I’m watching TV today — an episode of Monk (Mr. Monk and the Red Herring) — and imagine my surprise when they feature a sun conure! On the show, Monk goes to a pet store and notices a bird. The geeky pet store clerk says, “You can have him for free. We can’t get rid of him, people keep returning him.” When asked what’s wrong with the bird, the guy says “he depresses people: he doesn’t talk, he just sits there and cleans himself.”
Aughh!!! This is such a huge pet peeve of mine (pun totally intended). An animal is not a toaster oven!! You don’t just return them because they aren’t as “fun” as you thought they’d be. When bringing home a new pet, you make a commitment to him/her. You don’t just exchange it.
This attitude isn’t just writers’ license on a television show; I see people say things like that all the time on the Internet. “Oh, he didn’t bond with my wife, he likes me better, so we’re thinking of returning him and getting a different bird.” Ugh!
Oh, and that cage the bird was in (in the fictional pet store) was WAY too small. A conure cage should be at least 20″ in the shortest dimension. Stewie’s cage is 21″w x 32″l x 35″h and I’m actually of the opinion that it’s a little too small (even though I can fit my whole body in it). Once you put toys and perches in a cage, it really starts looking small, fast.
Here’s what a cage that size looks like; notice the conure standing on the door.
Got Stewie to step on the scale today, finally, after many months of getting him used to the idea (yeah, I wasn’t in a hurry). He weighs 104 grams. Down from 106g last time I took him to the vet for a nail trim, and up from 103g when I took him to his first well-birdie visit after I picked him up from the animal shelter. That type of variation isn’t that unusual, especially since I’m not measuring his weight at the same time right in the morning - a few grams here or there can be attributed to what food he has stored in his crop and/or the last time he “emptied out.”
He’s on the small side for his species, so I’m not worried that he’s a little under average weight for a sun conure.
Here he is on his bird scale (the perch is covered in vet wrap):
I’ve been housesitting and dogsitting for some friends this holiday, so I brought Stewie with me.
His regular cage was set up in the guest room so I could keep the dogs away from him, but he just pitched a fit. Much more than he ever did at home, he screamed every time I made a move to leave him alone. Ordinarily I just ignore him when he screams for attention, but this just seemed different - he was in a strange place after all. So I felt I had no choice except to put him in his travel cage and bring him out into the den. I put the little travel carrier on top of the counter where the dogs couldn’t reach him, set up my laptop next to it, and peace was restored.
Don’t worry, I’m super careful about not letting the dogs near him. None of the dogs seems particularly interested in him, but I still watch them all with an eagle eye.
Stewie seems much happier being out with the rest of the “flock.” I can even leave the room without him screaming.
I even took the little critter into the shower - my friends have a much nicer shower than I do, easier to bring him in with me - and he took his first real shower. Usually he just takes little half baths in his water bowl, or I mist him, which he doesn’t get into. He plasters his wings to his body and basically “puts up with” getting wet with the mister.
But this time, after a couple of minutes of not being excited about the shower at all, he started getting really into it. He spread his wings, shook his tail feathers, walked toward the water, lowered his head … and started enjoying it! He got soaked, really soaked, for the first time since I’ve had him.
I’ll post photos as soon as I get home and download them.
Stewie got tired of the the “put the ball in the cup trick”… not sure why, but he just doesn’t want to do it anymore.
Here’s a picture of him when he was still eager to do it:
We’ve been working on “put the ring on the peg” but this one has been difficult. To tell the truth, I’ve sort of abandoned the clicker. I’m terrible with it… my timing is off, I’m inconsistent, I’m uncoordinated (I need three hands to handle the prop, the clicker and the treat at the same time). So I’ve been trying to do clicker training without the clicker. It’s slow going.
Here’s the prop:
I originally got him the small version of the toy (I can’t help it, I keep thinking of him as a small bird, not a medium-sized bird), but it was too small. This is a picture of him with the medium-sized Ring Toss prop.
He’s still not very good at it, but he’s done it a few times where I was holding the peg and helped him get the ring onto it. Today I spent a bit of time playing with the rings and peg, picking up the rings in my mouth and putting them on the peg like I want him to do (rather than doing it with my hands). And he did it a few times by himself!
He also likes to throw the rings off the side of the cage, which is cute too (but doesn’t earn him a treat).
A month or two ago, my conure loved, loved, LOVED his Happy Hut. Wouldn’t let me near it. Here’s a picture of him in it (isn’t he cute!) Apparently conures really like their Happy Huts.
