Bill, can you identify anything Nike *does* like to do? Like eating or bathing or swinging or tearing paper in strips or digging for treats in paper balls etc etc etc? Maybe if we could identify a few things she likes we could magic up some ideas for her?
You say she likes chewing, so a first step would be to get her lots of chewies to occupy her. Do you get Australian Bottlebrush or Melaleuca in New Hampshire? They have lovely shreddy bark and the birds just adore stripping long strings off it until they leave it bare and shiny. Can you get untreated pine pallets? My hubby cuts 'biscuits' out of the slats with a hole saw, then I drill holes in them and string them together on a bit of paulie rope. They last a good few days! Then, the remainder of the cut-out slat goes on the roof of the cage and the Beakies will hang upside-down, chomping on it till it's gone. Sometimes, I'll screw cuphooks into the slat and hang it from the roof or across the cage like a perch. It will last, maybe, a week.
Then, there's all your useful recycling materials. Egg cartons, fold-up drinks trays (from McDonald's etc), paper cups, paper plates (not wax-covered, mind), paper towel cylinders (NOT toilet paper ones: they usually have glue on them), even toothpaste boxes. All my birds have a Rummage Basket (hanging wire planter) in their cages, filled with whatever cardboard rubbish the household produces plus the odd nut or other treat, just to make it interesting. One year, we gave the Beaks a pile of shredded paper to play in. They LOVED it, preening it and rolling in it. The following year, they nearly made a nest out of it! Never again! Some people don't like to give birds plastic, but I collect milk bottle lids and string those on a bit of rope. The Beaks are clever enough not to swallow the stuff, but Rosetta's not even interested. Personal tastes, y'know?
One thing I mean to teach Rosetta (who is also a velcro bird and won't allow me out of her sight) is stationing. She's absolutely not ready for that yet (still working on having her stay still for more than three seconds at a time), but when the time comes I think teaching her to station and to stay there will be Very Useful to her personal development. Just be thankful you don't have a long plait hanging down your back. Certain Persons seem to think mine is their own private play station! :22_yikes:
If Nike doesn't like to play, maybe you could spend some of your together-time teaching her to do a few things? What if you taught her to climb up a rope (later, she might hang from one on a play station). Or teach her to swing on a rope suspended between your hands (later she might swing on a play station). You know the sort of thing. If nothing else, why don't you consider teaching her some tricks?
I taught my Barney to put things 'in the bin' inside five minutes. All you do is hand the bird an object (big bead, whiffle ball etc) and say 'in the bin'. When they drop it (as they eventually will), you make sure you catch it in your 'bin' (some kind of container) and reward with a treat. Don't reward when the bird misses, just give her the object and ask again. Keep going until Nike figures out what gets her a treat and does it perfectly every time. THEN you start putting your 'bin' a little farther away so that Nike has to walk to it in order to plop the object in. When she can walk right across a table to insert her object and then walk back to you for a treat - you 've done it!
I've found that trick training has opened my birds to lots more possibilities when it comes to playing. The Beaks love to put things in things (eg. scraps of paper into a small box in their cage). I'm convinced this comes from their 'in the bin' training. They also like to climb ropes (comes from training to 'walk a tightrope') and swing from looped rope (again, tightrope training).
AFAIC, the single best thing for a velcro bird is another opposite gender bird of the same species. I know lots of people disagree, but my experience with the Beaks has been that when I'm not available for play, they occupy each other. Barney has had much greater aptitude for trick training than Madge, but I still work with each bird in turn and have equal amounts of time with them. I think Madge 'suffers' from being a hen and goes through periods of moodiness and nestiness when she's not as easily reachable. Or maybe she just has a different personality to the sunny, mischievous Barney. Dunno.
I think this (figuring out ways of improving a situation) is the biggest fun of bird ownership. I LOVE making toys that suit my birds' quirks and fixing their cages to reflect the way they like things. Let's see if we can't work something out for your Nike.
