SRSeedBurners

You wouldn't happen to be posted at Quantico?

I'd be interested to know if the plucking stops once Buddy is reunited with his/her flock.

We have a Stewart - named from the SNL skit. He's always getting in trouble so the name fit.

We're getting new floors and new countertops. I'm wondering about the safety of the birds. I took a pic of the urethane they will be using. Anyone had their floors redone around their birds? Ours will be locked away in their own room but I'm not sure that's enough. Although it will be a major PITA, I also have the option of moving them into the RV. Of course I will have to move in there with them. A bird sitter is another option but the only one I know of is the breeder where we got Greycie and that's a 2+ hour drive away. Plus the job is going to take around 5 days. Bostik BST Urethane - wood flooring urethane adhesive

Wow, I've never seen her site before. I can't believe she can free-fly Greys as she does. A few posts down she's describing the day her Grey outran a Peregrin. That's some crazy scary stuff. I guess the only bird that's safe to free fly would be a raptor of some sort, but then the Ravens will harass it. There's also the guy here who posts very infrequently about free flying his Grey in Asia. I can't think of his name right now....

Greycie - kind of named her ever before we even located a breeder. Then I start registering at these bird sites and find 'Greycie' or 'Gracie' is a common name for Greys so I almost ditched the name in favor of Charlamagne or 'Charlette'.

Yep, that thread pre-dates my arrival here by about a year. Rikki goes above and beyond by following the dish to the floor. Greycie has never had to go there because she's 10 for 10! The ones she pulls out of the cupboard are close to 8 feet high and hit the counter before bouncing to the floor. No chance of surviving that. She's also got a naughty habit of dumping water bowls. You can see the same satisfaction in her face as the water flows across the counter. She's soaked my wallet and my cell phone along with any mail that is sitting on the counter. Sometimes I want to wring her neck.

Anyone else get the shocking sound of plates/glasses/bowls crashing to the floor from their kitchen? We have carpet in the living room so prefer to leave the two feather-heads in the kitchen to eat. Greycie has learned an annoying habit of dragging the plate or bowl to the edge and lifting and dropping until it goes overboard. She will also sit on the cupboard doors and pull at the plates, bowls and glasses until she gets one to go crashing to the counter and floor. If she can topple a glass on the counter,she'll roll it to the edge and watch it crash. It's gotten to where we can't leave her unattended around the corner because she will open the cupboard doors and then it's plate slinging time. We have to use the heavier crocks now so she can't haul them to the edge and make them walk the plank. But dare anyone leave out a personal bowl or plate...she'll get it. Her count now is around 10 broken items. It was funny the first couple of times.

Greycie has had multiple cuts and abrasions around what I call her 'mask' on her face. She's a rough player and sometimes I have no idea 'how she did it this time'. The worst was when she managed to wrap herself up in a towel and then fall 6 feet onto a hard tile floor. Took her two days before she recovered from that one. No broken bones though...just a nice sore spot. I swear she's worse than having a little toddler around.

My wife is from Australia. I've been 3-4 times now. They seem to call all cockatoos "galars" whether it's the rose-breasted or not. Her sister who still lives there caught a Lorikeet. She had it for several years and then accidentally let it out. She's the one who incidentally let Greycie out when she came for a visit several months ago. I was impressed with all the colorful birds they have there. Ours are sort of grrey and colorless here (don't tell Greycie I said that). My mother-in-law lives in an area where there are a lot of kookaburras doing their calls all the time. It's sort of surreal when you first get there. What else did I do while I was there - got out of the rental car and chased a goanna down the middle of the road. Shows you how smart I am sometimes. He was sort of cute like this one:

I have a channel but I haven't convinced myself that the videos can be made public. They're 'unlisted' so you have to dig through my posts and find the links. Maybe I'll make a permanent post in the Pictures and Video subforum containing all my links.

Wow, those were in-the-wild cockatoos. Wonder if you could friend them and they would be regular visitors?

She has very similar mannerisms to my Greycie. You have a roll-over Grey there if you notice at 0:23 she does the exact same thing that my Greycie does. I have a video on here showing her on top of the fridge trying to roll. How old is Scarlett? What a cutie.

