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I haven't, but will check it out!

I love that Sukei is helping to train Kasey! Alfie used to yell at our dog, Ben, all the time- but Ben knew better and just ignored him! Alfie now has two cats to yell at- he tells them 'off' and 'out' and 'no' but they don't listen to him either. Doesn't stop him from trying though!

Oh how lovely!

Well done Huey for keeping your human's in order and making sure they look after you properly! Lovely to read that he is so well cared for by his vet.

Love the photos! I've never seen a TAG in real life before either. Are they much smaller than the CAGs? I think Alfie is on the larger size for a CAG. The vet always comments how big he is. He's a normal weight though- just larger in size than others they have seen I guess!

Oh yes, Alfie loves to bite feet/toes! I have to keep them well out of his way! Although he seemed to get a bit confused one, started biting my big toe then regurgitated for it. So I think it was a bit of a love/hate relationship that day! 😂

Ah, he'll never go on the floor if I try and put him there. Sometimes he'll misjudge a flight and end up on the floor by mistake and have a little wander but for the most part he never really wants to be on the floor. I did let him explore for a while over the weekend. He flew between each window sill quite a few times and checked everything out. Then he came and had a snooze and some head scritches on my knee, so I think he's pretty happy with it all so far!

Interesting topic - I'm afraid I don't have any answers. I wouldn't be able to get my face close enough to Alfie to give him a proper sniff- but I do notice how he smells sometimes. I can't say I've ever noticed it changing. And I only have him so wouldn't be able to compare to any other birds.

Oh goodness, I couldn't even imagine!! 😂

Well I'm fresh out at the moment- so it's back to cardboard for Alfie. But hopefully someone sends something through the post too! My dad has a sailing boat and I bought him something boat related for his birthday once... so now I get sailing/boat catalogues through the post every so often... they always go straight to Alfie!

Alfie has had a busy day shredding a large bathroom catalogue in his cage today. I let him out of his cage this evening so he could play and get up to some mischief but he's obviously tuckered himself out during the day!

I'm having lots of renovations done to the downstairs half of the house. Alfie is being housed upstairs for now until it's all done. I'm going to be buying him a new cage as well when it's safe for him to move back downstairs. I've carried him downstairs a few times so he can see the room and check everything out. It's got to pass his inspections, of course! In this photo he was checking out the new flooring that is being laid this week. He also checked out the kitchen space now that everything has been stripped out. Can't wait for all the work to be completed so I can get the house back to some kind of normality! And I'm sure Alfie is looking forward to having a bigger cage back and a bigger space to play in too!

Well that's a puzzle for sure!

This is a real long shot- but your neighbours don't have any bright lights (e.g security lights) pointing at the room/window he's in, do they? I only ask because my neighbours are a nightmare for leaving their outside lights on... although they don't shine directly into the house they do get through the blinds and light up my ceiling in my bedroom. It's more irritating when their flashing solar lights are blinking away well into the early hours.

How strange - does he have a cover over his cage? I've not really had this with Alfie. He doesn't have a cover over his cage because he always pulled them off so I gave up on the idea years ago but he's normally pretty good at settling down and staying quiet overnight. He's also pretty good in the mornings as he'll tend to wait for me to wake up and start moving around before he makes a load of noise. At the moment, Alfie is housed in the room next to my bedroom so I have to walk past it to get to the bathroom. So he'll sometimes say "hello", "night night" or ruffle his feathers at me as I wander past and back again in the middle of the night. But other than that I've never really known him to make loads of noise or move around much overnight.

Funnily enough, I'm looking to slightly downsize Alfie's main cage this year. It's a liberta enterprise and is biiiiig! There's a couple of rust spots on it and the whole thing is too big for me to get outside on my own for a deep clean. Alfie has also been living in a smaller cage upstairs (his 'working from home' cage in my office) for the last few months whilst I renovate the downstairs half of the house. It's a rainforest dakota cage and he seems to like it in there. So I'll be looking to replace his big cage downstairs with something in between the two cage sizes. I'd still like to to be on the large size, as he does spend a fair amount of time in there when I'm out at work. I also don't think I'll go for a playtop option like I did for the dakota - one because he doesn't use it and two because it makes the cage inside quite dark. So I think it'll be another dome/open top like the enterprise one. I was looking at custom built cages too- but they never seem to look as nice as the rainforest or liberta cages. I also debated about scrapping the downstairs cage entirely and just having a java tree so he can come hang out with me... but then I realised that wouldn't work when I had guests round, as he wouldn't be the centre of attention if he was in his upstairs cage. I'm beginning to think Alfie might be a little spoiled 😂

Thanks Kevin, much appreciated. I'll make sure to donate as soon as I'm able to. Money is a bit tight right now because I'm renovating the downstairs half of the house. But as soon as I have some spare cash again then I'll send some your way. Thanks for all that you do to keep this place up and running.

