Stories- ringneck, quaker, and gcc

[shiraartain]

I just thought to share a few stories of things that have been happening lately.

When he first came here, Fajr would fly to the front door when the doorbell rang because he knew my dad was home. We would tell him "mitthu agaya" if he didn't fly off immediately, which means " mitthu's here!", mitthu being what he calls my Dad, as it's what my dad calls him. The other day, before his injury happened, the doorbell rang and he perked up and said "mitthu! Mitthu agaya!". I was so surprised I laughed out loud. Unfortunately it was not my Dad and just a UPS delivery. A

On another occasion, two days before I left for Japan, I swung by home to get ready for an event with friends (we'd spent the day setting up the event). Fajr was in my sister's windowsill and called to me, and I talked back to him as we walked to the front door. My friends gave me strange looks, but didn't say anything as everyone knows about my bird. They understood better when we walked inside and as we were taking off our shoes, Fajr came zooming downstairs and landed on my friend's head, then came to me. Poor girl was frightened as he bit her last time she came to visit, so I petted him a bit and sent him back with my sister.

One day, Clover and Lemon had managed to throw all their fruitnoff their cage and were screaming, so I was picking it up for them. After I came back from Japan, they treated me worse than a complete stranger, something I wasn't very used to yet, and so I wasnt very careful. I put the bowl back and Clover ran over and bit me. Hard. I let out a yell and she held down harder. When I took my hand away, it started bleeding and I felt so bad about all of the times when we first got them and I just told my sisters to deal with it and fix whatever they had done wrong to result in the bird bite. It's painful! I may have cried, and angrily lectured the twins about placing their birds' food in the play stand instead of on top of the cage.

I give them their bath water in the mornings, so they're getting used to me again. They've taken an interest on the wood shapes I got them as part of a toy we made for the play stand, and took the shapes from my hand today after dropping them with no biting involved.

On this note- part of the toy is wiffle balls. I'm not sure what to stuff them with? Straws...shredded paper...popsicle sticks...and anything else? I'd like to give them a variety of toy types, as they have 3 wooden chew toys in addition to handheld wood pieces that they like to chew up, but they need something else to do.
I will leave the rest of the Clover/Lemon stories for Chika to tell on her own thread, once she's in the mood to have her next post go through my grammar and punctuation checks.

Our house is definitely at Full Bird Capacity right now, we would have been okay with two parrots but three is pushing it. We've made so much progress with Clover and Lemon though, they went from a fear of anything that moved to just flying away if anything as large of them or bigger is moved. Their flight has improved immensely, as has their confidence. There was a moment of uncertainty when Clover yanked a bunch of feathers from Lemon's head and he sported a bald spot, but his feathers grew back and she preened the keratin off with no signs of repeat plucking, so that's a relief.

I have mixed feelings about them as we are providing them with good care, but I think that someday we'll meet someone who will be able to provide them with better and will have to make a decision then. In the meanwhile, I get to listen to Chika's twin complain about how she can't spend time with Lemon because Clover bites her for not paying attention to her.

[liz]

Thank you for the update on your kids.

[Pajarita]

Wonderful updates, thank you, Shira!

[Wolf]

Thanks for the updates on the birds, they are quite amusing with the things that they do. They very often provide a whole new way of looking at things if you watch them. As for your last statement, it is often not just a matter of whether someone might be able to provide better for them as it is also a matter of their bonding with you as well as yours with them. This bond can make the difference and even make some shortcomings turn out much better than having everything else. I am sure that there are many people who could provide my birds better cages, or more toys and so forth. I know this for a fact as two of my birds came from such places and were not happy and they are happy now. My Grey is one of them and she was naked with holes in her body when she came here and she did not sing. She has stopped her plucking although she is still barbering her feathers, she no longer has holes in her body and she sings a lot and dances and makes all kinds of sounds all day long. She also would not allow anyone to touch her when she came here and she loves being out and either near me or on me. It may not be perfect but she is much happier now that she is here.

[shiraartain]

Well said, Wolf. One thing I will never regret is taking them in, because considering the situation my dad's acquaintance was in (young couple expecting their first child....not a good situation to have two loud, untame birds in a small cage), it's possible they would have ended up with someone who made their problems worse

Posting this thread reminded me that summer was ending and I still needed to get a new cage for the twins' birds (didnt work when i tried before bc it was winter and noboyd was selling). Within 24 hours somehow managed to persuade parents, locate cage on Craigslist, find a potential buyer for their playstand (we have 5 homemade ones of varying sizes, don't need the one they came with) and bring home the new cage. Twins are working in cleaning the new one now- it is spotless, but very dusty and of course we need to disinfect the branches it came with.

[shiraartain]

They've settled into the cage. No more screeching in the AM to tell us they were ready to leave their cage. And only one bird-structure's worth of poop-mess to clean up...though I just supervise its cleaning. Trying to get twins into the habit of wiping it down with a warm rag every day when the newspaper is changed, because it is large and heavy and maneuvering it outside for a detailed hosing down is going to be probably monthly instead of weekly.

And Fajr is always on the lookout for a chance to bathe. He was following my mom around as she prepped for dinner guests yesterday, later I noticed his head was wet. Rushed over to check his splint, panicking, it was dry. Cone was wet. We were confused until my mom gasped and rushed back into dining room and confirmed that he had dunked his head in the jug of water. Thankfully this discovery was made BEFORE anyone drank from it. He was very pleased with himself, I was relieved the splint was dry and am now keeping an even closer eye on him. Right now that consists of laying in bed while sick and feeling bad about leaving him in his cage. Feeling very drowsy and slightly nauseous, but have to take him in to the vet for xray later today.

Nails are getting long...would it be a bad idea to clip them while he's still sedated?

[Wolf]

If you think that they need to be clipped, I can think of no better time to do them than while he is sedated. Do be aware that clipping his nails will affect his grip on perches for a few days.

[Pajarita]

They sedate him to take an Xray of his leg?

[shiraartain]

Didn't end up sedating him. Will update vet visit and reply to Parjarita in other thread.

[shiraartain]

Fajr's living in my room lately because we have relatives staying over at our house. I leave the blinds open when it's dinner time (so that he can see his food), and duck back in to close them, change into my pajamas, and go to bed later on. But no matter how quiet and fast I try to be, Fajr wakes up. Earlier on, he used to say "mitthu!" when we woke him up and try to talk to us. But we would always reply with "Fajr, sojao." (Fajr, sleep) and reply with "sojao" every time he said "come here", " mitthu", and "ajao" (come, in Urdu)-all requests to come out and interact with us.

And so now I feel even more guilty for disturbing him because he wakes up and says "sojao. Sojao." quietly and goes back to sleep a few minutes later. He sometimes goes through his repertoire of words and phrases (a lot of which we never hear during the daytime) as he settles down to go back to sleep, but repeats "sojao" in between.

I'm sure he knows what it means to an extent, because it is a word he never uses outside of bedtime.

Every time he learns a new word, my parents remind me of when I told them he wouldn't be able to talk. For some reason, every bird that we have has picked it up. Maybe because we have so many people here talking all the time.