Yep, first thing when coming out of the cage for any extended length of time, we head straight for her potty spot and I start using the phrase "Go potty". She knows it and will start the tail wiggle. We only have rare accidents these days.

Ok as far as I know. She wasn't in a fright-flight, we're just baffled that she did it. It's not like it was in her way either as she has to go up and over her tree and then down sharply to hit the glass. She's a weird one sometimes.

Greycie is just past her 1yo bday and she flew into a window on the other side of her tree. I couldn't believe it as she knows it's there. Occasionally they will.

I feed brussel sprouts warm and they get DEVOURED. I also feed cabbage straight out of my salad and my Grey loves it. We have a lot of diversity here so they are practically eating different things just about daily though.

I highly suggest getting a sign-in or whatever is needed to view the pictures at the link I provided. That guy built a really really good aviary that is not to over-the-top. He even provided the source of the aviary netting that he used. With four birds and possible being five in the next few months we're putting a serious push into getting our aviary built. Your carport idea is interesting. The breeder we bought Greycie from has a flight pen built from a huge hoop-style greenhouse. She demonstrated flying her birds in there for us and I thought it was neat. One of my points for having an aviary is so Greycie can be outside in the UVA/B rays so she can get her quota fulfilled. Hate to de-rail the thread but it's a very interesting topic.

Thoughts? Mine - Loved it that they didn't glamorize parrot ownership. Reinforced my guilt for parrots in the first place. I've always felt it should be illegal to own/breed/etc parrots in general. My wife actually commented during the piece that it's a highly selfish act to bring a parrot into your home and ask it to bond with someone in the home. Unfortunately I agreed. Really sad to see some of the cases they profiled. Lou left abandoned in a house to basically fend for himself. The overwhelmed parrot rescues. I really wanted to cry when the profiled the African Grey that was addicted to nicotine. Just breaks my heart. I wish there was an organization like that at the end that was focused on training the birds to be reintroduced back into their wild habitat. The parrots are just another segment of this world we've managed to pollute and destroy.

No advice on the crazed cockatiel but would love to hear what your plans are on the other topic you mentioned - the aviary. We had a guy come out just today to give us a quote on a Pergola to see if that would somehow work as an aviary. This guy has an awesome setup too.

You might try some warm food to jump start her appetite. It might just be mine but warm things will go down almost no problem.

I have the book 'For the Love of Greys'. I agree, not that special - will probably sell it online. One of the best books I have read that I compare other books to is by John C. McMichael PhD 'Caiques - Their care Breeding and Some Natural History'. Granted it's not about Greys but he does a really good job of not simply regurgitating the false information that's out there. I wished he had experience and would write a book about Greys. I so often see people just propagating misinformation because it's so often quoted elsewhere (guilty as charged here). Examples are parrots and chocolate and similar. Greycie decimated a chocolate bar the other day that was left out and we couldn't tell a thing with her. I swear she ate half the bar, the wrapper and piled the rest on the floor. She's also gorged herself on my wife's coffee that was left out. Milk - she's been into that constantly. I don't know what's true and what's just being parrot'd because it's popular to quote. McMichael addressed the lactose topic in his book and basically went on to say that he gives his birds a half inch cube of cheese per day. Greycie will do anything for cheese, it's her absolute favorite. Read it on the internets though and you're led to believe you're poisoning your bird with lactose. Anyway, a good book is a must. I have that African Grey Parrot Handbook mentioned by Dave. I'll have to break it out and read it. I quit reading For the Love of Greys about 1/4 of the way through.

True dat! I love how Greycie wants to see me every time I come through the door in the evenings. Our little Toby (Caique) is even the same way. He will waddle, not hopping yet and he was clipped, across the floor to ask to be picked up. They're so cute. I think about them all day long. We plan our days around them. My wife acts like they're her children and she wasn't even a bird person till I begged to get a Grey. The weirdest thing I do is probably telling Greycie little bedtime stories at night, in the dark, before putting her up. She has a hard time going to bed and needs some extra bedtime coddling.

Sweet baby face.

Sounds awesome. Your lil TAG just moved out of the stone ages. We had some idiot come in one time and tried petting our birds with a broom handle. What a dumba55. The ex-wife promptly removed him from the premises.