SRSeedBurners

"The Utopia of Rules" - David Graeber. An essay "On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy". That book describes in fine detail what you're dealing with. I picked it up one time for a flight back from the East coast. Pretty accurate. Great pic of Sukei. Not sure I've ever seen a pic of him besides your avatar. Really hoping for the best here.

Everybirdy needs a toy box. Wife has been after me for - I don't know how long - to build Rio, our Jardines, another hidey-fort for the aviary. He loves to hang out in little wooden boxes and the GreycieMae loves to turn them to splinters. So I decided to build GreycieMae a hanging toybox that I've been promising for a while now. It didn't take long. I had all the tools I needed in a pile from a fence job I finished that day. I was in the middle of a putting up some insulation/wall board and was waiting on my daughter who I sent on a gofor job to get more insulation. So this took about 35 minutes from raw fir strips to finished GreycieMae hanging skybox!!! I know I hit a home run when the birdies get possessive and wanting to fight over the new toy. Looks like I'll have to be building another soon.

God bless his little soul. May he fly free on the wind.

Please keep us updated. I've been following this from near the beginning. I can't wait to see pics of your bird happily living state-side with you!

It dawned on me today (Thanksgiving Day) what this day really means. For those of you who are owned by a parrot you may understand. I am not allowed in the kitchen on this day as I just get in the way, make a mess and won't stay out of the marshmallows. So I sit out here, on my perch, watching footyball and patiently wait for a feast that is being prepared - just for me. I hear chopping, mixers, opening of containers, the pepper grinder, cookings, and the smells are absolutely delish. I've made my way into the kitchen a few times looking for an early treat or to try and make off with a marshmallow only to get kicked out and told to stay out. I am feeling a bit empathetic to GreycieMae's struggles. The sounds and smells are tortuously irresistible and all I hear is the repeated NO! I'm hoping my time will come and a feast will appear before me. There will undoubtedly be morsels in my dish that just aren't suitable. I will merely fling those out of the way and eat only my favorites. If there is nothing more good to eat I will flip my dish in protest and make my way right into the middle of the sweet taters with the marshmallows. Because sweet taters and marshmallows is what this is all about. Right? I will relish this day, pretending I am a spoiled rotten parrot. Happy Spoiled Rotten Parrot (Thanksgiving) Day to all my US parront friends!

Happy Thanksgiving to you guys too! Hoping the worst is over with Ollie, know how that struggle is. You guys have the keen sense of placing a bird with the right hooman. Tinkerbell thanks you!

And a lil video of GreycieMae doing her very basic clicker training. She's pretty quick to get on with it already so I can't really slow down and show the basic steps. I've found it just helps to 'watch someone else do it'! The last bit is the 'rollover'. She has yet to do that successfully. I didn't realize I was behind a lamp. However you can see I'm helping her do what I'm asking. She has already started to try and roll since I showed her what I want, she's just scared of the vulnerable position.

Welcome to you and Dooble. Looks like she has a nice sunroom to gaze out upon. Also looks like she has some berry toes!

Sharing is caring, unless you don't want to share, then it's no funs. At. All. GreycieMae's birthday package got lost in Dallas and we had to wait a whole 17 days later to get her stuffs. Life just isn't fair sometimes....

This one? 'Parrot Clicker Training and Behavior Modification'. I went searching when I first started and they only had 10 members, now have 12. I didn't figure I'd find much in the way of advanced stuff which I'm clueless about.

I skipped step one. I put the target in their face to touch so they absolutely couldn't fail. My Jardines, who I would compare to a Border Collie, knew what to do within two clicks. I want to believe GreycieMae is smarter than a Jardines, as they supposedly have that reputation, but she took longer to get focused.

