will work. Megan bit the daylights out of me on almost a daily basis at first. And these were aggressive lunge bites, often breaking skin and drawing blood. It took a LOT of work, but bites are very rare. She learned, and most of all *I* learned what not to do to get bitten. Feel free to email me at deeATavianrefugeDOTorg (spelled out phonetically to keep spam-bots from harvesting it - turn the AT to an @ the DOT to a . ) if you continue to have problems with this.

I used to play that game with Mar. I'd gently grab his toe and said "I'm gonna get your toes!" then he'd just as gently grab my finger in his beak, and I'd say "Oh no, don't eat my finger!" Megan turned that into "Oh no, eat my finger!" LOL Escher sounds incredibly smart!

He does look relaxed! That's a happy, contented bird.