SRSeedBurners

We learned some valuable lessons - you can never be too careful with a fully-flighted bird. I've resolved to double and triple check her harness every time I put it on her. Doors will be reinforced with cargo netting so there are two layers of protection. It's also a constant reminder to us and visitors to be door aware. I need to figure out a way to secure an open window as occasionally we like to open one and I know she can chew through window screen like nobody's business. We're going to get moving on the outdoor aviary which will serve as another layer of protection through the back, most often used doorway. I can't believe how much I anguished over losing her. The first few hours we spent frantically searching and calling. Later that day and into the night despair and depression quickly set in. I'm not one to cry, probably have cried less than a handful of times in the last 20 years. I bawled like a baby multiple times over the last two days. Every little thing I did that reminded me of Greycie, like taking a shower and seeing her handy work in our shower curtain full of holes. Eating and there's no one on my shoulder with her left foot grabbing my ear desperately wanting to share my food. No morning and night singing and terrordactly flights. We woke up the next morning and there was this huge empty hole in our home. Even Raven our Jardine who is Greycie's daytime companion was acting different. We started searching with the car but it's impossible to see up and the engine noise prevents you from hearing things. I switched to my scooter and it helped cover a lot of ground quickly but still the noise issue, I would have never heard her call had I gone by her - maybe I did a few times and didn't know it. We finally switched to our Townie bicycles as they are dead silent and we can hear everything. We found her around 9pm - I stayed up on a natural high till 2am this morning. None of us can believe that we found her. She seems to have regressed back to her baby ways. I haven't seen her beg to be fed like a baby in a few months. That's all she's doing this morning. She will not be placed on her tree - only my or my wife's shoulder will do and she is doing that constant baby cooing. It's cute but I hope it doesn't mean she now will have 'issues'. We're hoping she'll get back to her naughty self soon enough. We're still debating whether we should clip her or not. She loves to fly around the house. Having her fly to your shoulder and being able to toss her back to her perch from across the house is extremely fun and useful. Everytime we see our Jardine just sit there we wished she could fly too, it's really sad to see a bird that doesn't have the confidence of a flighted bird. Sorry for the long posts....we just can't believe our luck. So so lucky.

It happened and it sucks in the worst kind of way. Our Greycie got past two doorways and flew to the horizon without a trace. My wife has had two of her Australian visitors in our house and I have had an inclination to just lock my Greycie up permanently until they are gone. We have her mother and her husband again in September and he's the one I'm most worried about because he takes over the place like it's his own. My least worry, her sister who had her own bird in Australia, was the one who left a doorway wide open and allowed Greycie to slip out and fly into the great unknown. I've hesitated on posting this because I feel highly irresponsible. I feel absolutely horrible and have had nightmares including an extremely vivid dream of Greycie sitting on my pasture fence calling to me. I woke up bawling at the fact that the dream was so real and realizing that it was only a dream and I couldn't go save her. This forum is on my button bar so I see a Grey every time I open the browser. Greycie's picture is my Facebook picture. Her picture is also my IM avatar which I constantly use at work. I'm completely surrounded by her image and I'm trying to figure out how I can begin to remove all this as I don't think I can handle getting another grey at least for a few years until I get over this. So we have posted a hundred full-color and some grey-scale flyers on local 4-way intersections. I had my secretary at work print off over 200 full color flyers that I planned to tape to doorways and intersections. My wife read online somewhere to search before dawn and after dusk. We've recorded my Jardine's parrot's contact call that I planned to hook up to a portable boom box and play behind my bike in a trailer to see if I can get a response. The area she flew, I've search the neighborhoods relentlessly, some areas I've been to over ten times. The advice I've seen, don't ever give up. We never did. Now for the good news - we found her tonight after only 48 hours but it seems like a month. We found her, after dark, on a path that I never intended to search as it was not the direction we saw her go. We were headed home after an exhausting few hours of calling and searching. My wife stopped to adjust her seat and I heard that tell-tale squeak I know oh so well. I called back and Greycie started contact calling in the dead of night. You cannot imagine the relief at hearing her call to us. Once she knew it was us she wouldn't stop calling. She was planted in a tree in front of a house. My wife went to the doorway to ask permission to try and retrieve our bird but Greycie had other plans - she busted out of the tree in the dark and fluttered down brushing by me and finally landing on my wife. She really really wanted to go home. We got her home and she was emaciated. It's been hot here but not Texas 110 degree hot. She drank up a storm and ate like a pig. She's now sleeping in her cage that she never really liked. She really wanted to be put to bed tonight. It's amazing the change in her demeanor. I can't tell you how relieved we are to find her. We held out hope that the mass flyers and the constant searching and calling would pay off and it did. Two days in the wild and Greycie was ready to come home. Time for the cargo netting in the doorways that I've been meaning to put in place. I've learned my lesson on this one.

