Now it's time for an update on the others.
Codee GCC and Pablo PFC are doing great in their large flight cage - much better than I anticipated, actually! Pablo had slowly become more at ease with me and, although I was still a bit anxious about putting him in a human area where there are also dogs and cats, I wanted to try it out because being in a room without people was not fair to Codee. But it worked out wonderfully! He climbs all over the cage -even comes out every now and then- and is completely unfazed by the dogs or the cats or even the other birds perching on top of their cage.
Peachy and Jerry Lovie are on their second clutch (five eggs in this one!) and, as male lovebirds always are, he is a VERY devoted husband, feeding her in her beak and even taking turns inside the nest. She comes out to fly every day (not him because it's a hassle to get him back in but more about this below) and, when she is ready to go back in (hungry!), she flies to my shoulder so I can put her back in the cage where she promptly perches on a lower stick and raises her head with an open beak for him to feed her (high maintenance wife, isn't she?
). When Keeta and Rajah come to me, I think I am going to clip both the males so I can train them to step up to a stick. I abhor the idea of clipping a bird but I can't think of any other way to do this because I need them to go back into their cage before I can let the cats out of their room and both Jerry and Rajah are so little and wild that the only way to accomplish this is to go after them and towel them because I can't let them out in the afternoon and trick them with their dinner seeds inside their cage until the summer when my grandkids are out of school and they no longer need me to babysit. I also figure that, if I do it now, they will molt at least two of the four feathers I am planning on cutting at the end of the summer so they won't be clipped for more than a few months.
Zoey and Sweetpea Sennie are doing VERY well. They don't have sex and he doesn't feed her in her beak but they perch, eat and chill together without Zoey lunging at him and he has been chewing up the new nest I gave them so everything is good.
Isis ARB is becoming more and more attached to me, which is good in one sense but not so good in another because I want her to bond to Davy ARB - who pays more attention to Zoey than he does to Isis! But she is eating a large variety of produce and even greens on an almost daily basis! Funny how different species, even belonging to the same family, are so different when it comes to diet. Both the redbellies and the sennies are pois but I haven't been able to get the sennies to eat any greens (even though they've been getting them for years and years) while both the redbellies do with relish. And it's no credit to me, mind you!, because I do the same with everybirdy and, while Zoey grew up eating chop and then gloop and raw produce, Isis ate only nuts, green beans and dried papaya for years before coming here. She was also quite nesty for a while... she chewed up my husband's heavy jacket zipper and found my everyday pocketbook to be her idea of a perfect 'nest' so she not only chewed the zipper on it but made confetti out of everything I had in there, including most of my wallet!
Davy ARB is also doing VERY well! He says "Good morning!" every morning when I uncover his cage and, when I say "Nite Nite" when I cover it, he immediately replies "I love you!" (I tell all of them "Nite nite - I love you!" every night so he finishes it up for me) and makes a long kiss sound
He is a GREAT eater and very, very smart -he likes to fly to Pookey's cage which makes her complain so I walk over to the dining room door to tell him "SHOOOO" but he just looks at me waiting for me to move my hand to the lock of the gate that separates the kitchen from the diningroom to fly away -naughty boy! This morning, he also gave me a good bite in my right ear. He has been flying to my shoulder more and more often but he usually only stays there for a minute or two before taking off again. This morning, he stayed -which made me suspicious but I did not do anything because I ALWAYS give them the benefit of the doubt- and, all of a sudden BAM! Little devil gave me a good bite, piercing the cartilage with the tip of his upper beak (I actually heard the crunch noise the cartilage made when he broke it) which left a V shaped wound. It's OK, they do these things when they first start to 'connect' with their new human... I don't know if it's that they are checking to see how far they can go, if it's a way of establishing 'ownership' or if it's a matter of them getting used to the different movements their new human does (I was trying to catch a canary inside its cage to move it to a clean one) but it stops after a while so no biggie.
The old ladies, Naida and Mami Zon, are doing very well. They've been chewing up a storm of cardboard boxes and both have plucked chests, courtesy of Mami who does her own and Naida's! I never have any issues with them, they eat well, they bathe without a problem, they don't bother other birds, the step up and down without a problem, they never bite, etc. They are very good girls both of them.
