birdhouse

Sorry to hear that you're getting off to such a stressful start in the morning. Bummer for everyone. And this is coming from someone who is definitely not a morning person. This sounds a little like the trouble you had getting Nilah to bed. So what types of things helped most then? Nothing succeeds like success. http://www.greyforums.net/forums/showthread.php?194735-Need-Advice-for-Nilah! Changing the current schedule might help some until you work thru this. A little more time to say good bye if that's what she needs. A little less stress for you if she bolts. Good Luck!

And yet female ekkies are supposed to have a rep for being hot tempered & difficult. But my SI Kura is a real sweetie pie, too. So where are the pics & what's Ruby's story?

You might get lucky w/a long scarf knotted behind your head. Either head band or kerchief style. As long as it doesn't freak anyone out, it might at least make Gus uncomfortable about landing. Too bad it's so hot or you could use a neck sprain horse collar while everyone heals &/or until Gus decides he's too frustrated to bother any more. Also too bad he's not the bird of prey he thinks he is. Then at least you could put hunting bells on his leg. But it would probably drive a parrot crazy for the 5 min it would take for them to pick them apart.

So true. But this group is not only rescuing these animals but have found a way to use it to help abused children. Extra special people!

Even better! These types of places usually need all the publicity they can get to help keep them keep going.

Ahh, those good old nursery school days! Life was so much simpler when you could say it all w/one good chomp. lol Too bad Gilbert didn't enjoy his vacation as much as he might have. He may never be totally convinced & w/good reason. But even though he's just as stubborn as any Grey, he really is beginning to believe life isn't all sad & scary & it shows. You guys have a lot to show for the effort & it's just the tip of the iceberg. Think it's safe to imagine some day, you'll look back 20 yrs & be amazed at how very far you've come together. And you'll still get that same rush of joy that you've got right now. It never, ever gets old.

I was going to post this in the Off Topic Discussions room. But there is a turkey & a peacock. I really thought it just belonged here. http://news.yahoo.com/video/rescued-animals-difference-lives-kids-191612719.html

There's still plenty of reason for hope. Even though every hour may seem like it's a week long, it's still early days. Lots of escapees who have been on the loose for a lot longer are recovered. Hope you'll have good news, soon.

^^^ Absolutely! lol That really is a beautiful shot of your beautiful fid! I like your avatar pic a lot, too.

I feel bad every time someone posts this type of thread. There's no doubt a new parront can get sticker shock at the vet. But no one can tell you whats really necessary from a distance. We aren't vets or familiar w/your bird & would never want anything bad to happen because we made any suggestion. Did you discuss it w/the vet to see where they think the priorities should be? Also, if you have more than one avian vet available to you, you could make some calls & ask what they routinely suggest for their patients' initial visit & a detailed list of prices. If their normal check list doesn't match up, then maybe ask your vet why, specifically, they're recommending something different. Then follow up w/some research about the disease/condition targeted so you can make the best possible decisions. If the prices seem out of line, you may have to decide if you should change or if the current vet is worth the extra bucks. A better rep, more modern facility &/or services might cost more but could also be a better investment in the long run. But unfortunately, at some point it comes down to trial & error. Not the funnest part of being a parront. Good luck.

This type of positive reinforcement can be used to overcome so many types of problems & this vid is such a wonderful demonstration. Especially considering it worked so well & so quickly to correct an issue that involved a youngster. Precious to watch that next generation learn the joys of bird keeping, too. Thanks for sharing this. I just come from such a different place about this. I think working w/a difficult fid can often be easier away from their cage when there are territorial issues. But some, particularly certain rehabs, can become more insecure when they're taken (think "forced") out into the open & away from that safety & it can also make things more complicated. I don't think this is always a one size fits all solution, as usual. Working w/a caged bird like on Days 1 & 2 in the vid, can have the tremendous added benefit of helping them feel more comfortable w/letting humans inside their home when it's approached in a positive way. I'd also agree that a fid should feel like their cage is their special space. However, until they stop destroying perches & toys, are willing to clean up after themselves & get their own dinner, a cage needs to be maintained by willing minions. So it's important for a fid to learn to be kind & tolerate of those minions, at least most of the time. They also need to be comfortable enough to make it as easy as possible to be handled in the cage in case of injury or emergency. It seems to make sense to me that a fid's conditioning should be "that's their house, their rules" but to a slightly limited extent. That way they're that much more adjusted & everyone's happier overall.

