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Serra is going through a molt, and had the unluckiest sudden feather loss I've seen. Can you spot it?  Despite her being a 135ish gram cockatiel, which should mean "obese and unable to fly", she can fly from one end of the condo to the other. Well, could fly from one end to the other. Now, she has to flap about twice as fast and has a habit of missing her landing zone by a couple feet. The poor thing still gets air, but it's a struggle;e. (Avian vet always says the "flying test" is a good indicator of the difference between a massive bird and a fat bird. Apparently, show cockatiels are bred to be giants. So there is a good chance Serra could come from parents who bred the occasional show bird.)
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Jan 21, 2022 19:24
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Captain Log posted:Serra is going through a molt, and had the unluckiest sudden feather loss I've seen. ehehe its shameful but i always giggle when one of them loses a main flight feather, because they end up wobbling as they fly until it regrows 
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Jan 21, 2022 19:39
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Question - Due to a series of misfortunes not worth reciting, my condo does not have central air and heat anymore. We likely won't fix it for a while, if at all, because we have a MiniSplit (think of an industrial, in wall space heater) and put oil filled radiators in the two bedrooms. Serra still comes through to her sleep cage in my room at night. But the parakeets stay in the living room. Running the MiniSplit at night isn't really feasible. Despite having temp controls, that thing seems to be either "LAVA" or "Off." Which means this morning, our living room was down to almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit. When we are awake, it's closer to 78 degrees. The HVAC people said they think the thermometer I'm reading, located on the central unit that isn't being run, is possibly reading incorrectly. It might be a few degrees colder at all times. I know the actual danger to parrots in regards to temperature is sudden sharp, abrupt changes. I don't think eight degrees over the course of nine or ten hours is dangerous, especially with Blue and Yellow sleeping next to each other. Am I correct? Or do I need to come up with a solution for keeping the living room warmer over the course of the night? For the time being, their nighttime blanket is a custom stitched cage cover. It's much thicker than a sheet, but I don't really think of it as insulated. Any thoughts?
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Jan 23, 2022 21:11
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Captain Log posted:Question - my thermostat turns itself down to 64 at night. it doesn't get that cold in the birb room, but it's not nothing. then it turns up to 68 during the day, and the bird room gets correspondingly warmer. i wouldn't personally be worried since they have a fairly large range of insulation they can take advantage of as you know (i.e., how borbular they get), their cage is covered (so there isn't a large airflow sucking away the heat), and they're bunching up and snuggling, too.
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Jan 23, 2022 21:23
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If I'm converting correctly, 70f is one to 21celcius, which by my local standards is toasty warm. My normal temp in the morning is 15-16c, and all my birds are fine with that, but of course, sudden drops are a bad thing for little bird. Fun fact: we had a really lovely period of easterly winter storms a few years ago, which dropped the constant temp of the bird room to 4 celcius (39 f) so they all got wheeled over to the not extremely cold side of the house. (It's an old house so even with heating, the constant wind dropped the temperature to unbearably cold no matter what)
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Jan 23, 2022 21:28
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I really wouldn't get too worried, to reassure yourself look up temperature ranges and the difference between day and night temperatures in Australia where they live wild. Sounds like you're doing fine to me.
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Jan 23, 2022 23:01
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can't remember if i or someone else posted this and i don't care
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Jan 23, 2022 23:48
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mediaphage posted:can't remember if i or someone else posted this and i don't care I love birds
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Jan 24, 2022 02:39
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mediaphage posted:can't remember if i or someone else posted this and i don't care Is that a Bourke's parrot? How cute 
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Jan 24, 2022 03:49
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bee posted:Is that a Bourke's parrot? How cute Yes, and I am very sad that they aren't widely available in the US. I want a big pink budgie dangit
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Jan 24, 2022 04:23
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Thanks for the input, everyone. I'll worry less about a dip in temp overnight. I guess I felt a little guilty they don't get to come be toasty with Serra and myself. 
