Crying wolf

Background:

This morning, the greys, Brian, Thomas, and I are in the kitchen.  The caiques are in their cages in the living room.  Basil and Rocky are out of their cages, in the living room.  Rocky wanders around but is not bird aggressive and usually is ripping up the cage liner in Beeps's or Stella's cage.  Basil stays on his cage door, happy to be out.  We listen for trouble.

End of background.

Basil, who has very talkative all morning, starts yelling, rhythmically, "Help! Help! Help! Help!"  We have never heard this before, so we go in to make sure that Rocky hasn't climbed on his cage -- nope.  A few minutes pass, during which time he goes through his normal routine "I got your foot, Bas! Peek-a-boo!  Hello Basil!" etc.  Then again, "Help! Help! Help! Help!" but upon inspection, no help was necessary.

Cracked us up.  I guess he was a little lonely.

Bath time!

Max was being extremely irritating this morning -- constantly flying over and "helping" me get food in the crock pot for tonight's dinner.  I decided that was a sign for me to help her burn off some excess energy by taking a bath.  Max loves to be sprayed!  This is good exercise for her, as when she gets too wet she does a lap around the room (and then returns for more).  She also moves around a lot as I'm spraying her to make sure everything gets wet.  And I move to different locations she has to fly to in order to keep getting sprayed.  It's kind of hard to make a video of myself doing this, so here I just had her go to different parts on her stand.


I do not know at what point she would be ready to call it quits on bathing herself.  The longest my hand has been able to stand has been two refills of the spray bottle -- and she still wanted more!

After the bath, she and Calypso (who likes to only get a little wet) each got a piece of carrot as a treat (I was chopping them up for dinner and she kept saying "want some!")

One last wet Max picture:

Brian gets what he wants

This morning, Thomas was eating his breakfast of cottage cheese.  Brian was begging for some, but since parrots really shouldn't eat much dairy, Thomas was holding the bowl in his hand, elevated from the table.  He thought this would prevent Brian from eating any.

Please put that bowl on the table!

He was wrong.  Brian simply jumped a little higher than we've seen before:

I guess I have to take matters into my own hands!

Never underestimate the problem-solving skills of a budgie!

Grey team

The greys continue to flock together in their own strange way -- still no physical interaction, but they prefer to be near each other.  My guess is that this has more to do with making sure the other one isn't getting something they're not than a genuine desire to be close.  Whatever works -- I still credit Max with a bit part of Stella's improvement over the years.

Maybe if we hang around long enough, they'll feed us!

One of the bad things about summer and it staying light out later is that the greys (led by Max) will fly into the kitchen and then try to get us to come in when we're eating dinner in the living room.  During the winter, when it's dark in the kitchen, they stay put.  Max's attempts to get us to come in used to revolve around cuteness -- singing, yelling "Come here!  Gimme a kiss!  How are you?", etc.  Lately, however, things have taken a more sinister turn.  She must have realized that naughtiness will get her more of a reaction than cuteness.

Last night, they were banging things around.  They don't intentionally damage things, but I worry they may throw something to the ground, breaking it.  When they continued to bang, I went in there to see what was going on and retrieve them to the living room.  I did not expect to be so entertained by them.

Pretending to eat onions will definitely get us attention!

As they were banging things, they kept an eye on the hall I'd be emerging from, and as soon as they glimpsed me, they ran over to pretend to eat the onions.  (They did this twice last night, so the second time in particular I paid close attention to their behavior and observed this.)  They did not actually want to eat onions -- they would have done so quietly.  Nope, they wanted a reaction.  If this continues, we're going to have to figure out a new place for the onions.

Just to be clear -- onions are on the danger list of foods for parrots and they do not eat them.

Rocky

I had Brian on my shoulder recently, so his cage door was open.  Rocky saw this and climbed right in (Thomas closed the door and took a picture.)  Rocky did not mind being locked inside -- he just ate some of Brian's food and played with his toys.  He tried unsuccessfully to perch on the budgie-sized boing.  After we took some pictures, we let him out again.

A macaw in a budgie cage?  Madness!

Later, Thomas was heading away from me down the hall when I asked him a question, he returned, but I could only see what was in his hand -- Thomas was manipulating him so it was as if Rocky had asked me to repeat myself.  I responded by saying it was an unpleasant surprise.

What did you say?