Another step on the road of progress.

Was observing Garrus just a little while ago and he kept twitching his right wing alot like something was bothering him. From watching him move around I couldn't find anything broken or bleeding and it looked like it was just a feather that was probably set slightly off and thus annoying him.

Though I got him to perch on a stick so I could take a closer look at him, once he was out of the cage he finally stopped and did a little preening to that wing and seemed to resolve his issue with it.

I didn't prod much at it since Garrus hasn't let me really touch him at all since I got him.

The big thing though while he was on the stick is I had my free hand resting infront of him, just to get him use to it being closer in a non threatening manner. When he did something I wasn't expecting at all. Mainly he dipped his head down rather low to where it was near level with my free hand.

Knowing that many Pi's use this as a invitation to scritch their head I cautiously moved my hand forward till I was rubbing my finger along the back of his head. Not sure if I was doing it quite to his liking since after a good ten seconds he turned his head around to grip my finger briefly.

Though the slightly comically thing was he promptly put his head down and let me do more scritching. Then after ten to fifteen seconds he'd grab my finger again. I'd stop he'd look around a bit more then dip his head again.

When I was doing the scritching I was trying to bring the side of my finger back towards his beak against his feathers since I'd heard that parrots tend to prefer that motion rather than a petting motion like you would a cat.

Either way it was a nice surprise from him!


Also rather poor quality picture of Garrus afterwards. He kept moving around his cage so much though that my little smartphone couldn't get him into good focus.(Seems to be a thing with him, whenever I try to take a picture he decides its time to do some more moving around.)

That's awesome progress! Yay for Garrus He sounds typical though, Pi's (like my Raven also) don't like hands on them. Neck scratches and hanging out on you are about all we can expect from a typical Pi. Especially males. Good job!

I remember reading that about them when I was first looking at getting a parrot. While having a cuddly bird/pet would be really nice what attracted me to Pionus other than their more general quiet nature compared to some other parrots is just everything I read about them made me feel like we'd mesh persona wise a lot better than if I'd say gotten a Cockatoo love sponge.

Since I love my alone time, but I enjoy interacting with others as well. Which meshes rather well with how Pionus love interacting with you but they also like their private time to hang out and just watch or fiddle with their toys, or contemplate the existence of the universe.

Least that's the general vibe I got of Pionus when reading about them, unlike Cockatoos which while seem like awesome parrots also demand a lot more of your -personal me me love- attention. Least from what I've heard and read about Cockatoos. Can't really comment to much since I don't know anyone with one of those lovely birds.