neoow

Hello and welcome to the forums! Well done for doing your research. Greys are fascinating birds. I've had Alfie for 12 years now and he never ceases to amaze me. It's an ongoing learning experience!

Lovely video, thanks for sharing! I love that Kilaya gets to go to so many awesome places with you!

Thank you! I have loads of those as well but Alfie isn't overly interested in them, funnily enough. He tends to just launch those across his cage. He'll sit and work on the birdie bangles for ages. He obviously has expensive taste!

Haha that's awesome! I hope your dogwalker said hello in return! Maybe Echo wanted to come along for the walk as well?! Hehe

"Are you going to come out?" is probably another one. Alfie gets asked this whenever I open his cage door. He did say "out" earlier though. But it sounded more like a command (e.g trying to get the cats out of the room) rather than a question.

Yes possibly. They also have a bit of colour to them (well, until he strips that layer off, anyway!) He's been busy with them again today so I'll be popping a couple of new ones in his cage this evening.

I've tried Alfie on card before- the card tubes you get in the middle of kitchen or loo roll, for example. He's never been that interested. Not interested in boxes either. But these little birdie bangles? He loves them! I'm going to have a job to keep up with him at the rate he's currently munching through them. I think my next purchase will have to be a pack of 100 rather than 12!!

I recently discovered Birdie Bangles on my favourite parrot website: http://www.northernparrots.com/birdie-bangles-and-parrot-pipes-deptbirdie_bangles/ These are made from lots of strips of cardboard and are great for shredding. I bought one pack of small bangles for Alfie and hung them up in a few places around his cage. He LOVES them. He went through a pack of 12 in a few days. I've now bought another 2 packs plus a pack of large bangles. I also got one pack each of the pipes, but unfortunately these don't fit over the plastic chains as intended, so these will be used as foot toys instead. I've never seen Alfie go quite so crazy for a toy before. He went through 4 of them today and has already started on a couple more!

Alfie doesn't say the cat names. He did try and say Widget a couple of times, but other than that he's given up. He says "No!" "Oi!" and "Off!" instead... so maybe he thinks those are their names instead! Alfie has never picked up "morning!" which is what I say to him every day. But he knows hello, bye and see you later. He knows night night as well (it's really cute!). I'll come back if I think of any more.

You'll get used to those floating about everywhere!

The prime sale over here in the UK has been mostly disappointing. It was hyped up to be such a massive event... "bigger than black friday!"... but it's been pretty rubbish in my opinion. The only thing I wanted didn't drop by enough to make me want to buy it. There was no parrot stuff on sale over here either. Well, not that I've seen anyway!

I'm not sure I know what you mean- are you able to get a video of the behaviour?

Hahahah that's brilliant!!!

Haha that's hilarious!

It does look a little long- but it looks like it is being worn down to me. I wouldn't worry too much so long as Alex has no problems eating, drinking or getting around. With the pumice style perches and lots of things to chew he should be able to look after it himself for the most part. Just keep and eye on it and see how it goes. If he ever looks like he's struggling to eat, drink or get around, then you'll need to take him to the vet.

Whit woo! Check you out, Isaac! Looking good

I don't think samansad was suggesting to deliberatly walk fast towards a parrot- I think he was saying that he learned that if he moved too quickly around Alex, he got freaked out. So now he is aware that Alex will freak out if he suddenly moves too quickly towards him, he announces his movements before they happen so Alex knows what's going on. Not sure if I'm right, it's just how I read it

Aw yay! Rikki is a very lucky parrot.

In the past Alfie has nipped me and immediately said "ouch!" before I had chance to react. I had to laugh recently because Alfie is forever telling the cats off. He'll say "oi!", "No!" and "Off!" when he thinks they're up to no good or if he thinks they should get down from somewhere. I went to visit my sister and my nephew and my nephew (just shy of 2 years old) kept running around after the dog shouting his name and telling him "no" and "away!" if he thought he was being naughty.

That's great news, Samansad. Thank you for the update! Sounds like things are going so well for you! Alex is a fantastic bird and lucky to have you!

Thank you for all you do Talon, it is very much appreciated! Hopefully the bug with the logins will be sorted soon. Sometimes it can take a while to fix problems. I've stuck around because there's still a lot of interesting posts and I'm learning new information all the time. As an aside: I'm also a member of a bengal cat forum because I own two bengals (or rather, they own me!). However, I have stopped posting there because many members moved on and no longer post. Now all you see are loads of "Is my cat a bengal?!?!?" posts because people aren't sure if they've been scammed or not. So I don't frequent those forums much any more because there's nothing of interest for me there.

Thanks, I'll bear that in mind!

Haha yes, his flying is quite cartoonish!!

No, I could not free fly Alfie. He sometimes spooks and just flies off in any which direction- so this would be particularly hazardous outside. He could be helped by a gust of wind which would carry him further away, he could get hit by a car or injured by an animal... it's just not worth the risk. Plus, he's not very good at recalling. If he doesn't want to fly to me, he won't. I can get as excited about it as I like, I can offer treats, toys and fuss... but if he's got something else on his mind, he will NOT come to me. So he's not a particularly good candidate for free flying. If I was going to take him outside to fly, I'd have him on a harness. But I'd have to get over several hurdles to harness train him. (He's not fond of having his back touched and wings are a total no go area unless you want a bite). Some people have trained parrots to free fly and it looks like an incredible experience- check out the "BirdTricks" channel on youtube, for example- they free fly a lot of their birds and post videos about it. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1BpMn4ErGPo8XB3Rzltojg?&ab_channel=BirdTricks However, I don't think I could ever get to that stage with Alfie.

Thanks for the insightful post, Ray.