Bird Songs

Bird songs are a little different when you live with a parrot, or in my case, a bunch of parrots. Its not those pretty wild bird songs, though I guess if I could get a tape of them I could probobly hear them echoing off the walls at all hours. ;)

Not long ago, to combat Echo's screaming anytime I left the room, I started singing as I made lunch, washed the dishes...went to the bathroom. It's been working wonderfully. He gets so happy when I sing that he has figured out the first note and likes to try and prompt me into song when he is in the mood to hear it.

It's silly but I sing "My Bonnie lies over the ocean", it's one of the few kid songs that I know all the words to and can sing it with out music and Echo has been singing it back to me lately. Well, kinda. He has a few lines down like the first one, all the "bring back's" and "to me to me's" He will sing those for hours and pay very close attention to me when I sing to him. You can see the gears turning in his head as he tries to figure it all out. This is amusing me much more then it should I think.

I am thinking about "Soft Kitty" next once we are done with this song. it's simple and he should pick it up rather quickly. Anyone have any other suggestions?

Friday Picture Post

It's been a rough month here, with everything that's happening there has been very little time to get out and actually enjoy ourselves. I have been busying myself with fractal making in the hopes of keeping my mind off some of the more traumatic incidents that have recently been daunting us. And on occasion snapping pictures of the animals when they do something that makes me smile. These are a few of those pictures.

Gunnar (front) and Scarlet (rear) were running around and playing until I pulled out the camera. Scarlet went for the instant sitting girl pose while Gunnar was curious as to what he might have been doing wrong at that moment.

Echo posing pretty for his close up.

This is London, one of the green-cheek conures we have here. She is pretty feisty and very brave for a smaller bird.

As I was feeding her London made a break for it and flew over to the kitchen window. Lou is outside watching the action and wondering if she'll get close enough to grab.

Slowly life is returning to normal, life moves on even if I don't really want to. So I will try and get out a little more and of course, take pictures to share with everyone.

See you guys next week, have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Fun Day

To day is going to be a fun day. How do I know? Because since my husband has left for work the birds have been talking and talking and talking in ways that has me giggling like a mad woman.

Echo: I love you
Kenya:*wolf whistle* I love you toooooo!
Duke: Hello
Kenya: Helloooo Stink-ER!

This has been repeating over and over again with small variations on the theme. For instance Kenya saying "Hello Echo." Followed by "You Stink-ER!" She really emphasizes the er part in Stinker.

Morning

I am not a morning person. I never have been. My body wakes up hours before my brain does so to say I am grouchy or cranky in the morning is an understatement. The good thing about this is I basically just sit and grumble until my brain catches up with the rest of me which tends to lead to some pretty quiet mornings.

Yesterday morning my normal grumpy mood was being bullied by a lot of back pain, lending me to be not quite my usual growly self, more of a whimpering state actually. I shuffled out of my room hunched over like I should be residing in a bell tower someplace, my bed head and half mast eyelids just giving the whole bell tower theory more credence. I made my way through the living room to a hail of greetings like every morning...but not quite.

Echo: "Hola!"
Me: "Hola Echo."
Duke: "Hello!"
Me: "Good Morning, Duke."
Kenya: "Go Lay Down!!"
Me: "I just got up."

Gotta love those morning conversations with the feathered ones. Kenya has never minced words and always seems to find just the right phrase for the moment. ;)

Escape

Last night while checking on everyone one of our green cheeks got loose and went flying about the house screeching.

"I'm a Green Cheek Conure and I'm on the lamb!"

Scarlet ran and hid, bravery is not one of her finer points unless it's something on the other side of the window.

"It's right behind me, isn't it!?!"

Gunnar sat and watched John and I as we wrangled the bird.

"That way, he went that way!"

Echo, who was on the bird stand, wanted to help. He hopped down and ran around the floor squawking back at the flying green cheek following it from the ground.

"Notme bird up there! Notme bird up there! GET IT!"

It was a very amusing night. :D

Christmas with the Cranky

The crankiness has spread from the amazons to the others. I am not sure why, they are getting lots of yummies and fun so whats the cranky-pants stuff all about?

Echo, the most easy going of all the flock shows off his cranky with a look that says, "Back off Momma, I'm not in the mood for snuggles."

Duke here displays how he puts the "AH!" in "Bah, Humbug!" And yes, he was charging me in his ever so loving "I am going to eat you." way. (He's been taking lessons from Lou.)

Pedro who is cranky all the time normally has taken being a cranky-puss to an art from. (Pedro as you can see, kinda, is not well. The vet has no clue why, neither do we, but he is eating on his own which is an improvement from a few months ago.)