Also 911Parrot Alert & Craigs List. You can use your personal social media like w/the CITES petition only encourage everyone to target contacts in the local vicinity for now, if the weather's been good. You can move the search area outwards after a while or if the weather changes. There's reasons to worry. But still Kiki's kind of picked a "good" time to have an adventure, though. It's warm & there's tons of food ripening everywhere. Even if she can't find a water source, she's bound to find fruit enough to keep her. So try to stay positive, ok? Good Luck!

I usually avoid kissing the fids full on & it's usually Eskimo kisses when we actually make contact. But that's only because of the possibility of swapping germs. Very early on, I saw a shouldered Zon rip the soft part of his owner's cheek wide open; bad enough to need plastic surgery. It was every bit as nasty as Dave's pic only it happened right in front of me & still makes me a little queasy when I remember it. So I won't ever disagree w/anyone who says the smart thing is to keep a safe distance. I also know someone who needed surgery after a bite that resulted in a ripped tendon in their hand. These guys are much more dangerous than they look & people should respect that any time they handle their fids. But they also need to remember that if anything translates as fear the fids will pick up on it. Some birds might not care. But many won't fully trust us unless we fully trust them & that can create its own backlash. So, it's kind of important to keep in mind when deciding "To kiss or not to kiss...?" , "To shoulder or not...?".

Sadly, even the suggestion of civil disobedience can get you into serious trouble these days. But there are still plenty of reasons for us to celebrate because there are many worse places to live. Hope everyone enjoys their holiday!

Seems like Gracie is very at home at your parent's. So I think the difference in the way she behaves there is more like her vacation attitude. Your house your rules (when absolutely necessary). Their house, a little more Gracie unleashed. lol And believe it or not, she's really not so bad. Once you can get over feeling the big reaction to her acting like her wild cousins, I think the two of you will live happily ever after. Just w/a few speed bumps along the way. You've already trained Gracie not to bite. She's telling you in no uncertain terms that she knows full well what you expect & simply doesn't chose to adhere because she's not your little girl any more. She's everything you said you wanted her to grow up to be. Oh so smart, fierce & arrogant w/a few demands & very definitely strong minded will of her own. I know you think you've known this all a along. But she's making a concerted effort to show you a whole different interpretation. Biting, nipping, pecking is the obvious way to drive a point home to slow witted humans. Now it's your turn to get schooled in what Gracie expects & renegotiate the pecking order. (puns intended) Better to approach this w/a sense of humor because some of it is just a bad joke. Gracie's idea of funny. It turns out that parrots can tend to a slightly sick sense of humor & the more something bugs you, the funnier it is. I know it's not the popular approach but try learning how to pout & throw a faux temper tantrum effectively. You can't lie to a parrot, anyway. So it's better to channel those emotion towards a positive outcome. Gracie's doing certain things to get a rise out of you as much as anything. So give her what she wants on your terms. };> Once I got it to work w/Phenix it's become a surprisingly effective training tool. If she wants to go to bed, but she's still pecking at you when you pick her up, maybe put her down & act emotionally hurt. Walk away. Make her come to you & make nice before she gets the thing you know she's after. If it works, keep practicing w/situations which aren't very important & don't have any much genuine emotion involved. If it blows up in your face, however it may well be because you didn't understand what motivated Gracie in the first place. If "she's been asking" to go to bed, is she trying to communicate that she's gotten frustrated waiting, for instance? Not to mention tired & cranky. Wondering if she doesn't put herself to bed because she still needs that bonding ritual w/her Daddy, just to throw something else into the mix as well. So is she actually justified in giving you a little attitude? From here on it's mostly about manipulation & negotiation. That, I think is where parronts have the hardest time coping w/the terrible 2's & 3's. When mature young adults continue to be seen & treated like they don't get a say it can create issues. Now that they have a mind of their own, they will find a way to be heard. And it's not always easy to figure out who or what's causing it & how to settle things fairly. Sometimes it's a process & those take time. The good news is Gracie was born w/a mind of her own. She wasn't the easiest baby & you've been dealing w/a fledgling version all along. All that practice might actually make the process easier for you, in the long run.

My guys do not like hats! They're not particularly crazy about sun glasses either. They're kind of put off by them. But a couple of weeks ago, I had to get a the first new pair of everyday glasses I've gotten in ages. The floor is finally back where it belongs & I've long since forgotten all about it. But the fids are still taking turns giving me attitude when I least expect it. I know it's the glasses because they've regressed to where they're trying to pull them off, again & that's something everyone learns pretty early on is a no no. I'm a little surprised it's taking them so long to get over it & I feel bad. But there isn't much of anything for it but to wait them out.

