She is home!!!!!!!

[tacotaco]

My baby blue fronted amazon has arrived! I picked Willow up in Maryland this past weekend - a long 6 hour drive! The breeder was excellent - she had many babies that I held and played with. My little girl was tired - very quiet most of the way home and lots of yawns!

About 2 hours into the drive, she started making all these noises. Talking to herself... that lasted about an hour! I had some bananas in her bowl and some water. She didn't touch either of them the entire ride.

Since being home - she was very nippy. She does the baby movements and noises all the time (the head bobs, etc). I was a little intimidated at first, since I am used to conures - she is much bigger. I noticed she wasn't touching her food or water at all which worries me. When I hold her water bowl up to her she will drink it though. Last night I warmed up some oatmeal and she ate a nice amount. She was eating it as a baby would (fast head movements in a gagging motion). I am keeping a close eye on her to make sure she will eat her solid food (below she ate a small piece of my Eggo).

She is doing so excellent with flight recalls. As soon as I say her name she flies right to my arm. After spending some time together last night in my room - I noticed a major change when she saw me this morning.. she actually got excited. Started bobbing up and down - opening her wings, and climbed down to the door. So I opened her cage and stepped over to the door way. Called "Willow" and yep! she flew to my arm

Here are some pics, and vids of our couple days together so far.

[laducockatiel]

Awesome! She looks awesome, I love the pic of her with the wings spread out. Is that noise she is making normal for Amazons?

[Polarn]

ladu, do you man the noise in the first clip where she rides the car or the sound she makes in the eating video? anyways most zon's that are young that I've met will do the baby wining sounding thingie as she did during the car ride, most seems to grow out of this and learn how to use their "grown birdie" sounds... the sound she makes while eating kind of a chuckle sounding thingie, this is something that seems extremely typical for zons, it is pretty much that or really loud vocalization during excitement, well to be honest they make pretty much the same sound when annoyed (although they usually prefer todo a growling sound when annoyed/upset but tends todo this when cornered/toweled etcetera), but thats pretty typical about zons, they have a lot of common body language/sounds when their happy or angry and sometimes if overly excited on the happy side it'll flip into acting out as agression... like zons that are hyper you can most of the time keep on exciting them to being happier happier happier and then they will bite ya. And well you know pretty well you played with it or sang with it too much, and you learn to stop at some point, now with a parent raised bird that point is usually pretty easy to spot if your used to zons because their body language is so clear and exadurated, but hand reared amazons seems to loose some of this communication making them harder to read, but no matter what I still think their extremely clear in their body language compared to a lot of other birds and as the birds parront you definitly learns to spot the tipping point where excitement expresses itself as "aggression".

Anyways, realy nice looking BF loads of blue in that pretty face!

[EleriDragonfly]

She is beautiful, and the sounds she made in the car are cute.

[pionus]

aww, congratulations! she is adorable, and i really enjoyed all the baby pictures on your blog.

[Pajarita]

She is beautiful, congrats! But I am afraid you are misreading her. The 'cute' sounds in the car are actually baby distress calls. See how low she was perching and how she wasn't moving? -she was afraid. This is normal but, in the future, please put her in a semi-covered carrier when taking her out, babies in the wild don't see anybody except their parents for the first months of their lives. And the 'happy to see you' head bobs in the morning means she is hungry. You do know you have to handfeed her and weigh her every morning to make sure she is not losing weight, right? Baby parrots don't wean from one day to the next and they always regress when they go to a new home so you always have to monitor their weight and supplement.

And, please, don't start training her for, at least, another couple of months. Parrot babies flood very easily and there are studies that show that birds that were stressed out when babies remain high-strung for the rest of their lives so be careful and take it easy, please. Flight recall is not important at all when they are babies (they don't go anywhere, they don't dare) and BFAs belong in the 'hot 3' species so stressing them when they don't know or trust you is less advisable than with other 'easier' species.

[spiral71]

shes lovely

[tacotaco]

UPDATE: She is doing Excellent. Her baby noises and head bobs have stopped. She started eating well and is back up in weight - She was 316 grams when I picked her up - she is now at ~322 grams. She has been eating sweet potatoes, broccoli, raspberries and more.

She is an amazing flyer - The breeder did an excellent job of training her with the flight recalls, she comes to me from different rooms and I really didn't have to do a thing.
Whistles all day long!! Said "hello" once, for the first time this weekend. Barely squawks - just loves to make pretty noises. The hard nips have stopped - she just nibbles in a playful way - as soon as I say "no" she backs off.

LOVES the shower!!! I had her on the perch with me - she's had three so far. Opens her wings and spins around.

I feel very blessed and lucky. I still won't keep her out with the conures at the same time - but they are all in the same room and seem to tolerate each other when close to the cages.

[tacotaco]

She is beautiful, congrats! But I am afraid you are misreading her. .

thanks for the info pajarita..still learning everyday. things are much better and she has been very good.

[cherswansea2001]

Aww she's gorgeous, great videos