Definitely give the clicker training a try. I wasn't sure how to do it either and I'm still not sure how to do advanced techniques. However my GreycieMae is now twirling for treats, even when I don't ask (which I don't reward) and is currently learning to roll over. She also recalls now (when she wants to), will sometimes fetch my target stick and a couple other things. I use the 'Starmark Pro Training Clicker, Blue/Orange' which was what I found in the pet store one day. Nothing special. My target stick is a wooden chop stick from the Pho joint I can't stay out of. I'm looking for a metal one as the birdies tend to get distracted wanting to split the target stick into splinters..no no no.... I'm assuming Brutus will sit still somewhere so put him there and immediately ask him to touch the target stick by putting it right in front of his beak. He'll touch it just because it's there then - click - treat. Over and over for about 2-5 minutes, never past the point where they lose focus. I did this probably 3-4 sessions the first day and she finally got the point that touching results in clicking results in treat. I started increasing the distance to the target I was asking to touch. After that I started asking her to jump down off her perch and run across the counter to touch. Fly across to a chair and touch. Up off the floor to my knee and touch. When 'touch' was down pat I started on the turn around (got it in one session) and recall (one session) and a few other things. Roll over is proving harder as she is scared to flop over unless she's distracted playing. I also found training when they are hungry is almost crucial. GreycieMae will flat out ignore my requests if she's not interested in scoring treats. The Parrot Wizard has gotten in a little trouble because some claim he starves his birds. He probably just does similar, finds an opportune time to train. I don't starve my birds but they do come in from the aviary expecting to be fed - TRAINING time knuckleheads! Holding the clicker and target with the same hand helps to so you can present the treat in a timely manner. They do expect to be rewarded! I used shelled sunflower seeds and pine/pinion nuts. I also cheat and just give them small pieces or I've found the time between trick & treat takes to damn long and I start to lose focus. GreycieMae now must work for her very occasional bits of cheese. She would run outside and work on my car for cheese. She'll do anything for cheese. Too bad they're not supposed to have much of it. Since you're going to stick perch him, you will also want to clicker train him for that too. It gets the lil brains sidetracked from their original intent if it was naughty. I'll see if I can get a video of GreycieMae doing some of her clicker work. It's nothing earth-shattering but the basics are there.

Just a question as I have absolutely no idea how to remedy this: Is/was Brutus particular to your ex? I.e does he prefer males? If so, I'm guessing the new male coming into the household is causing him to revert to old behaviors? You actually might try reaching out to Barbara Heindenrich, or at least getting one of her books, I believe 'The Parrot Problem Solver' is the one I'm thinking of. Something to try is maybe start clicker training. I used this to stop our new conure in her tracks as she was becoming excessively abusive/clingy with me (it's a conure thing) and I needed to get her to do a few things like step up so I could curb her nasty bites on my face etc... I then started clicker training the other birds, including GreycieMae. I noticed they all seem to listen to me a lot better now. It's like it smashed a communication barrier, all except my Caique. He's a little to ADHD and I really got nowhere with him.

You'll get used to it. It only took us three weeks to start seeing Tinkerbell as a she instead of a he. It took my daughter the longest. She just couldn't get over how a little girl conure can strut and backsass as good as this one does.

I got kicked out of Costco. They can go F themselves. We go into Krogers, Walmart and lots of other places. The only places I don't go into are eating establishments.

I would get her out of there. It will be non-stop trauma. When we had our roof replaced, I put the birds in the aviary so at least they could see what was making the dang noise. You don't want to give her an excuse to start some traumatic plucking.

See...I'm not the only one that constantly renames my birds!

Mushrooms are one of those grey-area foods. If they won't kill you, they won't kill your bird but lots of people, including me, don't give them to the birds. A stolen morsel won't hurt your birdy. Mine has made off with one from a pizza that I thought was an olive.

Which means - IT'S GREYCIEMAE'S BIRTHDAY!!!!!!! 4 years old and still a rotten mess :cool:

I used to cover. It got to be a chore to cover all three cages at night. I finally constructed a method to easily hang blackout curtains in the birdroom and it they make it pitch black in there. Now that we have two more littles, I have them in another room (for now) and they get covered every night. However that doesn't stop our conure from listening for the tiniest noise around 5:30am and hitting the screech button. Once they go in the birdroom at nights I'm going to have to get a soft white noise maker to stop her from waking everybirdy up. GreycieMae hated the cover btw. She doesn't like going to bed period and has a game of 1) making hooman chase her around the house and 2) crawling into my shirt when she is finally caught. After about 5-10m of this she will softly let go and go on her re-charge perch.

I thought we had a zoo.

Now which one was Gabby? Now that I have a mental picture of who and where. If I recall one of the Greys but not sure which one.

Hilliray? You mean Hitlery Kitten?

Do you get to visit during quarantine?

Love it. I routinely watch cat videos, they are....weird.