SRSeedBurners

I have to agree: - hanging light chains are something I never ever even considered until one day my little Tinkerbell smashed right through the one in our living room. She hurt herself a little bit but it could have easily broken her wing. - Door and cabinet tops are also another critical one. I've nearly shut a bird in a door that I didn't realize was up there. I now have an inner nervousness about shutting doors which always makes me check that nothing is getting slammed in the door - even when nothing is around. It's a good habit I developed. One thing we did for safety since I now have an escape artist was to install a European style insect chain screen on our main entry door. Tinkerbell, our conure, has gotten out twice because she is so silent and fast. Both times she was following me or looking for me. So now we have a hanging 'no-fly screen'. These are common in Europe and nearly impossible to find here. I had mine shipped from the U.K. It works crazy well! Edit: we thought about having a storm door installed but it's too easy for this little girl to fly around a door, she's done it multiple times. She is also absolutely impossible to hear in the air like you can our other flying pigs. She's incredibly difficult to spot in the same room as she will sit silently and the minute I'm out the door, she's out there with me. However something about this chain screen that confuses her and NONE of our birds will go near it. It apparently screws with flying insects vision as well as they won't go near it. It even makes me dizzy when I get too close to it and stare at it. Tinkerbell was basically holding us prisoners in our own home as every time we wanted to go out we had to physically locate her to make sure we knew where she is before opening that door.

oh jeez...momma always told me not to hang around the crack dealers...

I'm almost embarrassed to say I have no idea what GreycieMae's leg band has on it. I'm 100% sure it's written on her hatch certificate from the breeder. However, if she ended up in a CAG lineup, I know 100% sure I could pick her out. I have spent WAY too much time grooming her, kissing her, fart sounds under her wings, pushing her on her swing perch and just general rough house with her. She would do something that would clearly give her away as my little feathered girl. I bet I could even pick her out blind folded by noise and touch-n-feel. I know my Grey. I obsess over her.

Great thread. Hope other's chime in, I love reading how you got your birds. Repeating what I've written here before but I got my first bird, a white-eyed conure I named Lester, when I was 18. Soon after I got my first African Grey, Odie. Shortening the story I got booted out by first wife and she took my birds who later ended up living with my Aunt, except the little conure. My Aunt still has Odie and someday I'm hoping I can take over her care again. For about 10-15 years I've had an itch to get another bird. However all I could remember was the constant mess and wasn't sure I could deal with that again. Then one day my manager here at work told me he was getting a CAG to replace his Quaker that he was tired of (*#!@#$). That's all I needed to push me over the edge. We had been visiting a Caique named Spanky in a local pet store for a few months. I kept wanting to get him but just couldn't make myself do it. So after my manager started talking CAGs I started looking for a breeder and found one nearby (Spanky had been sold by this time). We went to visit and there was this naughty little CAG busy-body who later came to be know by 'GreycieMae'. She also had two clutch mates. One was a male which I wasn't interested in (who knows why). She also had a sister there which is the one I REALLY wanted. Her sister was SUPER friendly and just wanted to sit on me. However she was already sold and the breeder kept trying to talk me out of her anyway saying I wouldn't want a velcro bird. The breeder clearly didn't know me. GreycieMae wasn't a velcro bird at first but she is now - HAAAHAAHAA!!! On the trip when we went to see GreycieMae for the first time we stopped at a "rescue" which was nothing more than a filthy disgusting animal hoarding situation and they had two birds, one was a little super scared Jardines. My wife fell in love with her in an instant. I tried to leave the place but my wife wanted that bird. That was Raven, the bird we lost a few months later to PDD. She really captured our hearts. I had to get another Jardines after her and that's how Rio came into our lives. He's a totally different bird but still has those Jardines traits and absolutely adores my wife, just like Raven did. Now Toby, our Caique was that itch that I just had to scratch. He ended up being a back parking lot deal. I felt like I was buying drugs when we went to see him. Something shady about the people selling him and they would only deal in cash and only in the parking lot. However he's a great little bird albeit a ferocious little tyrant. He was clearly a baby when we got him as he grew out of his baby face. Stevie our Cockatiel was a lonely little caged bird at a local bird fair. I made the mistake of taking my wife. She said we're getting that bird over there. I said no we're not. She said we're getting that bird over there. I said no we're not. She said I"M GETTING THAT BIRD OVER THERE. I said NO WERE NOT. We went home with that little bird over there. Tinkerbell our Conure came to us by way of Murfchck my crack dealer right here at GF. Since my wife got that cockatiel she owed me a conure, that's just the way I saw it. She's been an absolute cutie-pie and I love her to bits.

OMG...I go on hiatus while my Mother is in town and come back to find several members are conspiring to stuff my house full of more birds.....hrrmmppffff. I'm not sure a bird that can give a group of cockatoos a run for their money in the noise department would do well here. We have a cockatiel that gets pretty damn loud and he's nearly ended up on the chopping board a few times. If Quakers are aggressive that's also a no-no. We have one highly aggressive bird, our Caique, and he's a damn handful. He's convinced he'd look good wearing conure and cockatiel scalps. He tried to wear a African Grey scalp but she beat the living tar out of him and he's learned his lesson.