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Jan 24, 2022 08:38
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Youth Decay posted:Yes, and I am very sad that they aren't widely available in the US. I want a big pink budgie dangit If it makes you feel any better, they're not widely available as pets here in Australia either. I've seen a few over the years in pet stores and at bird shows but they're not common. Also for CaptainLog asking about temperatures, I live in Australia and we've got two budgies. It gets down to 50f here some nights through winter and we don't keep the heat on overnight. The budgies are fine, it can get a lot colder overnight in the desert where they live naturally. So your 70f birbs are getting rather spoiled in that warmth 
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Jan 24, 2022 09:39
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My ancient cockatiel is completely fine at 65-70 degrees. You'll be fine. She was visibly uncomfortable when the power went out and the indoor temperature dropped to 45. You'll be fine.
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Jan 24, 2022 15:44
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This is what happens when you spend most of your life in the US south. I'm not used to life without a central unit and get paranoid for the tiny borbs in my care. The weather is so severe in the American south that pretty much everywhere has central heat and air. Nashville will have summers well over 100f with 100% humidity, then winters that can get to freezing. Even the cheapest apartments typically have a central unit, or we'd all die.
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Jan 24, 2022 19:39
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Captain Log posted:This is what happens when you spend most of your life in the US south. I'm not used to life without a central unit and get paranoid for the tiny borbs in my care. lol growing up without ac in a kentucky river valley succccccckkkekd
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Jan 24, 2022 19:46
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It's natural to be concerned for the well-being of small, fragile friends. They are little and precious. (Except Serra, she is enormous and precious). I think the base take away is that rapid changes are risky, but birbs are tougher than we think and can cope with a wide variety of climates. There's a house near me that has an outside aviary, and I know from listening that they have budgies and cockatiels, and they've had them outside all winter when it got down to.... maybe 5 celcius? It rarely gets much below zero c here, but it is very dank and clammy every winter, so it feels colder than it is.
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Jan 24, 2022 19:47
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We went to the pet shop to meet the birds..  This sweet cockatiel seemed very friendly and would come to the front of the cage to say hello whenever we moved past it.  The baby Hahn's Macaw was pretty chill and sat calmly while my kid gave it pats. I'm still really on the fence about which bird to get! Leaning towards the cockatiel because they don't need as much attention and make less noise than the macaw. But just look at that sweet little green face
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Jan 25, 2022 07:10
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GotLag posted:You may remember a post I made in February, about a juvenile magpie with a tangled foot: Visited her again this evening, she's now a beautiful fully-grown young lady with no trace of her difficulty except that one of her toes is slightly stunted. She can catch thrown food, happily eats from my hand, and after the rest of her family had enough and flew away to argue with the neighbours, she stayed with me until I left
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Jan 25, 2022 14:38
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GotLag posted:Visited her again this evening, she's now a beautiful fully-grown young lady with no trace of her difficulty except that one of her toes is slightly stunted. She can catch thrown food, happily eats from my hand, and after the rest of her family had enough and flew away to argue with the neighbours, she stayed with me until I left ahhhhh
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Jan 25, 2022 14:48
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Bird thread: a relative of mine has passed away suddenly. She had a roughly 25-year-old (believed) female Senegal parrot. I may need assistance getting the bird rehomed. CA Bay Area region. Discuss in thread or PM me with help, please.
