birdhouse

Wow! It just keeps coming! I really have to give you credit for the way you just keep giving to these poor guys! You're both pretty awesome in my book!

I was actually thinking Gabby may be a little over-excited by her new & pretty wonderful home. Hopefully, she'll get better after a while. Honestly, my guys all stopped most of the non-stop craziness somewhere along the way. I was also thinking maybe the new aviary might help slow Gabby down some, too. No denying it though, keeping flighted parrots is not for the faint of heart! And a whole ton of love & patience is required, too. Good thing you & hubby are such excellent sports about everything!

...and you're so lucky! Think of all the poor people who have no idea how much fun they're missing!

^^^ For sure. Kura's always "singing" with the vocalists. Loves Josh Groban. Phenix is into Country. He came that way. Very fond of Xmas carols, too. If it's rocking, Charm's all over it. They all bliss out on Native American Flute Music, though. I play it whenever Charm's a little over the top, non-stop during 4th of July & anytime I've got a new rehab. Everyone stops & listens & it just has a wonderful calming affect on them.

For about 15 yrs, we were all convinced Phenix was female. Then they finally came out w/affordable DNA blood tests. Oops! Needless to say, it took the poor guy a while to stop telling everyone that, "Phenix is a good girl!" Glad Banner won't have that problem. Very nice that you don't have to change her name, either. Congratulations on your new baby girl! She is quite lovely.

I wouldn't mind, either. I got an iPod touch & was surprised at how well it handled the internet. It's almost always w/me for music. So, once I finally got used to the keypad, I started using it more & more often for web browsing. It will never replace my PC. But, like FirstPenguin said, lots of times it's just more convenient.

...and this is only the beginning!! Good work! This is good news. Hopefully it will make you feel a little more confident about rounding Shelly up for his vet appointment. That will make it easier on both of you.

My guys like music very much. Just at their version of a reasonable decibel level & easy on the bass. They don't care for surround sound so much, though. Which is how I eventually connected the dots. I'm fairly certain my guys aren't very fond of my sub woofer "thumping". It seems to make sense because all sound is vibration. But even humans can feel the vibration from a decent sub woofer. And of course, the louder the volume, the more vibration it makes. For many of us a-hem, older people, it's a kind of torture to be stuck at a light w/a car that has skull rattling bass blasting at full volume, No matter how many Rock concerts we've been to. lol Birds process about 10 times more sound bytes/sec than us. I think they may get that same feeling from much less volume & bass.

Our emotion is contagious for our fids. So, you always want to be as calm & confident as possible, especially w/tough situations. If Shelly will come out on his own, that's best. It would be good to see if he's willing before hand. Maybe this weekend? Give yourself as much time ahead of time as possible. It may be less traumatic to let Shelly sit in the carrier for longer & acclaimate than to try to rush him out of the cage w/limited time. If you have to towel him, then show him the towel, talk constantly & soothingly. Move slowly & be open about your approach. You'll have to do the best you can for now. But you might want to ask the vet to show you the least stressful way to do it for the future. As bad as toweling looks, birds get over it pretty quickly when it's done right. Let us know how it goes. Good luck.

You guys have been thru a lot this year & still managed to keep your sense of humor. Got to admire that. Hope Mick is up & running around again, soon.

I think some people have a way more sensitive sense of smell than others & some for certain odors. All of my birds smell differently to me. Kura was nasty, filthy when she came home. I also think her previously bad diet contributed to her very unpleasant odor. It went away after a couple of weeks of normal bathing & good food. Bonus, now, everyone says her breath smells just like honey, too. Cage sanitation shouldn't be the issue since the problem happened overnight. But the smell of bird poop may be something your household is particularly sensitive to. In which case you could add a light layer of cobb, shavings or unscented kitty litter to the cage tray. Just make sure Piper can't reach it. One other thing could be if there's a problem w/Piper's metabolism. That can cause some stinky droppings. You should tell your vet when you take Piper in for her first check up. But if there aren't any real health issues causing it, then a decent diet may be all that's needed to eliminate the problem.