But lately I’ve noticed that he doesn’t seem to be using the Happy Hut to sleep anymore. Stewie still crawls into it at night to signal that it’s nite-nite time, but when I’ve peeked under the covers later I see that he’s come back out.
And in the morning when I uncover him now, if he’s not already climbing around, he’s on his perch leaning against his Cozy Corner. The Cozy Corner is made of the same material as the Happy Hut, but it just hangs on the side of the cage for him to lean against (basically a blanket except it has a little hood-like thing).
Here he is with his fleece blankie after a bath:
I have yet to catch him on film as he’s sleeping with it, but trust me, it’s adorable.
Anyone else have a small parrot that has both of these? If yes, which does it prefer, the fleece tent or the fleece blanket tied to the side of the cage?
If your bird doesn’t have either, I highly recommend getting at least one or the other.
I went out of town for the weekend and asked my friend Lisa to come over and keep Stewie company for a while, so he wouldn’t be too lonely. She said she read the paper to him and he behaved very well. He even made his trilling/purring happy sounds when he was digging into his apple slices - so it seemed he didn’t miss me too much.
Stewie did something he’s never done before: he flew to(wards) me while we were in the bathroom together. He was hanging out on his shower perch and I was taking a shower. When I was done and toweling off he flew toward me, but given that his wings are clipped and he’s not too coordinated, and the fact that I wasn’t prepared to catch him, he landed in the bottom of the tub. Now, my bathtub isn’t draining properly and he landed in about an inch of water. He was more surprised by it than I was, I think.
After he hopped around a little bit in the water, I managed to fish him out. After determining that he was in fact alright, I put him back on his shower perch and gave him a good misting so that he could get thoroughly soaked from head to tail (not just his belly).
Here’s the shower perch I have (the toy hanging at the end of the perch is different, but you can hang your parrot’s favorite toy on the end as well) and a photo of Stewie using that perch (attached to the bathroom mirror). Click on the photo on the left to see it in use by an African Grey:
Conures love to take baths and/or showers. Bathing is important for the bird’s health and comfort, especially during molting season. You should give your parrots a bath or shower several times a week. Stewie started taking little baths in his water bowl, but the bowl was too small for Stewie to fit his entire body in. So he’d only get his front wet.
So cute! He’d make these really happy, chirpy (almost purring) noises when he was getting wet.
I tried introducing larger containers into the cage so he could take a proper bath, but he ignored the bowls, tupperware, large plates… And my attempts to spritz him with water from these containers did not meet with approval.
Today I took Stewie into the bathroom while I took a shower. I didn’t take him into the shower because I thought that might be too aggressive. But I did get a pump-style spray bottle and misted him thoroughly. He didn’t act like he enjoyed it, but he didn’t try to run away or react negatively. I played in the spray and cheered like a bozo to show him that it was a fun thing. I think he’s probably going to get cleaned via misting from now on.
Important: it’s important to spray up into the air and let the mist fall down on the bird. Never spray water directly into the bird’s face.
Friday night I let lil’ Stewie out of his cage for the first time. He was quite timid and adorable to watch him checking everything out. At one point he got startled and jumped off the cage to land on the floor. For a split second I was worried that he’d scamper underneath the couch, making it impossible for me to catch him (keep in mind he’s till not trained to step up onto my finger). Much to my delight, his first instinct was to try to fly to his cage. Unfortunately, with his wings clipped, he couldn’t get enough lift to get from the floor onto his cage. So I put his little wooden ladder on the side of the cage so he could climb up. Stewie made a beeline for the door and climbed back inside.
On Saturday, I let him out of his cage again. Based on his behavior the night before I thought he’d stay really calm, but as soon as he climbed to the top of the cage, he tried to fly out the window (which was closed). Luckily it was slow going since his wings were clipped and he didn’t hit the glass hard — he managed to glide into a plant where I was able to scoop him up.
And then… miracle of miracles, the little bugger did some “step ups” for me. And this whole time he was pretending he didn’t know how. Stewie somehow conned me into giving him treats for things as simple as venturing out onto a handheld perch, and this whole time he knew how to do step ups. Now I just him to do that when he has more of a choice (i.e., not just when he’s already on my finger, but when he has the option to walk away). We’re not quite there yet.
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Welcome!
Welcome to my parrot blog, where I share insights with other and would-be parrot owners on ways to keep their pet birds happy. These are just my opinions, observations and insights based on my life with Stewie and my efforts to do the very best for him. I also read voraciously and will share other cool stuff I find related to parrot ownership and training.
