Parrot Skateboard

Bird Bopping for the Holidays

I was chatting with a friend this weekend about his son’s school, STAR Academy in Los Angeles, which is affiliated with the exotic animal rescue organization STAR Eco Station which I hope to visit sometime. Junior and senior high school students learn to interact and care for parrots and other species as they are rehabilitated for adoption. We got to talking about birds and music, so if anyone dares listen to Christmas tunes already, here’s Snowball the Sulfur-Crested Cockatoo dancing in some excerpts from his Christmas medley. (Good stuff really starts about half way in!)

Snowball is also a rescue bird, an 11 year old who was relinquished to the Bird Lover’s Only Sanctuary because of behavioral problems. He has bonded with the owner, and she is keeping him. He’s also turned into a great fund-raiser for the sanctuary. His commercial endorsement contracts include Soba water from Sweden:

Goes to show what a little knowledge and patience with training can do. I notice on the sanctuary web site, Barbara Heidenreich’s Good Bird training site is listed in her favorites. You can purchase the whole Snowball Christmas DVD for a $15 donation to the sanctuary.

(Carly is also fond of bouncing her head and making drum sounds to music, but her sense of rhythm is from another universe!)

Anyone considering a great gift for a parrot lover, please check out some of the wonderful conservation and rescue organizations to the left which offer memberships, sponsorships, and other gifts to help fund their work.

Piper Learns About the World

I’m upping Piper’s excursions. I take Carly by herself most often when I do errands, because she is easy and also seems to do well when we have some one-on-one time like that. But today we had a family outing to Home Depot, and then a little training time in the pine tree at the park. Carly has a great time in the hardware aisle — hundreds of little tiny bags of parrot toys! Piper was apprehensive with all the people and busy-ness, so he rode in a carrier in the cart and observed. I really think one of the reasons Carly is so unflappable (?) outside is because she had so much exposure before freeflying.

Piper adapts pretty well once he’s done something a few times. He’s a great little car rider now. And today in the park he was very relaxed walking around and doing a little fun work in the pine tree, even after his big adventure the other day. I think with Carly it finally got to the point where experiencing new things was just nothing new. That’s our goal.

Piper being puffy in the park, while Carly chills.

So, finally, a question: what is it about Home Depot and parrots? I have met workers there who have parrots, and today met two more. Both men in their 60’s, one with a 3-yr old Amazon, and one with a teenage Grey. The man with the Grey had one who recently died also, at the age of 75! He was his 3rd owner.

Autumn in San Diego

OK, so it’s always beach weather here, but we do have an apple season too!

Some recent pics.

Fall means… the beaches are ours again!



Carly and Piper meet the skinniest apples ever.



And, doing their part to help the economy, Carly and Piper work hard to remedy slumping numbers in new home construction.



more in galleries…

Crow Migration, or What Not to Do on Day 2

There have always been a few crows in the park. One or two would often sit in the sycamore tree and watch while I was training Carly under the canopy. She was briefly chased by one once during one of her first big outdoor flights, but she didn’t pay much attention to it. Otis and Gizmo were chased by a couple on their first outing to the park here too. They did their usual divide and confuse routine, and the crows gave up.

So Monday morning was Piper’s second outdoor recall training session. (Put on your shades — you might be blinded by the glaring errors!) Carly went with us again, and before I let Piper out of his carrier I unclipped her leash so she could go on a few big flights. After that she’s usually content to just hang out with me. She didn’t want to go however, so we did a few short recalls from the wall like we did yesterday with Piper. Then I got Piper out to join in. We normally alternate back and forth when we practice indoors, and that’s what we did today for 5 or 10 minutes. Then Carly was ready for a big flight. She took off on a big circle around the park, and of course Piper followed her. (He always wants to take off with her if he’s on a harness.) They did a couple very large loops above the treeline, then Carly landed in a eucalyptus. Piper landed in another tree behind it, but I didn’t see which one.