A round of Tropican High Performance biscuits for everyone. Or as we call them around here "Who wants a monkey biscuit".

That second pic - "Care for a peanut?". He's a cutie. What's his demeanor like?

We've had a lot more unhappy endings than happy endings. About 5 miles from us there is a raptor rescue center. The joke around here is while being rehabilitated at the rescue, the patients are given our address for local meal options. We live in the burbs so we can't figure out why we have such a bad hawk/owl problem. Here's the other happy ending story that recently happened: I had 12 chickens at one point and was planning on getting some more. One day I had a hawk attack my adult chickens, which is rare that they go after a full sized adults. Result - one chicken missing and one with some weird disorientation disorder. I'm assuming she was picked up and dropped on her head or something. She sat in the corner of an isolation cage for two weeks barely able to move as I kept her syringe fed and watered hoping for the best. As I would feed daily I would try to do a head count....11 one day...12 the next...11 the next. Chickens are hard to count so I figured I had them all but the one that got taken. So about 3-4 weeks later I go to feed and hear some baby sparrows in my barn. I count 11 chickens and then go for a look at the baby sparrows. Turns out they are baby chickens hidden away in an old plastic water barrel...and there's my missing 12th chicken. She had been brooding eggs without my permission or knowledge and hatched out 8 babies. That explains why one day I would get 11 and one day 12 because she would occasionally sneak out for feeding time. She was probably brooding before the hawk attack, it's just that I was not counting beaks until that day of the attack. As for the chicken with the disorder, she has nearly recovered but you can still tell she is a little lopsided. We now call her dizzy chick.

Based on my n=1 sample I voted true. My BFA was far from clingy. My two grey's are closer to clingy than my amazon was and I don't consider them clingy although Greycie is a little moreso.

We have a hawk problem here as well. They nab my chickens every so often and sit around hunting here a lot. I take Greycie and my other birds out but we never leave them outside of arms reach (and of course fully harnessed). I have gotten used to Greycie's body language that there is a hawk in the area as she's a LOT better at spotting them than I am. The thing about the hawks here is they know us and we know them. They'll literally fly into our backyard to try and nab a chick off our lawn knowing full well we're sitting under the porch. But if we're too close they won't try. So we keep our high-value birds on us all the time. They won't try if the bird they're after is to near us OR if my dogs are around. Our dogs have learned to hunt the hawks and have nearly scored a few times. My wife got her hands on a hawk once and was too frightened to make him pay. Too bad it wasn't me. And if you're still reading...this one's good. A hawk flew into our backyard and nabbed a 3 week old chick right in front of my wife. She instantly threw a plate at it and missed. She chased the hawk down to the barn and thought all was lost. 5 minutes later she heard a baby cheeping on the neighbors property and she called to it. It came running back to her. Three puncture wounds to the chest but the chick lived. They're pretty brazen around here.

That castle would make a damn nice chicken coop on my two acres. Ripe for my flock of silkies I want.

My mental images on this one cracks me up. Especially when I think what Dayo must have been thinking - "WTF, he's gone mad and turned on me...I knew not to let my guard down with non-domesticatable hoomans" - haahaaa

Ahhh...Frodo has the foofy cheeks, I wanna squeeze... Anyhow, our Greycie is 7mos and has been with us 4 of those months. She like both my wife and I. I work daily and am gone anywhere from 10-15 hours M-F then about half the weekend I'm gone too. She still loves to see me when I come in although her party favorite is my wife who is home with her daily. She dislikes my daughter and I think it's because my daughter harassed her a little in the beginning like she harrasses our cat. I finally broke my daughter of this but too late I'm afraid. We're busy repairing that relationship.

I love that quote - "Why drive yourself nuts running around the forest when your neighbor can do it for you".

