Today our parrot made the first flight. Previously a bird was caged in a small limited cage, mistreated and malnutritioned.
This is a 27th day a cockatiel is with us.
In a photo the doors are open and that is him, ignoring me. Read below why.
My daughter is home, so I explained to her what might happen if a parrot that never flew before tries it. Sometimes, if a bird doesn't learn to fly, it might never learn it. So, I told her, in case a parrot tries to fly it won't be elegant. It is very important to stay calm, keep your head down and don't yell or scream.
A bird's cage is now open during the day, and I made a small platform with the flip door, bars, and extra cardboard, attached all part together with the paper duck tape to make it more stable.
On that platform, I placed all the food, treats, even the food I eat because a parrot is incredibly curious about anything I put in my mouth and likes to play with it.
He even takes pieces of paper and mini toys and inspect them. He turns them around with one of his legs and beak.
But, instead eating inside, now he has to get out of a cage after a whole stunt trip down the inner bars and he doesn't like it.
He used being lazy and contained, and I am not allowing it neither I am fond of keeping a parrot constantly caged.
If I had an aviary, that's fine, it is a spacial place, but I don't. The cage is closed during the night for security reasons.
The parrot was spending time outside sitting next to me. I noticed that he doesn't like too much of an eye contact and likes the best if I am doing my job without paying much attention to him.
Today I was curling the end of a platform inside so that the seeds he was eating don't fall all over my keyboard. At one point he was inspecting what I was doing on his platform with the cardboard and as he became overly enthusiastic while copping the cardboard left-right, he flipped and rolled on my keyboard.
The concerned bird was completely lost without an idea how to return to the cage. The thing is that this bird never used his wings and absolutely hates being touched.
I lifted him on the platform with the pair of gloves and talked to him while he was loudly protesting and taking his revenge on the gloves. He got tired so at one point he stopped doing this, so I carefully placed him on the platform.
But instead of grabbing a bar to hop back into his beloved house, he tripped on it, spread his wings and flew across the room, scratched down the wall and landed on a top of the shelf with my bag.
Completely freaked out by this event that he started to hiss around himself like he was under attack. I got up to him, patted him on his head a couple times while he was observing me like if I have gone insane.
I left him around 20-ish minutes to see if he is capable to do the trip back on his own, so I just sat at my work desk and arranged a curtain across the window in order to prevent an unwanted accident of him cramming himself at the window.
I ignored him but instead flying he was hopelessly observing how to climb down that thing. So, the next I had to transfer him together with my bag next to the cage for him to climb on it.
At one point he concluded that I am incompetent ( obviously) to do so, so he flew on top of the curtain rail and study for a good ten minutes how to climb down on his cage. Agitated by the fact that a curtain doesn't provide enough support, he started to destroy the holders and curtain.
After some persuasion instead gently landing on a cage he hovered on the opposite side of a room with the wings stiff like a paper plane and landed against the wall with the shrieks, hissing, and feathers flying everywhere just before making a touch down like a sack of potatoes.
At that point, I decided it is enough otherwise he might get injured, I stuck gloves back on and brought an objectionable and ruffled parrot back to the platform. This time he managed to grab it firmly and entered the cage.
After that, he drank a lot of water, hissed at me while I offered a treat, combed his feathers, stuck his beak under his wing and took a big nap.
I think he was exhausted from this acrobatics.
I left his cage open but transferred feeder and water up to his level to pacify him but I think he was quite fed up with me and my experiment with him flying around - like if he is some sort of a circus pet. Gah!
These are all my previous posts about him.
1.GIFTS OF KARMA - INTRODUCING OUR NEW FAMILY PET - LUTINO COCKATIEL (5/1/2018)
- OUR COCKATIEL PAL IS GETTING USED TO THE NEW HOME(5/2/2018)
- PARROT'S LIFE - LEARNING ROPES AND NEW THINGS(5/4/2018)
- PARROT'S LIFE - GALS AND GENTS I THINK WE MIGHT HAVE A NAME(5/6/2018)
- PARROT'S LIFE - PESKY ... LITTLE ... FATHERLY ... NASTY ... FLYING ... MINI... ROOSTER (5/10/2018)
- PARROT'S LIFE - SO, HE CAN EAT OUT OF A HAND, RIGHT! (5/14/2018)
- PARROT'S LIFE - COACKATIEL, ALLERGIES AND SOME OTHER DETAILS (5/15/2018)
- PARROT'S LIFE - AFTER 26 DAYS WITH US PREVIOUSLY MISTREATED PARROT IS EATING OUTSIDE OF A CAGE(5/26/2018)
Thank you for reading and visiting my blog!