Carly and I did a full circuit of the park and surrounding townhomes calling, but not a peep out of him. Then a guy came running and said he’d seen Piper get chased quite aggressively by 4 crows out of a tree. We went off to search in that direction, but still nothing. Once I heard Piper do some of his calls, but it was a courtyard or two over and I could not find him. Once I thought I saw a grey-like body fly behind some trees. But mostly nothing. Just walking and calling and whistling our contact tune. One thing I did find: crows. Lots and lots of crows. Not in big flocks, but 2-4 in almost every tree. Then later in the day larger groups flying overhead. Another person told me they’d seen him being chased also. Just as it was almost dark I saw the silhouette of a bird landing in the top of a eucalyptus in the distance. It was landing in the same silly way a grey parrot does. I ran and called and it was indeed Piper. He flew to a tree near me, and did the stair-step descent approach, going to lower and lower trees, finally landing on a scrawny twig about 15 feet high. One final call and he was back!

This was not the ideal 2nd day out for sure. I have never seen so many crows in the area. I have since seen flocks of them near the beach also, where there are usually only ravens. Unfortunately I didn’t personally see any of the chases with Piper, so I don’t know how aggressively they were behaving. But I do know it was very hard to find a landing place without crows already in possession. Piper has not been outside nearly as much as Carly when she first started either, so he has far less exposure to seeing large birds. It must have been pretty frightening for him.

In the picture above, our training spot is just to the right of where it says “found.” Pretty amazing after so many hours he was literally back within about 100 ft of where he started.

When we came in he ate a huge dinner, then went to his bedtime perch and fell asleep at 6:30 (about 5 hours earlier than normal!)

But back to the errors:

Carly went with us again, and before I let Piper out of his carrier I unclipped her leash so she could go on a few big flights. . . . She didn’t want to go however, so we did a few short recalls from the wall like we did yesterday with Piper. Then I got Piper out to join in. We normally alternate back and forth when we practice indoors, and that’s what we did today for 5 or 10 minutes. Then Carly was ready for a big flight. She took off on a big circle around the park, and of course Piper followed her. . . . They did a couple very large loops above the treeline, then Carly landed in a eucalyptus.

Totally preventable, dumb errors. Carly is just coming out of some re-training, so I should not have trusted her to stay focused on short recalls before she had done some longer flights. Dumb. This was Piper’s second day out, and I should not have been training him alongside her unless I was totally confident she would not fly off. I knew how he’d react. It worked the day before when she had already flown some, but even then it was more of a risk than I should have taken on his first day. It probably wouldn’t have been a big deal without the crows, but even so, not smart. I assume it was also distracting for Carly, still under intense observation and re-training, to have Piper flying with her for the first time.

What did go well:

1. I had my stack of 50 “Lost Parrot” flyers with pictures on them right at my home, so I got those out very soon. I also have business cards with Carly’s picture, my cell phone number, and web site address, normally for giving to people so they can access the training resources web page or photos. They are also perfect for handing out when searching for a bird.
2. Piper stayed very close, in the immediate vicinity of the park (even though I couldn’t spot him!) He must have really been hunkering down inside the trees most of the time. Since he is brand new at this I didn’t know what to expect, but I’m very happy his instinct was not to bolt in a straight line and fly off.
3. Once he felt safe retrieval was easy.
4. I could take the entire day off to search if I need to. I never fly outdoors when I have anything within the next 24 hrs that can’t be rescheduled.
5. This is a very animal-friendly and helpful neighborhood. Wonderful people, eager to help. (Two neighbor girls were so excited when I got Piper back home they even volunteered to go take down flyers. Wow!)

Piper is much more watchful of the sky when outside now, so I’m going to do spend some more time on the harness just walking around and doing recalls without big sis. He is a fearless flyer physically, but he also startles so much more easily than Carly ever did. It’s an odd combination. But it could also be that I notice it more with Piper because, being fledged properly, his instinct is to fly; Carly, unfledged and clipped, would usually just hunker down onto my chest. It’s easy to forget how much a baby hasn’t experienced yet.

