Scritches for Everyone!

After a whole year of watching Mika enjoying head scratches, Stewie has decided that he’s going to allow me to touch him. Not just touch him, but rub his neck and pinch the keratin off his new feathers! Pin feathers are itchy and uncomfortable and, in the wild, parrots engage in allopreening to help each other get rid of the hard substance that protects the feathers as they grow in.

In our homes, where they don’t have other parrots to preen them, they have two options: either live with the icky pin feathers and wait for them to fall off on their own, or let the humans help.

For two years, Stewie has not wanted me to touch him. He was all about preening me — trying remove moles from my neck, pulling on hairs, removing errant schmutz — but has not wanted my hands on him. Don’t get me wrong, Stewie is very affectionate. He gives me kisses, lets me smother him with kisses, crawls into my shirt… but he let me know that he doesn’t like hands coming at him or touching him and I always respect his personal space. Not respecting his no-touching rule would mean getting bitten, but more than that it’s a matter of maintaining trust and open communication. No hands invading where they aren’t wanted.

But for some reason in the last couple of days, Stewie has welcome neck and head rubs, scritches and help with his pins. Not sure why I even tried — I stopped trying to touch him long ago — but something about how he was all fluffy with his head down just said “scritches please”. After all, that’s the position Mika adopts when she want scritches.

Breaking pin feathers is a delicate operation; even if you’re careful, you could rub that feather the wrong way, which hurts. But Stewie has been very tolerant and patient with me.

Because of the fact that Stewie is kind of a bitey bird, I’m careful to watch his body language very carefully and always stop long before I think he’s getting antsy. I only break up two or three feathers at a time, at most and then take a break. When Mika is done with scritches, she just pushes me away, but I think that if I were to irritate Stewie he’d let me know a little more forcefully.

This foray into helping Stewie preen is a huge leap for us. These types of breakthroughs… with a bird who was aggressive and distrustful for months after I got him … is really the best part of working with a rescue parrot.

Scritches for everyone!

Updating the Parrot Blogroll

When I started this blog, I added a bunch of links to my sidebar in order to share other great parrot resources. Since then I’ve added a few links here and there, but quite a few more parrot blogs have either sprung up in the mean time or come to my attention; and quite a few others seem to have fallen inactive or been pulled down.

So it’s time to update the Best in Flock blogroll – I’ll be going through my links and evaluating the bird blogs I already know about, but would love some input from the community on other parrot sites I should consider. I’ll also be dropping a bunch of links – so if you think I should keep something, make sure to let me know.

What I’m looking for in blogroll suggestions:

• The blog is primarily/exclusively about (or “by”) parrots.
• Blog should be at least several months old. This will help weed out that huge percentage of blogs that gets started and abandoned almost immediately.
• Blog should be currently active and updated at least once or twice a month.

Here’s what I probably won’t link to:

• Blogs that offer what I consider to be bad advice or poor examples of how to care for a companion animal.
• Blogs that may mention parrots every once in a while but aren’t primarily about birds.
• Thin affiliate blogs whose sole purpose is peddling crappy parrot training DVDs. These are a dime a dozen, offering nothing original, and very often written by the owners of said DVD program and/or people who don’t even appear to have parrots, but create blogs with recycled content and fake testimonials in hopes of making a quick buck off of affiliate commissions.

I do consider the blogroll to be my recommendations (aka, a de facto quasi-endorsement to a small degree), so I think it’s important to have these criteria — I’m not trying to be snobby or judgmental, just making sure I only link to the best stuff. (The blog doesn’t need to be “professional looking” or self-hosted – it’s the content I care about.)

So, what’s your favorite parrot blog? Who do you read?

Here are some of my (new and old) favorites to inspire your creative juices:

• Likambo.com – Carly Lu’s Flight Blog
• Good Bird Inc.’s blog – authored by Barbara Heidenreich
• Life of Pis – where I, ahem, Mika is a co-contributer
• Heckled by Parrots
• Parrot Musings
• Parrot Nation – by Patricia Sund

Ok, your turn… what parrot blogs do you recommend?

p.s. If you like Best in Flock, please feel free to link to it from your site as well.

Wet Birdie Wednesday

Nothing sillier than a wet parrot

Here’s Mika looking like a wet chicken after a shower:

Here’s Stewie sporting a faux-hawk.

Mika loves her showers, always getting good and soaked, while Stewie prefers a more gentle misting (or a bath in his water bowl).

Mika Tries Her Veggies

Mika made me proud this weekend. Not only did she take a couple of flights that didn’t involve crash landing behind the couch or into the recycling bin, she also ate her first pieces of fresh food since she’s been with me.

Ordinarily, when I offer her something that isn’t dry and hard (pellets, nuts, pieces of pine) she’ll touch it lightly and then quickly recoil in disgust… like she thinks I’m trying to poison her or something. Over the weekend, I handed her a fresh sugar snap pea (one of Stewie’s favorites), hoping she’d play with it a little. Lo and behold, she held onto it and started tearing at it. And then she decided the icky wet food wasn’t so terrible and started eating.

