Well....
Gosh, look at the time. And I need to have a diary to publish right about... um... now.
This week has been little busier than usual. Stuff going on at work. Starting to gear up for banding season. (Migration will be going strong before you know it!) And one more little thing....
Kinda hard to type like this.
A year ago last weekend, we lost our beloved macaw, Amelia. It tore me up and put me into an abyss for months. I looked into the possibility of getting a rescue bird, but it ended up being ridiculously complicated. I took it as a sign that I just needed to spend a few months letting my heart heal.
Earlier this year, I bribed myself to finally get around to scheduling a bunch of medical tests (the "now that you're fifty" suite) by promising myself a new bird once they were all done. Makes sense, really... want to get a clean bill of health before making a long-term commitment. Once the results came back, I got to work on finding the bird.
I've always loved African Greys, and connected with a friend of a friend who had a baby soon to be available. When we first met for the first time, at the start of July, Baby Bird was only about half-feathered. Wing and tail feathers were well under way, but there were still large bare patches in the body feathers.
The fabulous tail feathers begin to emerge.
At that point, Baby was still being hand-fed three times a day. Because I work during the day, it wouldn't have been practical to bring him/her home at that point; we'd have to wait until it was down to two feedings at most. I did go over a few nights a week to do evening feedings, both to learn how to do it and to get to know the bird.
A ride in the car! Now that was exciting...
On Wednesday night, we finally brought our newest family member home. We had some concerns about the reaction of our other bird, Kodachrome. She's a little over 22 years old and has been with us since she was about six months old. She's rather change-adverse, a bit of a neo-phobe actually; anyone who has visited our house can tell you that she doesn't usually warm up to strangers right away. But she'd met one other African Grey last fall when I was still looking into a rescue situation, and she was pretty calm about it.
This perspective distorts their sizes - new bird is actually a little bit larger than Kodachrome.
The meeting went even better than expected - no squawking from Kodachrome, just some low, soft clucking to greet the newcomer. (If you've ever met a Sun Conure, you know that low, soft sounds are not the typical response to anything.)
Just double-checking the security settings. I tell you, they're really smart birds.
So a new, happy chapter is starting in our home. Things will settle down very soon, but for this week, the indoor birds are getting the attention - thanks for allowing me some self-indulgence. Back to the great outdoors next week.
barbwires has some really great advice for anyone considering adding a parrot to their home. Please take a moment to read this if it's something you're thinking about.