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Jan 25, 2022 17:19
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bee posted:We went to the pet shop to meet the birds.. Unless you have feel really confident your daughter can take ownership of the Hahn's, I would go with a cockatiel. Saying this as someone who is inheriting a cockatoo in the not so distant future. We got him when I was in fourth grade and my #1 goal in life is to outlive the bird. Not that I don't love him, but I don't have anywhere for him to go if I pass before him. Granted a Hahn's doesn't live that long, but very well could end up a legacy bird. Also tiels are adorable and way more straightforward. If you don't have experience with large parrots, I would start with a tiel and possibly look to expand the flock later. And consider rescuing a larger bird if you decide to go that route, there are so many that need homes. E to say that the macaw is outrageously cute, though
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Jan 25, 2022 17:29
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mediaphage posted:lol growing up without ac in a kentucky river valley succccccckkkekd 
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Jan 25, 2022 17:34
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bee posted:We went to the pet shop to meet the birds.. Sometimes I don't like the phrase "Starter Bird" because it implies a person can half rear end taking care of a parakeet or a cockatiel. I don't get that vibe from you in the slightest, but I'm obligated to say this - Even a parakeet can go literally insane without a lot of love, attention, and care. But, a Hahn's is not a "First Bird" when a little kid is involved. They have a "Big Macaw" attitude, which means they will do poo poo like "bluffing." That's a behavior where they will intentionally act like they are going to bite, hard, while not meaning it. But how can you tell the difference between a bluff and actual intent to bite? I sure can't. A cockatiel was my first bird when I was probably your daughter's age. I still feel guilty about it, because we had no idea how to take care of a bird in 1991. We did our best, and she got a lot of love while we made mistakes about cage type, cage placement, food, and other poo poo. Then, bird puberty hit. He turned out to be a she and would lay eight or nine eggs at a time. Simply put, she went into a hormonal level of crazy I've never seen in a cockatiel. She started projectile pooping on the walls and went from a friendly ball of fluff to psycho. In the age of the internet, I could have figured this out. But eventually, my mother made me get rid of her. I'll leave it there, because it will choke me up. You are handling juvenile parrots, which are so much more chill than a bird that goes through puberty. You need to be prepared for two years in, when the hormones hit. You'll have about a year, maybe two, of the bird being extremely difficult. But in a cockatiel? He or she will probably just become fussy. Serra was a complete angel before puberty. Now? She is a strong minded, sassy, suspicious bird who does what she wants. I love her to bits. But she went from, "I'll do whatever you want!" to "I'm only doing what I want!" This could be off-putting to people who don't know it's coming. Get the cockatiel, be prepared for bird puberty, and be prepared for at least twenty years with the little birb. Cockatiels in captivity, well cared for and with an avian vet, can break thirty. But twenty to twenty-five years is normal. But a cockatiel has a lot of room for honest mistakes, as their personality is dopey and forgiving. A macaw of any size? Your margin for error is razor thing.
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Jan 25, 2022 19:47
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mediaphage posted:lol growing up without ac in a kentucky river valley succccccckkkekd Sweet Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry. I lived in Lexington for four years. (Transylvania University! Philosophy and History Degree two years before the 2008 collapse! Woo!) Where were you?
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Jan 25, 2022 19:48
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Captain Log posted:Sweet Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry. oh nowhere special. we were just hillbillies from the eastern hills. ultimately ended up at nku, then cincy, then canada. i knew a couple folk who went to transy tho the real poo poo part is it’s just as hot and humid here in the summers????????? though at least it doesn’t last as long.
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Jan 25, 2022 20:36
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Thanks for the effort posts Eejit and Captain Log! I appreciate your sharing your stories and thoughts. I've kept larger birds before, so I'm not completely unprepared for what to expect but the bluffing thing is something I hadn't given much thought to. I've had lots of birds chomp on my fingers/hands over the years so I'm used to that but my delicate flower of a child still screams bloody murder when she stubs a toe. So the cockatiel is going to be the wiser choice here.
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Jan 25, 2022 21:11
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mediaphage posted:oh nowhere special. we were just hillbillies from the eastern hills. ultimately ended up at nku, then cincy, then canada. i knew a couple folk who went to transy tho I've spent time in Breathitt county, Tophat, Pikesville, and Neon. I know the weirdness that is exclusive to Kentucky, and quite liked it. Transy is an awesome school if you are a rich kid with grad school money, or which I was neither. Getting a liberal art's degree with a loving ton of debt without any ability to go to grad school, in 2006 before the economy imploded, was such a cruel joke. bee posted:Thanks for the effort posts Eejit and Captain Log! I appreciate your sharing your stories and thoughts. Cockatiels can bite. But of my three, I've never had one draw blood. I know this is probably not the norm, but they don't really have a cruel bone in their body.