Really Ray. We've been trying to tell them all along, but they just wouldn't believe us. As a parront the only truly surprising part was this... "Surprisingly, the performance of the birds was sensitive to the shaking movement: they were successful with containers shaken horizontally, but not with vertical shaking resembling parrot head-bobbing. Thus, grey parrots seem to possess ape-like cross-modal reasoning skills, but their reliance on these abilities is influenced by low-level interferences." http://phys.org/news/2012-08-grey-parrots-inferential.html#jCp I thought this was pretty cool, too. First it's reasoning & then using tools. Isn't this the stuff that's supposed to make human beings so special? Just askin http://phys.org/news168701856.html#nRlv http://phys.org/news/2011-06-crows-parrots-highlights-intelligence.html#nRlv

We want their acceptance so much! We want that bond. But it's so easy to reinforce bad behavior sometimes. Often hard to recognize it even after the fact. Looks like you're doing a greyt job w/Burt overall, though. Thanks for sharing.

I love how pleased w/the world Gracie looks in that vid! It sounds like there's a fan in the background? Whatever it is, it's making it hard to pick out the words she's not pronouncing well. And she sure had a lot to say at the very beginning. Seems like a shame to have missed it! I think I'm hearing everything you listed. What do you think Gracie's trying to say that sounds like "ice tea" to me? Is it doggie or Gracie, because there were a couple of times I thought it might be either? I know proud parronts do read things into their fid's vocabulary of course. But it really is easier for you to guess, too. Give or take things on TV, you know better what she hears & what you've been trying to teach her. So much fun to listen to her! Looking forward to watching her develop her vocabulary.

I think that may be one of my favorite fid pics ever & that's saying something w/all the cuteness around here!!

S-L-O-W-L-Y lol Everything is about grey time w/all issues. That almost always means slow motion. Welcome Shelly into the flock. Be around him doing quiet, non threatening activities & interact from a distance until he lets you know he wants more. Vocalize to him like he's part of the family. Talk/whistle/sing. Make eye contact that would include him, but don't stare because well, that makes everyone uncomfortable, right? Once you see that he's comfortable in his new home, you can start to make him comfortable w/his new flock. Once you get to know his body language (watch his posture, feathers & eyes) he'll let you know a lot about how to proceed. Just don't ask too much too soon & you'll be off to a greyt start. After that, it's a matter of working w/what he gives you & taking it one thing at a time. Once you start to post about specifics, we can suggest some more helpful tips. In the meantime, welcome to the forum. Congratulations to both you & Shelly.

Look at that. Another hour's gone by. Maverick will be in your arms in no time!

Hi Judyh, Welcome to the forum. A bird has to stay flighted during a molt in the wild or it would be in big trouble. So that's the most obvious sign to look for. A bird can't fly when they're missing more than a few wing or tail feathers. Sorry, but your fid is plucking. There are various degrees of plucking, though. Some fids will only go after a particular spot. Often, that's a sign that something physical is wrong. From your description your girl is technically feather barbering. That's where they aren't leaving bald spots for the most part. Generally they take out the bigger feathers, leaving mostly down. I'd second everything Judygram said. Something is apparently out of whack. You should check as soon as possible to see if it's physical. If the vet gives her a clean bill of health, post some more of the back story & we can try to help you figure this out as soon as possible to avoid her becoming a chronic plucker. Either way, please let us know how things are going & maybe post something about your TAG & other birds in the Welcome & Introduction forum. It might help us get a better understanding of what's going on w/your TAG. But we all like meeting new faces, too. :cool:

