Upbeat - news

[Terry57]

That is fantastic news and well worth celebrating! I celebrate those milestones myself, there is so much to be sad about with a plucker that all milestones are a cause for happiness.

 

[LaManuka]

That’s a feather you’ll want to keep forever, just to remind yourself that Sunny can do it!
Great to hear your fantastic news, now I don’t ever want to hear about Sunny or you getting into any more trouble ever again, got it??!!!

 

[ChristaNL]

LaManuka: Yes boss, I'll try my hardest to be good!
:07:
(missed you all a LOT!)

Now it's your turn to try and talk Sunny out of demolishing the curtains.


She is doing great in getting reacquainted with the aviator.
We haven't trained for months (wing-issues again), but she is already poking her head through the loop and accepting the weight of the rest on her back after only 2 sessions.

Cedarnuts (unshelled) are the best bribes on the planet!

 

[LaManuka]

Sorry Christa can’t help you there, I got enough trouble myself in the soft furnishings department! Lilly has just discovered how much she likes climbing up the curtains which she KNOWS she’s not allowed to do - I’m getting a lot of exercise shooing her down dozens of times per day!

 

[ChristaNL]

I am typing with a furiously flapping Appie on my shoulder: of all the places in this house she has availble *this* is where she wants to flap the moisture out of her wings after bathing... birbs...


Showertime today was fun: all 3 wanted to go and they got *soaked*.

Sunny got her swimmingpool filled halfway and she went in all by herself! :40:
Today there was a LOT of wing-splashing -> she moved them so many times!


Finally there is some symmetry creeping in \o/
She is moving the wings the same amount and the same way! :40:
Wettish wings and beautiful short powerfull upstrokes -> she really likes to make waves herself.

And ... just like that she is done (tired).
There may be a few feathers somewhere that did not get completely soaked through, but I doubt it!



When she loses her balance she still habitually uses one like a normal wing: flapping up and down with a tiny rotation, the other one just rotates helicopterstyle over her head with no downstroke-motion... but even that seems to be changing slowly.
(It does not happen that much and unfortunately she loses trust fast if I try to manipulate her into some serious flapping.)

so every time she is doing the "Up, up" command where she raises both wings almost all the way (above her spine) she is working on coordination as well as stretching the shoulderjoints and part of the elbows and wrists.
I cannot get her to stretch further than that by herself (yet), just like her active range of motion still stops around the 90-100 degrees (wrist) when she stretches one wing at the time.

(The right one can move much further, but she does not trust it. The left one still seems very painfull- but we are back to working with that for a bit now she lets me go near it again.)


but it really helped with the aviator training:


3 times is a charm!
Yesterday I took a moment (and quite a few cedarnuts) and we played with the aviator.
She did the headloop like a pro, decided that the rest was not even worth mentioning...so I just went ahead and put it on, complete with tightening the straps! :40:
(lots of snackbreaks of course, she is making me pay for the privilege!)


The only thing that freaked her out was the longer loop touching her wingfeathers. (esp when taking it off again)
Since that is still an overly sensitive area it was obvious it would happen, I was pleasantly surprised she just let me do it at all! :07:

I asked her to do a trick (UP) -as a distraction from freaking out about things touching her wingfeathers- within a trick (putting on/ taking off the aviator) and it worked! :40:




Right now she is talking up a storm and I hear quite a few new words in the mix ...
if she keeps going this way I will not be able to keep up with her!

 

[Laurasea]

Wonderful updates and progress, makes me so happy to read!

 

[ChristaNL]

Today is insane parrot-day.
(okay, maybe I should write insane-er, because insane seems to be the default setting when it comes to keeping feathered (sub)tropical hooligans in a human house)

Anyway... the greys have been within striking distance of each other a few times again and the interaction is still far from succesfull. Those two just do not speak the same language!
(No violence, so I am happy.)
After that Appie flew off to her favorite 'away from the flock'-place and is whistling and talking to herself.

Japie spend some time demolishing a cardboardbox...
Sunny climbed down and tried to walk over to see what he was doing (! :40: ) and got chased off!
Back up her cage with Japie in 'hot pursuit'.

