Thursday, April 30, 2009

P l a y f u l



Petey learning to play.
She absolutely LOVES this toy.

C o y



The trademark Shade "pose".
She does know how to work the camera...

C u t e n e s s



Zuri being adorable.

C o n t e m p l a t i v e



Gotta love his look...

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Drowned Rat Look

I love the look of wet birds.
I once heard someone referred to it as the "Drowned Rat Look". Given the context, I find it rather cute.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Rewarding good behavior

I think Petey is getting it.

She's been less aggressive of late with my other birds. Mind you, if they get too close, she'll be wanting to attack, but her idea of what is too close had gotten better.
Lately, I've been rewarding her for not chasing birds if they flew to "her" playgym. She's getting praised and, most importantly (to her eyes I'm sure), she's getting a Nutriberry (only one of the treats I can bribe her with, dried papaya and noodles being also favorites of hers).
She's a bright bird. Didn't take her long to figure out that tolerating the others a bit better means getting treats.

Of course, if the others are out, they also get a treat. Piper, Shade and Zuri need to give me a kiss for it. I'm also working to get Joey to do the same, although he's not catching on as fast. Might be because I think he's the less food motivated bird I have. As I'm writing this, Zuri is eating the discarded half of the Nutriberry he got.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Nesty Meyer's behaviour

Petey's obsession with creating dwelling out of hand towels/blankets continues....

Changing allegiance?

Lately, it seems Joey might have change allegiance, where his "favorite" person is concern.

From day 1, he's shown a preference for Bram, and the male gender in general. Slowly, I got him to as readily accept women like he does men. Now, it seems that he wants to spend more and more time with me. Still, in the morning the first person he wants to go to is Bram; however, I think that Bram's laptop (which he in on every morning) has a lot to do with it (aka how fun it is to remove keys...).

However, as the day progresses, I'm the one he comes to for one on one individual time. Maybe it's because Petey is somewhat of an attention hog and will only want to really spend time with Bram (how I'm looking forward to being alone with her for just over a week...sigh) and he often gets chased away by her. I don't know.

All I do know, is I do have a Red-belly parrot around me much more often lately.

Zuri's progress

Zuri has been here for just over two months.

When we first got her, she was a little awkward, socially at least. She took to me straight away but was a bit leery of my significant other. She didn't as readily step up for him, pretending to bite (he did show some hesitance, therefore she was just taking advantage of the situation) when he wanted her to step up.

I did tell him to show more confidence and he managed to do it. I've let him deal with Zuri more, letting him be the "good" person getting her out of her cage. She's now very good about stepping up for him. Although she still shows signs of wanting to interact with me more, she does show some interest in him at times. Hopefully, this will continue.