My Mom traveled from Northern NM to deliver some Sterling Ranch beef that my Dad raises. After pulling several ice chests and unloading into the deep freeze there was a dunlap bag still sitting there. Mom says "that's for GreycieMae". Looks like GreycieMae has been super schmoozing her Grammy behind my back: 75 lb bag of walnuts right off the tree on the ranch I grew up on

Do you ship Haahhaaa! What do you use to 'chop' it? You probably told me while I was there but I forgot.

We had miniature donkeys. Never. Again. They murdered every beneficial plant on our property. They have the instinct to carefully dig a root grass out of the ground by pawing to consume every last bit essentially killing the whole plant. They also chewed the bark off the trees at donkey level killing several of our beautiful trees. This eventually lead to a pasture full of nothing but weeds and several dead trees which we are still fighting to this day 8 years after I shot the bastards. Just kidding - I didn't shoot them but the only thing that stopped me was my wife and the city ordinance about firing live munitions within city limits. You will love chickens, especially their eggs! We have Guineas now too. This is my third go-around with them. We usually end up getting rid of them because of their noise and/or because they are mean to the chickens. However we just had some city-idiots that are building a 100 story house overlooking our property so I'm thinking they will enjoy my roosters and my guineas and the piles of horse shit right beneath their kitchen windows!!!

Not sure if I've posted this here before or not....lose track of where I've posted what. If you seen it already, Miss GreycieMae demands you watch it again to get a grasp of her amazing beat boxing skills. She works on them daily.

I know how it feels. A couple years ago Greycie and I were rough housing in the bathroom and she was all balled up in a towel. I accidentally dropped her to the hard tiled floor and she hit with a thump and let out a noise. She was not herself for a couple of days and it nearly destroyed me from guilt and worry. She bounced back though...and we still rough house it up.

Interesting story regarding snakes: a lady from Queensland Australia on the conure group I follow posted a photo and story of her little conure. She was awakened at 2:30am by screams from her conure in the bird room. She ran in there to find her conure was completely wrapped by a carpet python that had gotten into the house and found its way to the bird. She was able to get the python off the bird in time and sat with it the rest of the night as it was pretty shaken from the ordeal. Can you imagine? She got a little bit of a flaming for destroying the python but her reasoning was that the python would no doubt be coming back for a re-visit knowing there is a meal waiting. Myself, I would have hacked the snake into a fine powder, run it up a flag pole, and set the flag pole on fire. But that's just me. Nobody eats my babies and gets away with it. A pic of the little sweety directly after the incident...

I just made the link to Tinkerbell a shareable album. Try again and let me know. Uploading to youtube is such a hassle.

A conure was my first bird back when I was a teeny (a white eyed). My first love is the Grey but the conure is a close second. Murchck had a conure that was found in her area that apparently escaped it's home and was attacked by a hawk/crow. She had it a week or so, no owner could be located, so she asked if I wanted a conure and I went over and got her. She was missing some of her scalp feathers for a while but has healed. She's a pineapple GCC. Everyone here has absolutely fallen in love with her. She's got that conure cray-cray going on too. Here's a little video of her rotten self. Let me know if you can't see it and I'll upload it to youtube and direct embed it. Tinkerbell

Sorry to hear about the conure. We have a conure now too thanks to my crack dealer 'murfchck'. They are my second favorite bird and not sure how I got along without one.

...and flaked out again this morning. Profile and Inbox 'database error'.

Have the camera ready for when the babies emerge!!!

Mine are fine now too when I looked. But it seems to flake out every so often.

Yep, been that way for a few days now...

That chaps my ass. Why do they think they have a right to clip your bird in quarantine?

When I wanted a boat I wanted a pontoon boat, so we think along the same lines. I'd rather jump off the top of a pontoon with tubes in the water than speed along any day. Oh, and fish, love to fish. One thing I would love to do is have a jet ski in the middle of a body of water where there is no land on any of the horizons and just let GreycieMae do what she will. If she took off into the water I'd just follow her. I doubt she'd go far though.

Your aviary situation sounds exactly like our aviary situation when we started. We get to 110 in the summers here with brutal humidity so I had to put it under a tree. I also have a mister and box fan for the 95+ days. Check out my thread about GreycieMae's aviary. It documents the whole build process. I also have a parts list on my facebook album dedicated to her aviary if you decide to the go the route we did. Go big or go bigger - haaaa!!! Miss GreycieMae's Aviary

Have you heard about 'Lucky'? She's a bird that lives on a boat sailing the Caribbean. They have several videos on youtube of their adventures. Not sure if they're still doing it as I haven't kept up with them for a couple of years... This one is probably my favorite:

The last two pics of Alfie hanging in the window are beautiful. Just what a Grey would love! Good job.

What a cutie. That's funny he does the horse 'purr'. I was expecting him to do the 'neigh' after he said he was a horse.

They are very sweet like that. There haste been a couple times where I've been out of it and had to lay around for a while and GreycieMae will usually sit on my head while I sleep. She'll be very quiet too which is not her MO.