Sometimes I think they scare themselves & they'll bolt until they recover from the shock of doing something so huge. Don't try, exactly. Let her feel like it's all her idea. Just make it as easy as possible to approach you & you're more likely to make bigger headway faster after she's had time to work thru her little freak outs. Congrats & good job letting her go after that initial 30 seconds btw! It's very hard to do when you want to connect so much. But, that's life w/a grey parrot. Their rules. Their time schedule. Their way. Good thing they're worth it!! ")

It makes me so happy to see how far we're finally getting from caging animals in a cell. I think that's awesome! Oh, I think most of us have done a thing or two ...or three ...or more. lol So don't feel like you're alone, there!

That's good to hear! After everything you guys have been thru, it was so sad to think of starting another round. Do they have any idea what causes them?

At some point I gave Phenix a hut & he loved it. Totally shredded it in a single afternoon. :cool: The only one here who'd probably like a happy hut is my ekkie. But she's so hormonal I would never dare let her have one. She has an industrial sized paper towel roll in her cage & she unrolls it down to where she can sleep under the loose end. ...close enough. Sorry fiddo! I try to make an effort to build a hide away high up & to the back of everyone's cages for whenever they'd like a little privacy. Thick branches &/or big toys that they can feel hidden behind when they want to. It seems to work well for everyone in my flock. They like to sleep on their boings often, too.

The bar thickness can be deceptive beyond a certain point. When Phenix' cage arrived it scared me a little. But I've had it a few years & it's a lot sturdier than it looked. That actually makes the cage lighter & easier to handle. Good quality cage all around. I have seen that Petco model set up in the store. A couple looked ok. I wasn't so sure about the others. It almost seemed like they might be coming from different factories & the overall quality was a bit dodgy. Didn't really look like a 15 yr investment which is about the average life span of a decent quality, reasonably well treated cage. If it's as bad as Elliot thinks, it might even be worth returning it before it's too late, if they'll let you.

Geez, poor baby!