I somehow missed some of these messages so just catching up now. Very sorry to hear Debbie had a seizure. That must have been scary for everyone! Things with Alfie are going well. I started some structured training with him back in November 2019 - started with 'touch' training where he has to gently touch the end of a chopstick to get a treat. If he bit too hard, no treat. This went well. He also learned to wave- he sort of knew the trick anyway but now its much more consistent. We also started trying to learn colours using an abacus style bird toy. He likes that one because he gets lots of treats! And we worked on recall training, plus returning to a perch. This really helped build back trust between the both of us and gave us a fun way to interact. Things are going really great these days. The training is still a little hit and miss sometimes- Alfie has to be in the right mood for a recall, for example. But it definitely helped improve our relationship- he lets me give him head scritches and will seek me out to come and sit with me and get up to mischief. My housemate moved out in April 2020 so poor Alfie is stuck with just me again. I think he's just making do until someone more interesting comes along. 😄 He absolutely loves my mum - pretty sure I posted about that somewhere here. He goes all gooey and lovey for her and will sit with her for aaages getting loads of head scritches. It's very cute. I'm not on that level with him but I'll take what I can get! 😂 He's also getting pretty good at letting me know when he doesn't want to step up without biting. Previously if I offered a hand/arm and he didn't want to step up then he would just bite instantly. So I used to get him to step up on a perch instead. We turned this into a training exercise too- if he stepped up nicely he got a treat. He reliably steps up on to a perch and nowadays I can offer my hand/arm and he'll either turn away or walk away if he's not ready to step up. This is his polite way of saying 'no, not yet' instead of the instant bite. I know to back off and leave him be for a bit. Sometimes if I give him a minute then come back, he'll step up fine. Other times I have to grab a treat for him or use the perch instead if I need him to move sooner rather than later. So it's going so much better than it was when I last posted in this thread.

ooo please post photos when you get your new arrival! My family had a german shepherd growing up. We had him for 13 years and was dearly loved... even though he did have a real stubborn streak! Alfie grew up with him when we were still living at my parents house.

Haha yes, I had a similar thing when Alfie was young and I was still living with my parents. My mum would call up the stairs to me and I would respond. Alfie learned my response. So my mum would call up the stairs and Alfie would respond with a very stroppy teenager "WHAT?". 😂

Alfie likes walnuts (shelled) and pine nuts. I reserve pine nuts for training, as that's the only treat that motivates him. I do give him a couple of pistachios in his food bowl occasionally but I'm not 100% sure if he actually eats them or not. He doesn't seem to like any other kind of nut. Other than peanuts, but I don't give him those.

When picking up words/phrases, Alfie has always preferred male voices. He does mimic me sometimes but if I want him to learn something I'm better off asking a male to say it as he'll seemingly pick it up quicker. My dad has been helping out lots with all my house renovations so Alfie has picked up my dad yelling my name. And now he uses it with gusto. It actually caught me out once because my dad had been round and left, then I heard him yell my name from downstairs. I assumed he had forgotten something and had come back... but no, it was just Alfie. And he's spot on with it as well. He also yells my mum's name in my dad's voice. More recently, Alfie has taken to mimicking my dad's phone calls. He'll make a phone ringing noise, answer it with 'hello' in my dad's voice, he'll mumble a lot in my dad's voice then say "alright then... alright then.... bye!" and make the phone hanging up noise. That one always makes me smile. Even though he doesn't use many words, you can tell he's mimicking my dad's voice when he's mumbling.

Alfie is a nightmare for baths. The only place he will consistently bath is in his water bowl... which he obviously can't fit in. So he sticks a foot in and flaps around, sploshing water over everything except himself. He usually waits until I'm not around as well, so I come back to a nice big puddle of water on the floor around his cage. If I do happen to hear/catch him, I'll grab the mister and see if he wants a bath that way. He mostly hates it, but if I manage to catch him in the right mood then he'll get into it. I can only mist him in his cage though, as he'll fly away if he's out. Or just try and attack the mister/me. I've tried taking him to the sink, to the bathroom to see the bath/shower but nope, he's not having it. Only the water bowl will do. I even bought him a kids toy sink that was battery powered and had a little tap but he didn't like it at all, so I gave up on that idea. If I put a bigger tray with water in at the bottom of his cage then he ignores it and favours the water bowl. I did have a breakthrough more recently- I found some really big water bowls which are the same shape/material as his existing bowl and they clip on to the side of the cage. They hold 2L of water. At least he can fit both feet in that one and at least get a little bit of water on his body as well.

Oooh ouch, that sounds rough. I am so thankful that Alfie only leaves bruises. Does Sukei seek you out to attack you? What are you getting?

With the amount of mess he makes by dropping confetti everywhere (then flapping his wings to spread it across the whole room) I can be certain that he definitely is not eating it! 😂 It's no different to when he chews and shreds his toys. He doesn't eat the wood.