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Jan 25, 2022 21:26
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Yep, I hear you there. My last cockatiel would get a little nippy when she was about to lay an egg but it was more of a show of "I'm in a mood rn go away" than anything else. A cockatiel nip isn't going to be as shocking to a kid as a mini macaw nip though
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Jan 25, 2022 21:33
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Just to add, we went from cockatiel to African grey about...20 years ago (jfc how is it 20 goddamn years, it feels like 5ish???) Cockatiels are delightful, sweet dumplings who are confused by nearly everything and bite about as hard as a clothespeg. African greys* are an entirely different experience. You're switching from a sweet little loving doofus to an intelligent but also alien intellect. Big parrots are extremely smart, but they are not humans and they process information differently, they react differently. My own girl Pookie is 21 years old, she is extremely chill for an African grey, but 90% of that is because she is surrounded with humans who have spent 20 years living with her and learning how she works. She will bite the absolute poo poo out of anyone who crosses her lines, and she tells you this. But you have to know how to read parrot body language for this, and it's not exactly obvious. Sample: getting big and fluffy can mean 1. I am happy and relaxed, please give me cuddles! 2. I am furiously angry, I will bite the poo poo out of you, if you come close. The two states aren't actually identical, but there's a huge amount of other, much subtler body language that distinguishes the two. *I know, you're hovering over a little macaw, but I'm guessing the brains and bite strength are similar, plus AGs are less...feisty? than any macaw
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Jan 25, 2022 21:37
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To ad to my previous post, no-one is a perfect parrot parent at all times, so you will 100% get bitten. Some bites are worse than others, and a painful bite can literally make it difficult to interact with your bird in future. Pookie had a really difficult hormonal time when she became incredibly angry because her diet was too rich. She bit me really, really hard 5 times in the space of a week when she was adapting to an implant, and if I hadn't decided to just power through and accept getting massively chomped every second day, I'd still be afraid to pick her up to this day, years later. Just to add, this psychotic, bitey bird is sitting on my knee right now, having her ears tickled and being fed a tiny bit of toffee. Basically, big parrots are extremely complicated people, and they really need to be surrounded by a family that can hear them when they speak, and they don't speak in human. I know that sounds wanky, but its true. Pookah fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 25, 2022 |
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Jan 25, 2022 21:53
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The only blood drawing bite I ever received was from an African Grey at the local parrot shop. I was dating a woman who worked there. Apparently, he thought she was HIS. For the record, her and I never even hugged at the store, let alone anything else. He asked me for scritches, lowering his head and fluffing out his neck feathers. His eyes weren't even on me. When I got about a half inch away, he whipped his head up and went for my forearm. I thought, "Oh, he just wants to climb onto me." Nope. He latched on and bite drat near through my forearm skin. The scars from the top and bottom of his beak are about an inch apart, showing how much flesh he pinched together. I was more confused than alarmed, and just turned him upside down and shook him off. loving devious rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 25, 2022 22:44
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I had an Alexandrine parrot that was super sweet and adorable until I had a baby, then she started getting territorial and possessive of my husband. We decided that it was probably best to rehome her after the day where she burrowed in under the entertainment unit, begrudgingly allowed me to have her step back out onto my arm, but then ran up my shoulder and took a bloody chunk out of my neck before flying over to my husband and cooing in his ear like nothing had happened  She'd started showing some mild aggression towards me just after the baby was born but nothing that fierce before. Anyway, that was the worst birb chomp I've copped. Having a wild cockatoo step up onto my arm and give it a good nibble for my daring to hang out with it wasn't anywhere near as painful, perhaps because it didn't draw blood. It hurt, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't hold still and just wait for it to stop when I didn't react. Anyway, here's so non-bitey content. This sweet magpie keeps coming onto my front railing for a visit. https://youtu.be/CgcrQ7HFOys
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Jan 25, 2022 23:29
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Captain Log posted:The only blood drawing bite I ever received was from an African Grey at the local parrot shop. The silly thing is that that bird probably did a whole pile of postures at you to tell you how cross he was about your affection for his lady, but you were listening in cockatiel while he was being angry in African grey. I've lived with a grey for a long time ,and she's not mean, or a liar, or anything else. She's extremely honest and straightforward; they just speak in a totally different language.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:47
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Pookah posted:The silly thing is that that bird probably did a whole pile of postures at you to tell you how cross he was about your affection for his lady, but you were listening in cockatiel while he was being angry in African grey. Egg-xactly! I feel like I understand “cockatoo” language, be it an insane Moluccan or a tiny cockatiel. But the other genus of parrots? I have no clue. Macaws intimidate the hell out of me. Although the one Hyacinth I got to interact with on multiple occasions was a big doofus’y sweetheart.
