My Meyers Parrot Training Progress

[seagoatdeb]

Well was quite the day of the birds adjusting to each other today. Sunny has gotten so much more confident. The largest playground is in front of the living room window and is lilac brances that are secured to a base and looks like a tree. It offers so many branch widths for healthy feet too. Sunny likes that playground, I have all kinds of foraging toys, destroyable toys etc attached to it and a small container of foot toys at the base. They also have smaller versions on top of their cages. Anyway today Sunny decided he is not going to let Gaugan chase him off things anymore, so he made a stations if she came to chase him. so they had a beak battle, with Gaugan winning, but today instead of waiting untill later, Sunny decided he wanted to be on that playground period. He kept going back and they had a number of beak battles with Gaugan wining. Finally Gaugan got so tired they were both on the playground in a semi peace. My husband thought that meant they would be fine together there now...but I noticed Sunny had smooth alert feathers and postures and Gaugan had her fluffy one that meant she was on the peeved side of things. But Sunnys stubborn persistent method is starting to have some results. Gaugan is slowly picking her battles more wisely. Later, I had Gaugan on my shoulder and went to another room for 2 minutes to do something and Sunny used that opportunity to climb up Gaugans cage. He hissed the first time I said step up but stepped up good the second time I said it. He is not quite 6 months yet, when Pois start to show their personalities more, but it is comming out anyway. The afternoon is much smoother, they are both very peacefull with each other, Sunny is peeping and vocalizing words, and looking out the window, mostly pretty bird and what are you doing and Gaugan is busy taking a forgaging toy apart, but tomorrow is another day....lol

[Pajarita]

I dont believe any of those greenish, blue green, turqouise descriptions, what the heck are those colors anyway. Everyone will see it different. So i am just saying there belly colors are similar, There are so many individual feather colors on both of them on their bellys i dont know what the heck color it is, so I just say greenish, because from a distance it looks more green than anything. Depending on the light, It can look turqouise too. His feet color is very similar to Gaugans. pinkish with a reptilian looking mottling of a darker color. Piper, my daughters bird has dark solid color looking feet. much darker. Those are all the references i have seen too. I hope someone writes a better reference. The pics are somewhat helpfull, but color in a picture and at a distance is not that helpfull. But of course the breeder could be not telling me the truth as well. But it will be interesting to see how these birds look after their first moult. I saw a bunch of postings in other formums i am in of people that said their Meyers did not get the yellow head for years and others that said it happened the first moult.

Well, when it comes to descriptions of birds, we have no choice but to go with what we find... I guess that, up to a point, subtle colors are subjective but that's the way ornithologists describe them.

I looked in my Parrots of the World book and these are the descriptions:

Six subspecies in two groupings: paler subspecies (1 - 3) from drier regions; darker subspecies (4 - 6) from humid regions.
1 - P. m. meyeri: yellow across crown; lower underparts green; thighs, bend of wing, lesser wing-coverts and under-wing coverts yellow.
2 - P. m. transvalensis: paler; little or no yellow on crown; lower underparts more bluish.
3 - P. m. damarensis: paler than transvalensis; no yellow on crown.
4 - P. m. reichenowi: darker brown; no yellow on crown.
5 - P. m. matschiei: like reichenowi but with yellow across crown; rump bright blue.
6 - P. m. saturates: like matschiei but head and upper parts darker brown; rump green.

And all the drawings had dark beaks, legs and feet -by the way, I checked all the pois and the only ones that have light feet are Jardines. But everybody says that it would be almost impossible to find a purebred of any of the Meyer's subspecies because breeders did not even know about the differences and just paired a male and a female assuming they all belonged to the same species. Same thing happened with the ekkies... they all ended up been mixes of subspecies.

[seagoatdeb]

Gaaugans feet look like medium grey from a distance and so do Sunnys, there feet are the same color. Close up you can clearly see that both of their feet are a skin-pinkish color with dark grey reptilian like mottling. Pipers are dark black with no mottling patterns that are visible to the naked eye. In Pics in this post you can see that neither of them have dark feet. Their toe nails are sure dark though. Does isis have the dark black feet or the grey looking mottled ones. Also what they call a brown head is actually grey feather with some yellow feather and it looks brownish. There is not a single brown feather. ...lol....Seems like they are bad at describing color.

[Pajarita]

Yes, redbellies have light feet, I did not mention it because I thought this had already been established.

But it's not that they are bad at describing colors when they say brown instead of 'grey with yellow' either mixed in or in suffusion' -LOL- The descriptions of colors are what ornithologists use in their field guides (which is what my Parrots of the World actually is) and they are all meant to describe how the bird looks from a distance at plain sight so as to recognize them on the field - they even have colored drawings of the birds from the top and the bottom with their wings wide open (as well as the profiles) so, if one is on the ground and sees a bird flying by or up high on a hill and sees the bird only from the top, one can compare it to the drawing and identify the subspecies correctly.

[seagoatdeb]

-by the way, I checked all the pois and the only ones that have light feet are Jardines.

Lol, It was this sentence of yours that had me wondering about redbellys,

[seagoatdeb]

Well that would explain why we need better descriptions then, we see our birds close up. All our descripton are for in the field.

[Pajarita]

Ahhh, but they also have drawings (more like paintings) with perfectly reproduced colors which they mostly get from dead specimens (unfortunately!)... Like the ones by John James Audubon! http://www.art.com/gallery/id--a23630/j ... 1951775795

But, of course, even the very finest painter cannot reproduce the beauty of healthy plumage seen in person with its iridescence, suffusions and subtle dégradé...

[seagoatdeb]

ohhhhh they are such beautiful paintings

[seagoatdeb]

Meyers training progress for today, was another monumental day. My daughter came over with her 7 month old GGC. I put Gaugan in the dining room on the big play areas there. Sunny and Rio the GGC hung out with my daughter and I on the couch. The two birds preened each other and both wanted to be pet by us too. Sunny was so happy. This was his first experience, hanging with both birds and humans all flocking so close together. Gaugan and Sunny have to be kept a distance apart. Sunnys talking is clearer and his ability to go into new areas of the house is advancing rapidly. He is like a different bird, my daughter noticed, he was not afraid, but just really happy to be in a flock preening and playing with foot toys. I gave Gaugan some special attention later. Sunny will let me touch him all over when he is in an affectionate mood. When he is not in an affectionate mood he is in a play and explore mood and is a very acrobatic bird. He is also a very vocal bird and will talk and vocalize around my daughter and granddaugher as well as us.

[Pajarita]

Awww, there is nothing better for a parrot than to allow him to enjoy the company of another one! That's why co-parenting is so infinitely better than hand-feeding, in my personal opinion!