So it's going to be a Cranky Parrot Christmas over here, whee!


((Hey, Sara, "Cranky Parrot Christmas" There's a fic in that!))

Quiet

Spent the morning watching Echo tear all the toys off the play stand. Once he wore himself out I brought Duke out now he is pacing back and forth not happy that the toys have been moved.

Ah sibling rivalry, so much fun to watch.

I wish my camera was working right now.

Bad Bird Day

Just like having a bad hair day, it seems that every feathered occupant here is having an off feather day.

Duke has not stopped screaming all day, I finally had to cover him to give my migraine a rest. Kenya almost "got me" when I was feeding her. Echo let out an alert scream right on my ear as I was feeding him. Pedro is upset and yells at me every time I walk past him. In fact, the only bird that seems happy to see me today is Lou, and I am just not falling for it.

Stand off

Last week Duke and Echo met on the play stand for the first time. It went about as well as one expects these things to go. Duke was a bully but Echo held his ground. I of course was close by, a stick in one hand, just in case, and a camera in the other.

Echo displaying at Duke, the ruffled feathers to make himself look bigger more of a threat etc. The display is to let Duke know that he doesn't want him to come any closer.

"What the heck!?!"
A closer look of Echo's display

Things calming down a bit, but not for long. This is about 15 mins into the first meeting.

I put echo up soon after the last picture. They spent just a little over 15 minutes on the stand together. No actual fight but a lot of displaying on both sides. Dukes displays were much more subtle then Echo's. Duke is much older and has a bit more experience in these matters, he also tends to be much more sneaky and deliberate with what he does. Which in the end, worries me.

Normal

Tings are finally returning to normal here. Birds are seemingly calm and noisy at times. Duke is back to screaming when he doesn't get his way, unlike the just screaming all the time because of all the hustle and bustle around him, and Echo has returned to the playful clown he has always been.


Echo loves to wrestle. He has more fun wrestling with me and his toys then with any other activity. Because of all the excitement he didn't get out of his cage much last week so his jaunt on the play stand today was long over due. He made prime use of his time wrestling with his toys for over an hour. Enjoy the pic-spam of his fun. ;)

As a note for those concerned, the toy was a temporary addition as of this morning, when Echo broke the original I had in it's place. The chains and bell will be removed as soon as my husband gets home and has a chance to exchange them with newer ones. Until then I am watching him carefully.

Party Time!

It's Friday again, time for a nice relaxing weekend before the holidays rip us to pieces. ;) I don't know about you guys but Echo knows exactly how I feel.

Here he is showing you his impression of momma when she starts to stress, thinking about shopping and decorating and driving much to far in the car to visit homes filled to the brim with people. AHHHHH! ^^;;;





On a serious note though, Echo is the clown of the house. He always does this bit of dancing if he deems that I am not paying "enough" attention to him. XD

Settling down

Things are finally finding a flow in the house. I was up early this morning, I went straight into feeding the flock and quieting everyone down. They can get quite loud in the morning.

Everyone gets bird bread in the AM. It's a basic corn bread/apple juice mixture with anything we have in the fridge they can eat mixed and baked. Almost everybody gobbles it down before I have a chance to walk away from their cage.

Duke now only eats when he is on the play stand. I put a foraging toy in his cage about 2 hrs ago in hopes that it will encourage him to eat when he is in there. I hope it works.

Echo seems to be relaxing around Duke. He isn't really screaming when Duke gets close anymore. Things are looking up.

Kenya is still eating anything I offer her. Defiantly a plus. She is also very curious about Duke. She watches him all the time and moved to the side of her cage that is closest to him when he is on the stand.

Lou has been talking a lot when I leave the room. Right now he is calling out "step up" and "Peek-a-boo". He may want to see me, so he knows where I am, or maybe he wants to lure me in for a bite, who knows. I think he wants out and is trying to be cute so I forget which bird he is and open the cage door. But I am suspicious like that. ;)

I have been trying to switch the birds to a organic pellet this week. It's going slowly as any food switch does. Pedro is completely switched over, and Echo is mostly there as well. I hope the others fall into line as well. The new pellet is much better for them.

Ut-Oh!

I know I need to watch what I say around the birds. I know this. My husband knows this. This is why when wanting to cuss myself blue I look like a fool yelling "OH Muffins!" at the top of my lungs.

So when Duke let out a scream the other day and Echo immediately replied with "Shut Up!" I ducked my head and slipped out of the room in shame. I am pretty sure he got that from me, but it is possible that John has done it too.