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Jan 26, 2022 01:00
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I house-sat for neighbors who had a couple of birds, including an African Gray who was older than I was, and the impression I got of what was just described as a smart but alien mind was strong enough to stick with me two decades later. That bird was cool as gently caress in that she was ok with a strange teenager coming in to feed her but was Not Down with me trying to be her friend. Someday when I’m raising fewer humans I’d maybe like to work up to caring for really big and smart birds. In the meantime, we have become sort of an amateur home for disabled birds people who know us find on social media: we took in an English budgie who hatched out to a breeder with what our vet described as “the bird version of the rickets” several years ago and he lived for almost a year, as happily as we could make him (he was incredibly social and loved to climb/try to fly all over people, and would get sad if I left in the morning for work without whistling and chirping with him, I miss him every day), when the vet said she wouldn’t realistically expect him to live to be eight months old. Some time later, somebody with a barn aviary posted a pair of scarlet-chested parakeet hatchlings who had come out with splayed legs on Facebook, and they eventually got to us. They had kept them for over a year and done all of the therapy stuff with the hatchlings which could be done to help them learn to compensate for their disability, but obviously they had to be separated and kept separated to avoid being murdered by their clutchmates and the rest of the aviary, and the folks were looking for a place for them. They’re in a cage on the wall of the room I’m posting from atm and while they’ll chirp with me and sometimes headbang, they’re decidedly Not Down with stepping up or chilling on my head grooming my hair while I play video games. They’re very skittish and I am bad at taking pictures, but I managed to get this decent shot of The Boy about a week ago:  Our kids claim to have named them “Pretty Bird” and “Sister” but recently both said they weren’t committed to either of these bits so I’m just calling them The Boy and The Girl until I think of good paired names (this could take weeks or years so those might just be their names too, who knows). It’s a minor victory in a conflict I’ve been losing which resulted in two cats named after foods (Ginger and Cupcake), anyway.
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Jan 26, 2022 01:01
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Captain Log posted:I feel like I understand “cockatoo” language, be it an insane Moluccan or a tiny cockatiel. But the other genus of parrots? I have no clue. Macaws intimidate the hell out of me. I feel this way too. Cockatoo body language makes a lot of sense to me,like there's a lot of overlap in the family. Macaws are beautiful but I can't read them at all.
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Jan 26, 2022 03:17
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https://i.imgur.com/cbqaAJN.mp4
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Jan 26, 2022 04:04
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OH MY GOD PREEN HIM PLEASE
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Jan 26, 2022 04:18
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incidentally i love/feel bad when alex and grace tilt their heads toward each other and ask for preens at the same time, then get confused/offended when none are coming
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Jan 26, 2022 04:18
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Captain Log posted:African Grey: I just reread the last part of this thread and saw this again. Captain Log, while the stuff I said about African greys having very distinct body-language, and generally not being liars, this is the one major instance when they 100% lie to be assholes. Head down pweease give the wittul fuffy bird a scritch? If you have any reason to believe that an African grey is pissed off with you, tread carefully. It's their go-to stealth attack.
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Jan 26, 2022 20:51
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