Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Léa's new obsession

Honestly, it's not one I'm too happy about.

What is it? Well let me show you with the help of a picture.



Granted it might not look all that obvious. What she is doing is removing some scabs on my arms. See, with the help of her incredibly sharp baby nails, my arms have looked pretty bad these last few weeks, all scratched and such. Unfortunately, Léa has developed a passion to try and take off any scabs..which doesn't help the healing process go any faster. I try to discourage her with other loved items, such as wood beads, but she's a stubborn one. She also has seem to move on to include any type of skin tags and moles..While I appreciate the fact that she wants to preen me, there are just some things that aren't meant to be taken off by her very precise beak.

In other news, while I'm still waiting on the coral to come on her forehead, that little red pin feather I blogged about a few days ago is officially her first coral feather on her ankle. While it's not yet fully open combined with Léa's effort to make it ever so difficult for me to get a picture of it, here is a small glimpse at the new colour on her ankle.


Léa's first official coral ankle feather!

As well, still in relation to yesterday's post, from what I have gathered, the coral on the ankle comes first, followed by the coral on the wings / forehead. So since she's just starting to get colour on her ankles, there is still plenty of time for her to grow the feathers elsewhere.

But what does her head look like nowadays? Well here is a profile shot of her from today.



She was a bit uncooperative when it came to me taking a picture of the top of her head, but you can see how the line of baby orange feathers is slowly receding. Another thing that might be worth noticing is the shape of her head - here it looks nice and round, which would be a strong indication of a female in any of the other Poicephalus parrots, as female have a rounder head whilst the males have a bit broader and flat head.

I'll finish with one last picture of Léa where I find she looks genuinely happy!

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The wait begins

Over the past few weeks, one question has plagued my mind.

"What if she's a boy?"

After all, DNA sexing isn't 100% foolproof. There was always a small probability that the DNA test for Léa would have been wrong.

She is in a pretty big molt right now; the baby orange feathers on her head are falling, there is definitively a tint of grey on her neck where it used to be green, some coral is finally starting to show on her ankles..

The head is what has been worrying me. While all babies have the orange cap, the males do lose it for good and the females get a new one growing in, a bit more on the reddish side from the pictures I've seen, comparing juveniles to adults. A while back, I had been looking back at pictures of other female Capes who's journey from baby to adult had somewhat been documented in pictures. And always I've seen that it's clear that the orange on the head becomes splotchy and slowly darker grey feathers with a tint of red show up and finally the full blow coral forehead shows up. I also hunted down pictures of one of Léa's older sister (previous clutch, not quite a year apart) and she went from having a full orange head as a baby (much more than Léa had) to having a full grey head with a small trip of coral coming in. I do wish there would have been more in-between pictures to show a smoother transition but no such luck.

Knowing myself and my tendencies to worry for everything and anything, I had told myself after all this "research" that it's quite possible that Léa will lose the orange before the coral comes in; in fact, I also found a little text somewhere only that said just that. I kept telling myself before the molt even started that there is no need to worry, that until the molt is all well and over that there is no need to jump to the conclusion that she is a male.

But here I am, undoubtedly worrying, going back to all those pictures that I've looked over a thousand times, trying to see something although what more they could tell me I do not know.

So what if she turned out to be a male? Well, obviously I would love her all the same. She is, regardless of her sex, my little goofball who brings me tremendous joy. But admittedly part of me will be disappointed since these years of waiting were really for a female Cape.

A little hope was thrown my way earlier this week by a fellow Cape owner with whom I had been discussing this first heavy molting in Capes. She also has a little girl Cape named Olivia. She admitted, when Oliva's head molt started, thinking the same question for a few weeks - "What if she's a boy?" at the face of the grey feathers starting to take over.

So a new wait begins. The wait for those little coral feathers to pop up on her forehead.

Carrot beak yawn

She does love her carrots! And I love her little pink tongue!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

It's all about Petey!

I did feel bad about not having a picture of Petey included in this morning's series of pictures, although this was due to his lack of wanting to participate, I figured I'd try again this afternoon, right after I took him out of his cage.

This proved a bit more fruitful as I did get a handful of usable pictures since he decided to cooperate a little and not move too much.





Eye pinning




More wet Léa



Playing with an Oliver's Garden toy




The Boy also wanted to take pictures.
While I seem to master the "take camera away from Léa's range when she tries to come and land on the external flash" move, he does not..

Léa sitting on his light sphere (softens the light out of the flash)


Intrigued by what is inside..


Sunday Morning Pictures

For the most part, they weren't entirely cooperative this morning.
In fact, there is no picture of Petey as he was already a bit on edge this morning and when I brought the camera out, he got more antsy. So I figured it was best to not even point it at him..











Saturday, November 26, 2011

Léa's continuous molt

I discussed about her losing some of the orange feathers on her head, here are some feathers I've collected over the last week alone. She's definitively molting out of her baby feathers.



(I meant to share something taken with my DSLR, but I was unhappy with those shots, kinda liked the processing I was able to do on my phone..as I stupidly tried taking pictures of the loose feathers with Léa out and one visit from her sent them all flying..)