Cute bird. Just love that second pic. That's the one I would have chosen for an avatar

Avoid work. My big concern is what am I going to do with my birds. Leaving them in the hands of my 19yo is not exactly comforting. My best vacation ever was spent: - 4 weeks cycling the end-to-end trail in the U.K. - Then we caught a ferry across the North Sea and spent the next three weeks cycling from Amsterdam to the Rhine and following that down into Stuttgart, Germany. I didn't have birds at the time though...

They are master manipulators of those heart strings. <------ I mean, just look at that face.

Can't wait for the pics!

I've always wanted to slurp down a June bug grub. Maybe next time I dig a couple up me and Greycie will have a go at 'em...

Interesting stuff Greywings. I have always wondered why around here and other places people say to give their birds fruits and nuts sparingly? I don't see African Greys digging up vegetable crops and lowering their natural fruit intake. My Greycie will bury herself in a mango if given the opportunity. Carrot - meh. I bet they don't drive to the nearest drive through either Exercise!!!

I am more interested in your (vs your birds) personal benefits and such would be interested to know: - how much does it cost you to eat as you've mentioned? - You mention no grains - why? I am on a mission to get away from the Frankenwheat that the food industry (Monsanto) is pawning on the herd, although finding a local source for Einkorn wheat is proving difficult. The oldest people in the world seem to live on fish and rice, not red meats. Although the Mediterranean diet including red meat seems to have some benefit but most likely due to the olive oils they eat?!? Not once do you mention exercise. I also feel better at 44 than I did at 30 and 35. It's 100% due to the fact I started exercising like a fiend. Ages 17-24 I was in the Marines where no one is fat or lazy, at least NCOs. Then I went to college and was still active because I rode my bicycle ALL OVER campus and rode it into the town nearby quite often. THEN I started working in corporate Ameri$$a sitting on my ass 24/7. My health went downhill in a matter of a year, and I'm talking downhill in a bad way. I had never once in my life been fat...I started putting on a spare tire. It took me the next 4 years before I finally picked up something I cant quit - bike racing - and it has turned my health back around. I also will commute to work via bike but most weeks I spend around 8-15 hours of solid training time and I feel much better because of it. What's killing people is sitting in their bubbles 24/7...it's not how even our closest ancestors (meaning our grandparents) lived - little pudding pops under air conditioners complaining about the 2 minutes they have to cross the pavement to get to their next air conditioned bubble. Try training in 90-100 degree heat for 4 hours. I sleep like a baby every time I do it. I would like to get my nutrition under control too though.

Got word that my cousin's house sits next to one that got flattened. Every time this happens around here I'm thinking the move to Pheonix sounds better and better.

A different perspective on this topic: I grew up on a cattle ranch in Northern NM and had a cattleman as a father, therefore we learned to shoot varmits. I blasted everything: skunks, coyotes, stray dogs, cats and most of all prairie dogs. I must have over a thousand prairie dog kills. When I was probably 8 or so, I remember shooting a bird out of a tree and watching it fall to the ground. When I got to it, there was this little feathery limp body and I felt horrible. It was different than blasting a prairie dog. I was never the same after that. For some reason just shooting a bird for the hell of it didn't sit well with me. Later on I got to where I couldn't shoot anything but it started with that little bird. There was something I remember feeling about that bird but can't quite put my finger on it. On another front, I never quite feel the same about my other pets as I do my birds. I love my dogs but they just don't have that deep connection. Even my GCC who we all joke only has three brain cells to rub together I seem to be drawn to more than any of the other critters. This has always puzzled me because birds are so different from us, from the feathers, to the type of skin they have, their beaks etc.... My wife would argue there's nothing like a horse but I grew up hating horses, and cattle and anything that had to do with being a slave on a cattle ranch.

She looks cuddly!

80/20 rule in full affect here. When I was in the Marines we called them the 10%. I started lurking a year ago and knew where the trouble comes from on a regular basis before I signed up - it's all in the archives.

Our GCC Stewart does not like my wife. He starts clicking, fluffing up, side-to-side rocking and this cute little 'licking his lips' routine whenever my wife gets close to him. We all think it's cute, they've both written each other off. There's a line in the sand, we all accept it.

meh...

Disco the talking parakeet is headed to NYC for a slot on the Today Show (for the record, I can't stand that POS matt lauer). I've watched a few of Disco's youtube videos and was estatic when I saw oh his FB page that he was headed for NYC for a gig on the Show. They don't know the time slot yet but I'd imagine they'll post it on his FB page. http://www.youtube.com/user/MsJumpinJude