SRSeedBurners

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.

All I know is, my three rotten brats all seemed to peak out on their weights at about 2.5 years. Our Jardines seems to still be getting bigger framed but his weight isn't changing. I'm expecting him to suddenly get heavier soon. GreycieMae better watch out, 'nother big boss bird in the house.

I have wondered what happened to you. So happy to hear. Happy for you and happy for Sukie. Hope you can get some pictures of the process as I personally have fretted over your ordeal wondering how this might work. I hate that a sweet Grey would get left behind. So wonderful!

I'm assuming your Dad's Grey knows you from living in the home previously. It should only take a little while for him to get used to things. How much did you interact with Dwight previously? If Dwight was a good talker with your Dad I see no reason why he would clam up forever. It may take a few weeks or even months for him to get used to your place but I'll bet that process really speeds up if he knew and lived with you previously. Also if you have all his things, cage, toys etc from your Dad's place that will make thing more familiar as well. You just need to have patience with these guys, they are definitely not like dogs and cats but you probably know that. Sorry about Snowy. They make a place in your heart that lasts forever. It must be pretty special to have your Dad's bird and I love hearing about birds that get taken care of like that.

Sounds like she's growing like a weed. I do believe Timnehs get north of 300 for sure when full grown. Our little Congo piggy was 435 at 3.75 months when she came home. Four years later we're at around 480, sometimes hitting the 500 grand mark after a nice day of stuffing herself. We've definitely noticed a drop off in her ability to fly sorties in the house. She used to be so fast and nimble. Now she's still fast but not she can't go around the living room 20 times. Now it's more like 10.

Charlotte would like to say hello to her foster Mommy! Hope you don't mind me posting her here, she was officially part of the Murphy Flock! Fortunately (or unfortunately I'm not sure which) she's a very early riser. The minute she hears anything, she starts screeching to come get her. So she gets about an hour of Daddy time before the big Grey Goose gets up and demands her Royal Court is in order, which means her competition, Charlotte, must remain locked away in the dungeons.

We don't do seeds for any of our birds. They get them as training treats only. Also, the mix that I buy has a lot of nuts in them so another reason I don't give them any more 'seeds'. Not sure about putting food in their cage at night. None of my birds except one, our new lil conure, moves around at night. They are literally in the same spot I put them every night. Nobirdy goes to the fridge. As for the chop, I do something similar with sprouts. I'll make a batch of sprouts that will probably last 2-3 days and that will be their main feed for the day. I will mix in some other stuff: bananas, veggie mix etc to spruce it up. They only have access to Harrisons during the day while we're at work because they can't fling it and make huge damn mess. Morning and afternoon outside aviary time is when they get the sloppy stuff. They can fling to their hearts delight (and the delight of the chickens waiting right outside the wire) and I don't care. Make sure to get us some pics! It's been right DEAD around here lately.

Nailed it! BTW...her name is nailed down: Charlotte. I like it!