welcoming a lilac crowned

[mh434]

I'm so jealous - I lost my LCA about a year and a half ago to gout. "Pauli" was a rescue, and an absolute treasure, and I miss him very badly.

Good for you, helping her!!!

 

[jeffisme]

Any secret for getting her interested in at least one toy? She has quite a selection, but she just basically sits on the perch all day in one place. I've put her on the play gym atop the cage, and she just climbs back in. On the gym in my dining room, she has no interest in any of the things I put there either.

The woman I got her from had her for six months and said she didn't play with a thing then either. I also see how tentative she is, walking very carefully to her food dish, as if she had been mistreated beforehand for it. Sometimes, she will take food from her dish and turn her back to us.

I do have her eating out of my hand now. I took her very favorite treats and put them in my palm. It took a minute or so for her to decide whether my hand was safer than my fingers and she decided the benefits outweighed the risks.

I'd love to see her play with something. Just sitting there all day staring at me can't be that interesting. And as I say, it was the same in her previous home. Maybe she's solving the theory of relativity in her head and I should just encourage that.

 

[jeffisme]

here she is enjoying her first piece of veggie burger.

 

[JerseyWendy]

Jeff, what type of toys does she have?

Perhaps start off with something super simple. How about you show her how to shred paper/paper bag? All you have to do is wedge some paper in between her cage bars, and start ripping tiny pieces off for her, thus showing her what she can do with it.

Another idea is to take a small piece of a natural tree branch, or a twig with bark still attached, and tempt her to remove the bark?

Does she like nutriberries? You can use simple gift wrap, cut some strips, roll the nutriberries in there and place in her food dish (that would be simple foraging).

Just some ideas.

 

[jeffisme]

Thanks, great suggestions. she loves nutberries. she has every single kind of toy, including a shredding one, a foraging one where I have put her favorite sunflower seeds, tiny leather strips to chew; one with paper to shred, and wood chips to chew.

no interest in the least in a single one of them.

 

[Mimsy01]

Can you tell if she is afraid of the toys or if she just doesn't know what to do with them? You can tell if they are afraid if you show them up close a toy and they will move away, or show alarm. Foo was afraid and it took some time for her to go from afraid to playing.

I found toys without bright colors were good starters. I'd pretend to chew on them and play with them. Sometimes even something really simple like a piece of plain cardboard can get the ball rolling.

 

[jeffisme]

will give it a try. one of her foraging toys might be a little complex for me, but if I can figure it out I'll run it by her.

as for fear, she was afraid at first, but now they're just part of the decorations. I have one hanging between her food and water dishes, figuring it had to get some attention. she looked at it once.

 

[jeffisme]

just passing on a good laugh. I was at our local bird shop looking for pellets. they had a nice selection, and i was asking the owner about the differences between two brands, and he said, "I don't know. I tasted all of them and didn't notice a difference."

 

[jeffisme]

Took her to the vet today, and had a mostly very good report. She might have had a problem with one of her wings though, which the vet thought was stiff. the dots on her eyes are calcification, probably from too much calcium in her diet when she was younger. We had thought she was six years old. the doctor thought eight to fifteen.

she wants us to monitor the listlessness to see if she gets more active over the next month. she said some birds just don't get toys.

the amazing thing though was she was a bit freaked out by all the screeching in the office and also about being stuck in a the cage. I had been petting the top of her head in the morning, but she tolerated it for a moment and that was it.

As we were waiting though, I stuck my finger into the top of the cage where she had climbed and scritched her head, and she just started bending her head all around and fluffing up her feathers. She couldn't get enough. It was a long wait, and by the time the doctor showed up, if I just approached the cage, she would bow her head and fluff for me.

NOw that she's home, she can't get enough when I reach into the cage. This is a bird that hadn't been touched this way probably for years. Really wonderful to see her get so much pleasure.

a photo from the doc's office, although in this one she isn't closing her eyes and putting her beak through the bars as much as she was before:

 

[henpecked]

Isn't it great to be loved by a zon.

 

[jeffisme]

yes, sailboat said something about lilacs being hardwired to be a loving companion, and that just came through. maybe it was just a matter of time and because she has been treated like a queen here in an unthreatening and quiet environment she is getting her confidence back.

 

[Birdman666]

Lilacs are one of the most easy going, personality wise, of all the zons.

My little LCA doesn't have an aggressive bone in her whole body...