After finishing her first piece, I gave her a second piece and she ate that too!

Later that evening, I heated up some mixed veggies for Stewie and decided to give Mika a bowl too (I usually don’t fix them for her because she won’t touch anything that’s not dry, but since she was being adventurous this weekend that I’ll give it another try). The bowl had some pieces of fresh apple, plus a heated up mix of frozen veggies (including corn, peas, carrots and green beans). Stewie likes the mix and dove right in as expected.

Mika was more cautious, but after leaving the bowl on top of her cage for a while, she started eating too. As far as I could tell, she at least tried all of it, but seemed to like the apples best. (Keep in mind I’ve offered her apple bits dozens of times before…. The lesson? You just have to keep trying.  Persistence pays off eventually.)

Between the eating of the fresh food and her attempts at flying, this has been a groundbreaking weekend for my Mika girl.

Loving on Mika

After a long day at the office, one of my favorite things is to rub Mika’s neck, press my nose against her and breathe in that adorable pionus musk.

I love the way she smells.

And when she starts to close her eyes, I know I’m scratching her in just the right place.

Yeah, right there, that’s it.

Progress Report: Mika Settling In

The long weekend was the perfect opportunity to give Stewie and Mika lots of attention and out of cage time … simultaneously. I’m constantly reminded not to rush them — so far their introduction hasn’t been the smoothest process — but we made a lot of progress if you keep in perspective that animals can sometimes takes months to warm up to each other.

Mika’s and Stewie’s cages are now set up on opposite sides of the room, so they can see each other without being too close. For the last few weeks, they’ve had separate out of cage time and Stewie has been reinforced for staying on his side of the room. He’s been pretty good about leaving Mika alone, but I don’t give him opportunities to go to her. (Recall that last time he bit her, she was “safe” inside her cage. And despite now being partially clipped, Stewie still flies across the room and back very easily! His latest wing clipping barely slowed him down.)

Over the weekend, we let them both out at the same time and each birdie got one whole human to pay full, undivided attention to them for hours at a time.

Mika had the security of two people running interference in case Stewie wanted to “visit” her (i.e., fly over to knock her off her perch). DP seems to adore Mika — he feels much more at ease with Mika’s deliberate personality than he does with the flightiness of my sun conure — and I think the feeling is mutual.

Stewie, in turn, could be confident that even with Mika out of her cage he didn’t have to fight for my attention or defend what he perceived to be his. I kept his attention away from Mika by working on his tricks, feeding him snap peas, inviting him crawl up my sleeves and letting him do all the usual stuff he finds so entertaining.

Being able to spend 3-plus days giving both birds lots and lots of attention was fun and satisfying. I feel less stressed out and am not worrying about shortchanging either one of them. Stewie has settled down tremendously. And I think Mika is a pretty happy girl too. What do you think?

Mika likes foot toys, so she can have all of Stewie’s unused ones.

Introducing the New Addition to the Flock

Haven’t had a chance to update the blog with the big news: I got a second bird! Mika is a two-year old white capped pionus — a total sweetheart of a parrot.

She joined Stewie and me last weekend.

Mika, the white capped pionus, reading a Washington Post
story about the rising cost of vet care.

I got her from a woman (via Craig’s List) who had to rehome her due to frequent overseas travel. Mika was clearly well loved. She steps up without hesitation and has only bitten me once, even though I’m a complete stranger to her and I’ve been having to towel her to give her medication.

Her integration into my household, I have to admit, has been a little rougher on Stewie (and me) than I was expecting. I was prepared for them not being best buddies right off the bat, but Stewie is having a tough time adjusting to the “interloper” in the house and he’s downright aggressive towards her.

Despite my efforts to keep him away from her, he flew to her cage on Wednesday, while she was inside, and bit her toe.

I freaked out, as you can imagine. I took Mika to my avian vet where they cleaned her up and prescribed some antibiotics, just to be safe. Poor girl — not only has she had to move into a new home where everything is unfamiliar, and she has to share her home with a little orange demon bird, but she has to be deal with me forcing medication into her twice a day.

Not to worry, she’s fine – the vet said it was minor. She’s being a total trooper about it; and like I said, I think I’m more stressed out than she is — she’s being very cooperative.

Mika playing with a foot toy.

Right now she and Stewie obviously have to be kept completely separated. For now, when he’s out of his cage, I have to erect a shoji screen around her cage so he doesn’t fly onto it. I’ll be bringing him to the vet to have his wings trimmed again. It’s a tough decision, since I do so enjoy having him flighted, but his little aerial attack is going to cost him his flying privileges — at least temporarily while they take more time to get used to each other.

It’ll probably take a few months before I can count on them being civil to each other (or rather, for Stewie to be civil to Mika, since she’s already a perfect lady) — so I’ll need to continue to enforce completely separate out of cage/play schedules for the two of them. In the mean time, all three of us are going to have to learn to adjust to the new routine and the new order of things.

Stay tuned for more details (and photos) about Mika and how the transition is going.