Friday, November 25, 2011

Monday, November 21, 2011

A very red pin feather

A lot of the other orangy/reddish pin feathers she had on her legs that I posted about the other day were orangy/red on the fringe or were tiny feathers.

This pin feather though - I'm pretty sure will be the first full blown coral leg warmer feather ;)
It looks nothing like the others, it's definitively going to be a big feather and it's quite vivid in colour.

Taking pictures of it wasn't easy though..

More Things for Wings Works of Art!

With each new toy she creates, Danita is making it harder and harder on me to want to give her toys to the birds - they are truly little works of art. But their purpose is to keep beaks busy so I'll just face the music and hang these beautiful toys in the cages.

This order was all about the Winter/Christmas collections available right now at T4W. I showed restraint and didn't order one of everything..but it was a difficult task!

My favorite of the collections has to be the Snowmen collection - it's simply adorable!

Some toys from the Snowmen Collection -

Snowmen Trio & Snowman Wiggle and Jiggle



Baby, it's cold outside




I also got a few toys from the Festive Collection -

Holly Pod Shaker & Grandma's Christmas Tree



Evergreen (x2)



Holly Jolly Shredder



While I find that Danita has outdone herself with all these toys and that I love them all, I do have one favorite, one that will be harder to give up.

From the North Pole Collection -

Elf



The collections seem to be ever expanding - just as I was typing this I have noticed new toys that have been added. I think it's safe to say that I might just have to put in another order for more of these toys!

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Hey Joey! Hi Petey!

These are the greetings we get by Joey and Petey (each saying the one with their respective names).

But there might be a new bird in the mix saying these things.

The Boy had mentioned in the past that Pixel had started staying "Hey Joey" (she's also nicked his low toned "hello" and makes it very confusing as to know who's saying it when..). He was surprised that she hadn't picked "Hi Petey" yet as Petey does repeat that one very often.

Well this morning she said it - a rather clear "Hi Petey" although not exactly said in the same way Petey will say it.

It was cute!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Expanded heads

More iPhone fun I'm afraid..

Yes?



Does this really make my head look bigger?



Monday, November 14, 2011

When you turned 6 months old...

You were very active - always on the go, go, GO!



You also lost some of the orange feathers on your head, resulting in a "splotchy" looking forehead - after all, must make way for those adult feathers! Talking about those adult feathers, you had quite a few pin feathers growing on your head which made it very itchy and therefore, you demanded quite a few more head scritches!





And you also had those pin feathers on your legs - and a few of them I'm hopeful by their orange tint will grow into those beautiful coral leg warmers that are typical of Cape parrots.


One tiny orange feather showing on your right ankle (there were actually two orange feathers at this time, but I couldn't photograph both)


Quite a few orange looking feathers on the left ankle!

Happy 6 months to you Léa!

A little blue bird

..who thinks he's REALLY big and definitively has a big personality!





Sunday, November 13, 2011

Why I can't always take pictures of Petey

Often I take pictures of the others and post and a picture of Petey will be missing.

It's not that I don't want to take a picture of him, but he's not always cooperative.

See, this is what he does when a camera is pointed in his direction - move, move and move!

Saturday, November 12, 2011

And I thought hormones were dying down..

..I was wrong.

So very wrong.

The Boy was letting the birds out a few minutes ago as I waited in the living room for them - most of them generally fly out of the birdroom on their own.

Generally this goes over fine, albeit the Red-bellieds landings are always something to watch out for as they come out of the birdroom very fast and don't generally know where they want to land until they are .5 seconds away from landing.

Tonight...well I don't know if they had conspired about what they did, but they were bad.

Joey was out first - I honestly can't remember if Piper was on me or close to me but all I know is that Joey went for my head - and he was NOT nice about it. It could have been that Piper was on my head and he decided to go for him, as he's done so a few times (although rarely as he's generally pretty subdued) or he might have just gone for me. I don't know. But I ended up shielding my face with my arm and it's good, since he decided to latch onto my hand. He's never done this before.

Oh and Piper is fine.

Pixel on the other hand went straight for Shade. I heard a scream but that was immediately followed by sounds of a bird flying off (this happened as I had Joey on me) and it ended up being Shade who had moved on to another tree. Once I was rid of Joey, I checked her out and she was fine. While Joey acting how he did was out of the ordinary, what happened between Pixel and Shade isn't so much. I always check where Pixel intends to land as she's tried what she did tonight in the past. Shade also seems to know of Pixel's intentions and that's probably why she managed to avoid the attack.

All of them were doing so much better lately. Why this happened tonight, why both of them did what they did at the same time eludes me - well I can only guess that Pixel seeing me occupied with Joey figured there was an opening for mischief of her own..

Never let your guard down.

A series of Léa videos

The following two have been taken with my iPhone last evening - must say I was pleasantly surprise by how they came out!

Léa enjoying one of the Atoms.



Léa saying "oui oui oui" (very short video, you might want to bring the volume up to hear properly)



This last video was taken a while ago with our video camera. She had a down feather on her beak and I found it cute (I might or might not have put it back on her beak on a few occasions..)

Friday, November 11, 2011

Point a camera in his face..

...and he'll just preen, preen, preen!







Thursday, November 10, 2011

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Bobble head Zuri







More phone camera fun.