Pookey appears to be the tiniest bit better but I still hope I could find her a home where she could do better... I've been looking for months, posted in CL twice already and in three different areas, got lots and lots of replies (of course, this was an AD for a free grey!) and out of all the replies, I considered three people. One I liked because he worked part time, owned his house, had experience with 'a lot of different animals' (I figured he was an animal lover, right?) and currently had a macaw. The other had a cockatoo, lived with his mother in a separate apartment, used to volunteer at a reptile rescue and also worked part time. The third is a lady who owns other parrots, had excellent avian vet references (she has a very sick CAG), owns her house and works in a school a few blocks from her house. Well, the first one, the one I thought was an animal lover, was a young man who smelled of cigarettes (not good), did not really own his house (his mother did) and worked part time at Home Depot making deliveries (not stable and not enough money) and who stuck his hand in her cage (which, of course, she did not like AT ALL!) while saying that he could have her stepping up in one week. When I asked him about his macaw, he proceeded to show me pictures of himself and all the other animals he had had experience with: ferrets (which he got rid of because he did not have enough time for them), a quaker (perching on his knee while he had a cigarette in his hand) and which he gave away to a relative, a mini pig (which he also gave away because he couldn't housebreak him), a German Shepherd (also no longer there because he also could not housebreak) and two other dogs, one of them a husky which had killed a CAG he used to have but which he assured me was crated all the time because of that
. I don't need to tell you that there was no way in hell he was going to get Pookey, do I?
The second one passed the first visit. He showed me pictures of his cockatoo, did not stick his hand in Pookey's cage but talked softly to her, etc. so I coordinated with him to do a home inspection. Well.... The apartment in his mother's house was a small portion of the basement of the house that was not only small but also crowded with stuff all over. He had his mother's cats there (I saw five of them) and there was no wall, no door, nothing that would keep them away from the birds when they were out. He had gotten a cage for her but it was a canary flight cage (no good as the bar gauge was way too narrow) and, because it was used, he has spray painted it! His cockatoo was not there ('visiting' a friend) which made me very suspicious because I had told him very clearly that I wanted to see his bird and how he interacted with it but her cage was - it was another canary cage (bad), on the floor (bad) and also painted with spray paint (bad) and with two food bowls, one with peanuts and another one with the cheapest parrot mix (bad). The too had one single stand, one made out of some sort of iron rod that had been tied to a garden fountain stand - now, I have NOTHING against homemade stuff for parrots but there was not a single piece of wood anywhere for this bird to chew and the stand stood only 20 or 25 inches off the floor! But what really made me decide he was not the person for Pookey was the fact that every single comment I made about the cage (the only thing I actually said anything about), he kept on saying: "I don't see anything wrong with it!" We all make mistakes and we all need to improve our husbandry so it's not as if I expect people to do exactly what I do or to take my word for anything but, if there is one thing that I do not compromise on is attitude. If he had said something like: "Oh, do you really think this cage could be dangerous to her? I don't think so but I will check it out and, if you are right, I will make sure I get her a safe one" I would have considered him but his dismissing my concerns without even checking to see if I was right nixed his chances of him ever getting her.
The lady sounds great. She recently clipped her birds but did it because her CAG is very sick with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and was getting stressed out by the other birds flying to her cage so, although she doesn't really clip, she decided to do it until her gray passes away and I understand her point. She feeds fresh food, doesn't work all day long, has a stable situation and, apparently, enough financial resources to take care of her animals but her car is not running so I'll have to wait until she is able to come over and see her.
Precie and Zeus Zon are doing great. They have gotten used to coming out of their cage and going back inside when I tell them to, continue to eat well and chew everything they can get their beaks on into confetti.
Sophie is also doing very well and I don't know if I am seeing things that are not there or what but it seems to me that she has made friends with Linus Too! She is still hormonal because she has been asking for attention and hanging on to my clothes while sticking her head under them, sometimes even hanging upside down from the neck of my clothes so she can dip her head down my chest which is not the most comfortable thing while you are trying to clean cages! But she is always the sweetest thing, never giving any trouble and now, she is sharing her dish and perching spots with Linus Too who has become very demanding of my attention following me around like a puppy. He has also been chewing up the new flooring in the birdroom so my husband is going to replace or patch the holes he's made this coming Wednesday and Thursday (he is working tomorrow to Tuesday) but that's a normal occurrence around here...
Everybody else -finches, cardinal, quail, canaries- are doing well. I am going to set up a single pair of canaries breeding this coming week because I have good homes for three of them (one female and two males). It's going to be Maria for sure but I don't know if the male is going to be Luciano or Luca - we'll see...