Taking Time

Digger is a beautiful Blue Quaker. I have been working with her for a few weeks now trying to get her to step up and in general be more social with me and less scared of people. It's been very slow going. I have noticed that with smaller birds it always takes longer to get them used to people, probably because they are small and we are huge in their eyes.

I have been very lucky with digger. She doesn't bite, heck she barely even nibbles. So if she ends up on the floor I can just pick her up and carry her back to her perch on the play stand. Makes life so much better if I am not bleeding all over the place. =D Besides, blood would muck up her feathers and she's so pretty I wouldn't want that. ;-)

"Ain't I perdy!"

This was the first time I got her to stay on the bird stand. Not only did she hang out there for an hour...she hung out there with 4 other birds for an hour! Only one of said birds was hand tame so getting them all there was an adventure in and of it's self. XD

Here are 4 of the 5, bottom left is Toro (Jenday Conure), top left is Digger (Blue Quaker). Right front is London (Green Cheek Conure) and next to him is Zora (Peach Front Conure) both of whom decided that this was the right moment to turn away from the camera. D=

Digger and I had a little, short lived break through today. She and Zora were climbing around their cages and for what ever reason got spooked taking to the skies. Zora zipped past me and landed on the floor near my bedroom. Digger landed on the arm of my chair next to me, stayed about a minute before panicking and flying away and landing on Echo's cage, which in turn had me panicking. (Everyone is fine, got digger off his cage rather quickly.)

So, were working on it. Small steps every day. It takes time to earn trust back, and I have lots of time to work on it. =D

Conures & Quakers

During the last few weeks with my migraines coming with barely any notice, I have found myself trying to preempt any loud bird noises. This is not easy with a room filled with conures.

In the morning s John goes in and feeds them while I am still asleep, thus saving me from their screams of "Hey! Thats the food guy! Do you see the food guy? I see the food guy. Hey food guy, FEED ME!"

I have a theory that a beak chomping on food is less likely to scream and so far I have been right so when the noise level starts to rise again around 11am I have been grabbing my bag of homemade bird bread and facing an onslaught of my own. I imagine it's something like this, "Hey, it's a lady this time! What's that she's got there? Hey Lady, what's in that bag? Give it to me!"

So I have been pushing threw the fray of screams to have a very quiet and easy going afternoon like I am now, the only noise is Kenya practicing her whistles and calling the dogs to see if she can get them to come to her.

Now the weekends are different, I don't usually go into the bird room because when John is home, and they seem to know exactly what days he is home, the conures never truly shut up. So today when I went in there it was total jubilation at the site of me. I really heard a difference in their calls, they sounded...happy.

The most amusing part was my pair of Quakers, who really don't have any use for humans other then the bringers of food and water. Normally when I am with in hearing distance they yell at me to "go away" actually saying those words over and over, "Go away! Go Away!" Today, as I was feeding the cage next to them I got, "Come here! Come Here!" I smiled opened their cage deposited a hunk-o-bread and closed their cage to a resounding, "Go Away!"

This has amused me more then it should I'm sure but I still giggle because I can.