Sometimes, when migraines strike, I can be a very bad birdie mommy. :( Sorry Duke.

Calm

Things have been calming down slowly since we brought three of the birds in from outside. We still have three more to go and I am almost dreading it because it will get really loud when two of them come inside.

Duke still poses a problem when the sun comes up. His alarm clock is so annoying. It gets loud too, especially if I don't come talk to him. But I can not give in, will not reward bad noises, darn it.

Echo has become more relaxed with running about the house getting into everything. When the holidays pass he will have more access to roam because the house won't have "extra wires" laying around. My birds love holiday decorations, and not in a good way. If how they react to all the Halloween stuff is any indication, Christmas will be fun. I can tell. ;)

Who is that handsome bird?

Amazons are natural born clowns. It's one of the reasons I love them so much. Echo embodies this characteristic to the utmost degree. He loves to get me giggling and seems to have that marker set as his goal every time I bring him out to roam around the play stand.

Today he found the metal mirror. He was so stunned. He could not figure out why the other bird tasted so funny. He tried to preen him, talk to him, even attacked him a few times and still, that silly metal sheet got between him and his objective.

"Who is that beautiful bird?"

He was so preoccupied with the “other” bird that he ignored me as if I wasn't there. Something he never does. He even ignored all the people food I put out for him, and let me tell you, his feathery butt really gets moving for people food.

"Come here."

I find this interesting mainly because he does not like Duke, the other amazon, anywhere near him. So much so, that he will throw a tantrum about it. Duke, on the other hand, wants to know everything he can about Echo and stalks him. It's an interesting thing to watch, though I never let Duke get too close because I still don't know what his motives are.

"Target acquired, I'm going in!"

Dinner and play time.

Echo decided to have dinner with us the other night. We were having one of his favorites, broccoli.

Nom nom nom nom

Then it was play time!

Got your beak!

Got your thumb!
It was a fun night for all of us. Maybe some slight bruising to our thumbs from an over excited Echo, but no real harm done.

Amazon Rivalry

As I said yesterday, Duke was moved inside last weekend as was doing great. So last night we brought Echo inside. We figured he would have been the easier of the two but Duke and Echo have this rivalry thing that we thought might cause an issue.

Well maybe Rivalry isn't the right word. Duke is -very- interested in Echo. Obsessed actually. Echo on the other hand feels threatened by Duke, and there for gets rather grumpy and nippy if he thinks Duke is too close. (“Too close” being anywhere Echo can see him.)

Mr. Grumpypants

All things considered, the night went pretty well. This morning as I went to take Duke out of his cage He ran up to me and said “Here we go!” This is a new phrase for me, he has never said it to me before. It was too clear for it to be just learned so he must have picked it up in the ten years of life before he got here.

Echo has also picked up a new phrase. “Oh, come on!” Which he just screamed from the other room. I will have to thank my husband for that one. He yells it the same way when things are not going the way he wants them to. Seems Echo has grasped onto the meaning behind the phrase as well.

Whose my baby?

The baby of my flock is Echo, a year old blue fronted amazon.

                                                                 "I'm the Baby!"

 This is Echo at 2 months old. He was a very big boy. He still is a big boy. He talks better then most of my parrots. He is quick with a “Hello” and an “I love you” every time he sees me. No matter what he is doing if I come up to his cage he rushes over and reaches out through the bars with his foot trying to catch me and bring me closer for some cuddling.

Echo and a few others spend their summers on my back porch. Why the back porch? The heat and moisture in the air here in Florida helps with their feathers, so in the summer most of my big birds reside on the porch. Out of direct sun and the weather, but where they can enjoy the day. As a result, a lot of them have picked up the calls of our local native birds, which is always amusing.

"I'm a bird dog!"

If anyone knows anything about Florida , it's that we have a lot of summer storms here. Most are mild, but some like to make an impact. The other day we had a pretty good storm brewing so I went to check on Echo and others who reside outside, something I do automatically anytime I hear the wind kicking up. I was a bit surprised to find Echo running around loose! Apparently, the food door was not latched well and it wiggled its self open.

So there I am, on the back porch with a loose amazon, who is not happy with the on coming storm, and I know, with 100% certainty, that I am about to be on the receiving end of one heck of a bite. I have no choice in this, I have to get him off the ground and back into his cage. So I step forward, reach out, tell him to step up and get bit...hard.

I bite back the pain as Echo then guides my hand under him and steps up on me, lets go and proudly announces to the world, “Good Booooy!”

If he were not so darn cute I'd hold a grudge.

~Suzanne