One final note: I think this kind of experience highlights the risks inherent in freeflight training, especially as practiced with companion parrots, by non-professionals, in a relatively uncontrolled environment. I don’t consider myself an impatient trainer (quite the opposite usually) and I could have prevented this event with the knowledge I had. But it’s very easy to “go with the flow” even when you know what you’re doing is increasing the risk. In addition to the importance of learning and gaining experience, one of the lessons for me with this is that a very important aspect of experience is to always remember why the rules you have established are so critical.

Carly’s card:

(Photo by Hugh Choi)

Baby its cold outside!

With the winter weather upon us, its about the time of year that bird owners start to worry about their fidlets freezing their, um, tails off. Some winter suggestions for keeping your fids warm include:

-Investing in a heated perch. I’ve heard many good things about this product. Best for smaller birds like caiques that are not prone to trying to chew through heavy plastic items.

- Invest in a heavy, warm cage cover. In doing this you can turn the heat down a couple degrees at night, save on your heating bill, but not worry about turning your feathered friend into a birdie popsicle

- A reptile ceramic heat emitter (emits heat only, no light) works great as a heat source for your bird.

If you invest in one, be sure to put the emitter into the appropriate light source, such as this one that has a ceramic socket which will not pose a fire hazard. One with a dimmer switch like this works perfectly to give you control of heat output.

Avitec also sells avian heat panels which can install in an aviary or your home to provide your bird a warm place to cuddle up to. I’ve heard lots of good reviews about these devices as well.

Stay warm, and have a happy thanksgiving!

Baby its cold outside!

5 Best Parrots for Families with Children

Early Training on a Harness

Here are some pictures of Piper’s early outdoor training on a harness.
Piper Goes Out

I use a retractable leash set short at the beginning (5-6 feet), then work up to the full length eventually (15 ft). They need to be familiar with doing recall on a harness and leash inside before doing this, so they understand the concept and don’t try to fly off uncontrollably.

I personally like using a harness like this to acclimate a new bird to flying outdoors. Even when Carly had started flying on her own outside, I still used the harness for the first few minutes of our outdoor sessions at the beginning. It allowed me a way to double-check that her response was good that day, that she was not distracted or anxious about something in the environment, etc.

I will take some pictures of the harness I use. It’s homemade, but similar to the aviator. I also have a version that doesn’t have to be put over the head since some birds don’t like that. The KEY with using a harness, in addition to sufficient indoor training first, is to make sure you have the leash securely attached on both ends. That means a secure fastener on the bird end that he won’t open up on his own (again — practice inside!) and a secure fastener on your end that you can’t accidentally lose hold of. That means a caribiner or some secure hook like those found at boat supply stores. I’ll include some pics of those too. Do not rely on holding the leash loop in your hand, or even looped around your wrist. If something startles your bird, and the bird tries to bolt, it may very well startle you too and you can accidentally let go of the leash. It’s also important to not have the line too long for what the bird is comfortable with doing recall, otherwise you can get tangled up.

An article about harness training by Barbara Heidenreich, featuring Stephanie Ernst’s African Grey is in Parrot Chronicles: Harness Training Your Bird .

Here’s a shot that show’s Piper’s harness better. I now use a screw-down pear clip to attach the leash to the harness because he learned how to unfasten the standard leash clip.

Smaller birds can forage too!

I myself have 3 parakeets while my brother in law has a cockatiel. I've been striving to allow my smaller birds to forage more like the larger ones. It's not as easy but I'm finding ways. I just recently started with them, really.


I found this great toy though, that works for both parakeets and cockatiels and I'm sure it would work great for conures and senegal parrots and the like...





It's a great "starter toy". I eventually added more for both the parakeets and cockatiel. The empty plexi one in the parakeet video was one they quickly figured out and emptied already. I think I can finally fill it with pellets now that they get the hang of it! Always gotta use the tastey stuff to get them interested, though!


More pics of foraging cockatiel Magoo...

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