The Feed & Grain had a large bird room. They sold all types from song birds to parrots. Youngsters mostly. But the occasional second hand parrot might crop up sometimes. Which is kind of how the TAG had gotten there. Someone had rescued it from a negligent & abusive situation & there were very few other options. I'd bought my critter supplies from these guys for years. Whenever I was there, I'd always stop by the bird room. I'd also been thinking that I might want to adopt a bigger parrot for a while by that point. So I'd spend some extra time w/however many cute fids caught my eye. I could have loved every one. But some how, none of them ever did follow me home. Maybe that's because most of my critters tend to be strays. The first time I saw the grey sitting miserably on his stand, many things about him & what little was known of his story got to me almost instantly. He didn't even have a name & that was just so sad to me. Of everything, for whatever reason that set the hook the deepest. He wasn't there to be sold. The store owner had taken him in & was trying to work w/him. But things had pretty much gone from bad to worse since he'd arrived. Unfortunately not as much was known about a grey's psyche back then. No one at the time realized how badly this type of busy environment would effect many greys, let alone one that had been wild caught & abused. Clipped & sitting on an open stand, he either sat & shivered or growled & lunged at anyone who even looked at him. A legend when it came to drawing blood from anyone who tried to handle him. Every time, without fail. I didn't know it, of course, but by the time I left, I was already a goner. I went by a couple of times before I finally just asked the owner if I could take him on. He knew me. He liked me. So he told me "No" & walked away laughing. I kept coming back & he kept trying to talk me out of it. In the end, I gave him $285 (no idea where that figure came from) & the vicious gray bird followed me home. He wasn't exactly what you'd call grateful, however. By the time I let him out of quarantine a month or so later he'd still cuss & cower, growl & lunge pretty much constantly. Even though I'd sat w/him, sung to him, given him space, remained calm, cool & collected, he hated absolutely everything & I'd found my way to the top of the list. He certainly seemed to look forward to every chance to prove it, too. Never ever missed an opportunity to rip something open if he could reach. He & my 80 lb dog on the other hand became BFFs literally on sight. ...natural born enemies ...big scary teeth ...first happy chirpy sounds I had EVER heard even after everything I'd tried & all the blood I'd lost. I was so jealous when that happened that I couldn't trust myself to handle "that damned parrot" for a couple of days afterwards. Which certainly suggested it was time to take a step back & get some perspective. And that was when I finally heard the little voice that said maybe something more was wrong w/this picture. We didn't take birds to the vet back then. Just wasn't done. When I finally found one, I had to do the handling because the vet was terrified of the miniature Velociraptor. Weeks of medication & treatment ended w/an eventual diagnosis that the problems were terminal & the humane thing to do was euthanize. For the better (or worst) part of a year, this same scenario got repeated w/all 3 vets available at the time. I'd had no parrot experience. But I'd had experience w/other types of birds & a wide range of sick & abused critters of all sorts. Stress, fear & malnutrition can make a bad mess out of the way a body functions. I just felt in my gut they were all wrong. So I defied them all & we went it alone. The first thing I did was got a huge cage. The living space was about 18" x 18" by maybe 36" high (yeah, we knew that little back then). Then I started a more aggressive campaign against his all seed (read sunflower & peanut) diet. One of the things I'd do was make a whole tray table of goodies & strand him on it. He'd sit in the very farthest corner & hate on me for a while. Then, suddenly race across the table, snatch something & fling it as far as he could because he knew it was going to kill him. This only ended once every single crumb had been safely disposed of. Then he'd go back in the corner & glare at me until I returned him to his cage. The one thing that everyone who lives w/a grey can agree on is how bloody stubborn they can be. Many months & I chose not to think how many pounds of food later, a happy accident finally happened. A cherry exploded in his face as he was about to fling it ...& he couldn't help but taste it. ...& it tasted good! When he went back to the edge where he'd pitched it, he couldn't get it back & that just got him even more angry. I had to leave the room. It was much too funny! Wish I could say the rest was instantaneous. But it was more like the beginning of a 3-4 month process. But the diet, exercise & whatever good all those antibiotics had done eventually started to counter the bad side effects of the overly aggressive regiment of those same antibiotics & all his other issues until physically, things finally got back on track. Wish I could say the emotional issues disappeared w/the physical ones, but... It had been pretty much a whole year while his medical issues raised merry hell w/any hope of our building a good relationship. The worst part was probably that Phenix had had no say in surrendering to me on certain levels, which had really compounded his basic trust issues big time. To say nothing of the oh, dozens of other mistakes I'd eventually realize I'd made along the way. I'd lost so much ground & I knew it. Step up had gotten brutal. But he had to be handled & I hated the idea that always meant toweling him. I also hated the fact that my hands were pretty much hamburger. Once he was healthy & stopped being medicated, I had mistakenly thought things would get better. But it was the other way around. He had more energy to stand & fight & even more reasons. And I really couldn't blame him. Eventually he just wore me down. One day he ripped the web of my thumb up particularly badly. I dripped blood all the way to the bathroom & just burst into tears of pain but mostly frustration. All the hard luck. All the mistakes. All the time & effort. All the BLOOD SHED. Was this really the best it could be? Or should I be trying to find him another home where none of the past year's trauma had ever happened? That thought just made me cry harder & it went on like that for a while. I replayed most every disaster I could remember & had a real pity party until I finally got it out of my system. But that finally gave me a different perspective & the light bulb came on over my head. It would turn out that somehow, even after everything that human hands had put him thru, Phenix' trigger was actually the words "step up". All I had to do was stop saying that! The first time I approached w/my hand out & said "Foot?" was the first time he came to me w/o so much as a threat, even though he was very obviously scared & shaking like a leaf. Even though that was about 25 yrs ago now, I'll never ever forget those few minutes. Not one bad thing that had happened before that moment mattered. It was all going to work out in spite of everything. Phenix & I had to overcome a kind of tough start mostly because we had to do it in a vacuum. No friends w/parrot experience. Not really informative literature. No internet & wonderfully helpful forums. Even the supposed professionals were "against us" in the beginning. But even though I wouldn't wish it on anybody, I haven't got a single doubt that all of that was worth all the wonderful stuff that's happened in all our years since.

Think that's most parront's least favorite game & most fid's love to play it. "Trick or Treat" grey-style. Always awesome when you get the Treat though! Even better when you're just starting to bond like you guys. Definitely over the moon time. Big Congrats on that & many, many more! It would be so much easier if it weren't, but cage switching seems to be pretty much luck of the draw. Hope you guys get lucky. It helps some if you narrate while you let him watch from a safe distance as you build it, though. No real big emotion, just happy, chirpy noises. lol I also have a theory that it's much easier on them if you give them a few hours of daylight whenever you first close them in, because they're hardwired to be more alarmed by strange things in the dark. Same theory applies w/new toys, perches & such. Try not to act worried if Elliot isn't exactly thrilled because our emotions are contagious. Just bribe him w/his favorite foods for a few days to ease the transition some & make sure he's eating enough while you wait it out. But if any of Elliot's reactions are territorial, this might be a good time to work around those issues because he won't have an established territory to defend for a little while. If you're very lucky, this could be a good time to bond a little more because he's off balance enough to seek some reassurance. However sometimes they're just too unsettled & won't be approached w/o overreacting. It just might be worth exploring as long as you're prepared to take a very pointed "NO!!" for an answer though.

A dream catcher! That is a greyt idea! Cheap & easy enough to make & you can incorporate as many feathers as you'd like. Thanks for sharing.