Lucky for her he got distracted halfway up and decided to explore inside her cage some more... it is like that story of Goldielocks and the three bears: he tried the pellets: they were too pelletty, he tried the the perch -> the perch was too large, he tried the toys made of wood -> the wood was too soft, the leather too tough etc. etc..
Right now he is eyeing the construction (rather disapprovingly) and testing the paper on the floor (too thin).


Sunny was fascinated just watching him do all that, so I went to read on the forum for a bit->
untill I noticed someone large and heavy trying to climb up my pantleg!!
:40:
(Thank Goodness I wear jeans )
Yup... Sunny again!!
(On her way to my shoulder to finish preening my other ear? She got quite high up before there was nothing to safely grab on to anymore.)
I never heard her climb down from her perch on the cagedoor or cross the room!


Me Tarzan - You Tree!

 

[ChristaNL]

Teatowels are the best!


I was browsing the web (after playing with Sunny a bit earlier) and out of the corner of my eye saw Sunny climb down...
she grabbed an old teatowel that was lying on the floor to mop up "the mornings donations" and - not unlike a lion dragging an overly large prey, only this time vertical- tried to drag it all the way to the top of the door (shoulderheight).
Not an easy feat: the towel got in the way of footholds etc.etc. but she made it!


I got lucky she was willing to trade it for a macademia!
(I try to stop her demolishing fabrics all over the place, and a juicy teatowel would be minutes of fun for now and the death of every other item just like it in the future...)


LOL while I was typing this she stole it from the bench where I put the towel for safekeeping...so she scored a pistachio for handing it over!


I am raising a thief!
(and acrobat )
sigh...I was hoping for a dishwasher/ windowcleaninglady ...


Right now she trying to find a way to the next place where I put the towel- never a dull moment
all the while ignoring the almond I placed on the floor where the teatowel was in the first place: taking and killing towels is more interesting than snacking!

 

[ChristaNL]

LOL, some days I am still such a newbie!


I asked one of the huge bird-knowledge-rich people I know how long Sunny will be this overly hormonal (because she is -mostly by lack of choice I presume- bonded to me and not shy of showing it).
He just looked at me as if I just asked him if rain is really made of water and said "You know birds react to the lenght of daylight, and since she's been that way since december... probably forever ....! "

Sometimes you need a reality-check

(He is, like me, a great advocate of letting birds live their birdlife and though he knows this one is in no shape for 'the aviary life' he will still claim "if you are in trouble with your bird, it is because you got yourself in trouble with her". He is right of course. Being right never stopped him trying to help me or anyone else, he is that kind of person. )

We have had some ridiculous high temperatures and lots and lots of sun the past few days (New record for Easter etc.) and this really turned her into Her Royal HormoneMess.
Lots of tailgrabbing during the day and even during interaction-time (I give the headscritches and I see one of the feet stretching backwards and clasp the tailbase again).

Apart from that she is showing another side that is far more calm yet more curious.
She is slowly going from desctructive to investigative (uses less force and takes her time to look/feel instead of 'hit and run').

Of course no zippers are safe and my glasses are in constant danger, and my big toe got a hole punched in it because she was in a terrible hurry to feed it: ran up and clamped down on it.
(The toe did not die of hunger, so mission accomplished.)

Training is going well, she accepts a lot more things that scared her a lot- rolling her over really gets her mind out of the gutter -> being upside down is not erotic to this bird (thank goodness).
If only her aviator had not disappeared...
(I think Japie dragged it off, it will turn up again. Japies aviator is still here- so he may be trying to tell me something? )


Time spend with toys is slowly increasing from absolutely zero and actively avoiding that part of the cage to a few seconds (wooden chewtoy) to half a minute (wood and ropethingy) at the time.
Outside the cage she loves tearing up a tissue after every soggy treat to gnaw on and clean her bill in the process (the greys prefer to use cardboard for this) and her coordination improved to the point she will actually hang on to a cardboard-roll (from inside the toiletpaper) without losing it while she is demolishing it.

=

lol, she just finally did a fake "I am killing you" with her rope-and-wood toy, banging it againgst the cage, grabbing it with a foot (she still interchages feet for this, so it will wear down her nails a bit as well - balancing on the pedicure-perch)
Creating quite some noise and drama!

(the grays are trying to catch some zz's and can't be bothered at all by all of this)