Skeeter the Red Bellied Parrot

[chika]

so have you gotten skeeter yet? that was my first time seeing a so my heart literally melted when i saw his picture. i have a my sister has a yellow without a ring around its neck. we used to have a and we have a that belongs to my oldest sister. i'll name the birds i listed in order.
1. clover
2. lemon
3. shararaat ( means mischief in urdu)
4. fajr ( fa-jur) ( means sunrise in arabic)

we have had othe birds too but my fingers are lazy. so far our birds have lived up to their names >U<
cant wait to hear more about skeeter!

[chika]

these are pictures of lemon and clover. ( you can tell who is who easily.) https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos?pid=6133564711014934770&oid=109602297704626632316

[Wolf]

No one can see these pictures unless they have this type of account with google. I would suggest that you talk to your sister about how to post the pictures so that we can see them. I would love to see them.

[chika]

ok i will ask my sister because i am pretty much still figuring out how to work this. i think i found out how.... lets see.

[chika]

nope cant i will try to find a different way..

[Weka]

Update: Now partly into our third year with Skeeter. He's doing great. I only wish I had an outdoor aviary for him, as he seems to enjoy fresh air and sunshine so much, and our extended winters prevent this and he gets a little stir-crazy (as do we all.)

He is no longer fearful of paper or the next door neighbor's dogs *cheer* but his phobia of the sounds that the washing machine and dryer make is still going strong.

He plays and chews and investigates with his toys far more than he did even a year ago, and has refrained from attacking my husband like he used to. That said, there are still a few things about his behavior that are puzzling.

The other morning he randomly flew over to attack a new scarf I was putting around my neck and bit right through it, leaving red welts on my shoulder. Ouch! I think he was jealous of it or was trying to protect me(?) Hard to say. All I know is, the master bedroom/bathroom now definitely is off limits to him at the moment, because whenever I currently take him in there he gets all riled up: raising his wings upwards, poofing his feathers out, cracking his beak and rapidly pinning his eyes. I find myself once again wondering if this is some sort of misdirected territorial behavior. He doesn't do this in any other part of the house besides the laundry closet (another place to avoid taking him right now, as he's tried several times now to "fight" bottles of laundry detergent or else attempt to wedge himself into the hole where you put it into the washing machine). Everywhere else in the house he's a model of a calm, well-adjusted bird. We've lightened up on his fave treats (limited amounts of apple, scrambled egg or pistachios) this week in hopes of him acting a little less hormonal.

His new feathers are coming in, and they're so shiny. He really is such a beautiful, intelligent creature; we really do enjoy him, even if we don't always understand his quirks.

[Wolf]

I am curious if Skeeter is giving the " this is mine and I will fight you over it" stance for the whole room or just some of the things in it. Kiki, my Senegal does this when she gets to pass through the kitchen on the way to the sun room or back to the living room, but it is only because since she first saw the coffee maker she decided that it was hers. Usually the only other time that she does this is if she gets to a shoe. She likes shoes especially tennis shoes and loves to bite pieces out of the rubbery parts of them and does the defensive posturing with them.

[Pajarita]

Hmmm, has he had any experience in this room that was not repeated anywhere else? What you describe is not necessarily aggression, it could be excitement too. It seems to me that the scarf episode was to protect you from this 'snake' that was wrapping itself around your neck. Now, as to his hormones and the changes on his diet... apples don't really trigger anything so you can give him his treat with no problem - the pistachios could put his protein intake at a too high a level (which does bring them into condition) but it depends on what else he eats on a daily basis and, I am sorry to say, scrambled eggs are always a no-no (high fat, high cholesterol -no parrot species eats eggs as part of their natural diet). But, although diet does act as a primary trigger in the wild, it doesn't really work in captivity because our pet birds never really lack anything -quite the contrary, we tend to feed way too well so our ONLIEST recourse is the solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk. Without it, change in diet or no change in diet, the birds' endocrine system will go out of whack and it will produce sexual hormones all year round... bummer, ain't it?

[Wolf]

I have been thinking about the scarf incident and it comes to mind that parrots see many more colors than we do and I suspect that just like us they have colors the they like and colors that they hate. Could the scarf be a color that he hates? Probably the way to find out is to find something elst of the same color and put it on the floor or someplace that he will see it and watch to see what he does with it.

[Weka]

Thanks for your thoughts, Wolf and Pajarita! It's been a busy couple of weeks so I forget to get back to this thread.

Wolf: Yeah, he could've been playing, but he seemed VERY earnest and deadly about it. Heh.

Pajarita: I've read that in the wild, smaller poicephalus species like Meyer's, Ruppels and Brown-headeds tend to eat a lot of high fat/protein rich arthropod larvae (much more than previously suspected), especially during breeding season.* That said, scrambled egg might have a different profile and Skeets is not a wild bird. I'll try to go easier on it.

*http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10336-013-0952-5
and http://www.jstor.org/stable/40665276