I didn't realize how much this product bothered me until I found myself thinking about it again for like the hundredth time this afternoon. The thought of one of these things on a bird I "know" is starting to unsettle my stomach a little. I've helped design some of the cable applications for the automotive industry, the Olympic rowing venue in Atlanta & many other innovative uses of cable for many more yrs than I'm going to admit. I've seen too often the result of people who think they understand how it works & the, call it "interesting" consequences. Think back to the last time you saw some poor Smoe dangling 20 stories high off his window washing scaffold. Much more often than not, it was the cable that was the story behind the story. If this is aircraft cable, I think it has too much weight, resistance & orientation of it's own for this application. That's going to become worse w/use & the fittings ill-advised for other reasons. I think the design of this rig is based on bad math & the physics look basically flawed. There was a time when King's Cages was a name I respected. Back when, they were American made. Then, they moved their manufacturing to Europe. But ok, still good quality. Now their product comes from the same plants in China as all the rest. But they're still trading on their reputation from bygone days when they deserve no more credibility now than anybody else, IMO. There have been so many catastrophic examples of inexcusable negligence in the pet trade, let alone human related products. Most recently the Kaytee formula that's harmed how many fids? And they have no intention of making restitution...? As if anyone could repay me for having harmed one of my birds under these circumstances! The most recent Mazuri recalls, etc, etc. Aside from my personal feelings about this, the science says this is a high risk product. And the likelihood that the seller will be accountable in the event of failure is realisticly slim to none. There's apparently no a credible vet(s) or parrot behaviorist(s) offering their seal of approval here. Some practical information from testing in the real world might have been nice before it hit the market if nothing else. I'm sorry for the rant. I could be dead wrong & I'll happily apologize a year from now & be very, very happy to do it. But I'm wishing everyone here, at least, would just wait until the thing has been on the market for 6 or 7 months to see if the feedback from real life proves me wrong.

Really! Quite clever!

In my opinion, an aviator harness would be a much better option. I've seen a number of members take their fids harnesses w/them while they were visiting them during weaning. Congrats on the new baby, btw!!

It looks like leg chains without the chain. They've replaced the actual chain w/what appears to be coated aircraft cable (think dog tie, bicycle or computer security cable). Then added metal snaps, rings & swage sleeves; things that I'm fairly familiar with. I'm guesstimating the combined weight for the fid will be very similar to the leg irons worn by human prisoners back in the day. I would imagine having the snaps bumping together would be almost as comfortable. There's some fairly good reasons why leg chains are illegal in countries like Sweden & Australia. They can cause severe injury to a parrot if it spooks or falls. The chain itself doesn't usually have much to do w/this. When the velocity of a bird's take off or fall is brought up short it can result in possible bone fracture, but more likely dislocated joints (especially hips) & torn ligaments. Extremely painful injuries & torn ligaments often aren't repairable. Parrot & raptor legs are just different, as I understand it. Parrot leg bones being weaker & proportionately shorter, for instance. They aren't designed to snatch live, heavy, writhing prey & hurtle skyward. But because raptors' evolution has designed them for this, their leg can better withstand some of the force of being brought up short or tugging by an extremely soft, pliant, fitted jess & leash. These snaps were not designed for anything like this purpose, either. I'd be concerned that they'd bounce & rub along the legs, joints & claws, potentially causing chaffing & swelling as well. The reason I suspect that is because I have a problem w/my little, boney wrists where several times I've had major issues because of a loose watch or solid, bangle type bracelet. Just from a few hours of bouncing where that bone bumps out, my wrist has swollen so badly that I haven't been unable to use it for as much as a couple of weeks. And I will tell you it's extremely painful & there's nothing to be done in the meantime. Given the way a parrot squats, I have to question the potential for those snaps to hit the hocks & create some issues. This rig just looks dodgy to me.

This is a little tough. But sometimes we just can't make a perfect world for our fids. If you don't have any other option then you don't. The risk of having a scared care giver dealing w/a flighted parrot & possibly other critters is more than I think I'd want to take. I think I'd opt to load up the cage w/as much activity as possible & smooth out the ruffled feathers when I got home. Rita may not be happy about it, but at least she's safe. And it's probably going to take less time for her to recover than to grow back her flights.

Greyt start! What does Casper think of them?