New Platform Perch for Moriarty

When Moriarty arrived, he came with a corner platform perch in his cage.  Though he has since moved into Dalai’s old cage (the Silver Villa), he still spends time in his old cage every day.

Moriarty napping on his old perch

The platform perch in there is one of his favourite spots, especially for a nap.

He had chewed down the rim at the part where he rests his head, which in itself is not a problem, but a little further along, a nail of unspecified metal was exposed.  I thought, it is time for a new, safe perch.  I did some research to find a perch of the same, or nearly the same dimensions, & ordered a custom made one from The Natural Bird Product Company (https://www.naturalbirdco.co.uk) who craft natural perches & toys by hand in the UK.

It arrived on the 2nd July.  It took me a while to get around to installing it as although the new platform perch slotted through the small Ferplast Canto door, the old one did not.  I thought it might come out through the bottom tray but that area is heavily padded so it was actually easier to take the top off the base & get the perch out that way.  It was a good opportunity to give the cage a thorough clean too.

The only worry about acceptance was that the new perch is slightly shorter than the old one.  Stupidly, I forgot about one side being 1 cm shorter, & installed it with the short side along the front.  There was about 1.5 cm difference with the old perch along that edge.  Moriarty took to the new platform perch quickly, but for general purposes only…

Moriarty on the new platform perch

He struggled to find his old napping position on the severely shortened length, often looking like he was going to tip off the edge…

He resorted to napping in different places…

Moriarty napping on the door platform

Moriarty napping on a different perch

Seeing his struggle, I remembered the new platform perch had a longer side, so I flipped it around & for good measure, also threaded through a wooden slat (0.6 cm thickness), bringing the perch closer in length to the old one.

Moriarty napping comfortably on his new perch

Balance in Moriarty’s universe was restored.  He was back napping comfortably on the platform perch in no time!

Bye, Bye, Dustbuster

The day had to come.  It could not be avoided.  My trusty & loyal handheld vacuum cleaner stopped working.

Dustbuster

 

For those in bird-keeping circles, you will know the importance of having a handy & quick way of hoovering up seed, husks, feathers, poop & dander!  Not to mention remains of chewing sessions on various materials.

So, bye-bye to my dustbuster that I purchased in 2011.  It had faithfully cleaned up after all birds on this blog: Atilla, Raspy, Cagney, Bezukhov, Phineas, Thomas, Dalai, Perry, Lennie & Moriarty.

Atilla

Raspy

Cagney

Bezukhov

Phineas

Thomas

Dalai

Perry

Lennie

Moriarty

 

It has already been replaced by a newer model that I hope will also give many years of service.

 

Tales from Quarantine – Dried Grass (5 of 8)

During quarantine, I introduced Moriarty to dried grass.  It was one of the few things that kept him quiet for a few minutes!

 

Me? Quiet?

 

 

 

Lennie’s feather problem

During the vet visit on the 16th June for Perry’s ‘turns’ (click here to read), I also asked the vet to check Lennie’s wing feathers.

The last time the vet checked his wing feathers was a year ago when he was already having problems flying.  At the time, it was thought a severe moult had caused the problems.  Since then, Lennie has grown wing feathers back again but also lost some, never getting to a point that he could fly properly.  The feathers he dropped also looked of poor quality.  In addition, we had the ‘crime scene‘ with a suspected broken blood feather.  It seemed appropriate to ask the vet to take another look.

Prior to her physical examination of him, I showed her many of the feathers he had lost.  She identified stress bars & also evidence of chewing.  Stress bars were not too surprising as Lennie is a bit of a worrywart.  The chewing was more concerning & raised lots of questions, primarily, was he chewing because there was something wrong with the feather or was he chewing on a healthy feather & if so, why?

On examining Lennie, apart from his strange feathers & whopping weight (a staggering 73g!) he appeared healthy.  She took some sample feathers for him to be tested for Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease (PBFD) which fortunately came back negative.

When the vet returned the following day to check on Perry, as a precaution, she gave them both treatment for (feather) mites, which I followed up on the 13th July.

Barely there wing

When Lennie could fly

 

Without further tests, it is difficult to establish the root cause of Lennie’s feather problem.  It is possible he has a psychological issue given he suffers from stress & anxiety.  Even if his feather problem is resolved, his weight gain will not help with his flying ability.  So, this continues to be a problem to monitor…

 

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Sample of feathers:

 

Remembering Atilla on her birthday

Happy birthday my beautiful girl.

Here is a video of Atilla chewing my jumper, from about 8 years ago.  Her boyfriend, Cagney, makes an appearance.

 

Always in our thoughts.

xxx

Tail pulling

Both Bezukhov & Dalai have bent & chewed tails.

My first thought was that Phineas was the culprit, mainly because his is the only tail that is still straight.  Also, if a tail is waved in front of Phinny then he will tug it, to the point that whoever’s tail it is will almost unbalance & fall off the perch.  It seemed the likely scenario.

However, over time I have witnessed another culprit…. Dalai!  One time, when Bezukhov was minding his own business, I saw Dalai on the ttmss swing below him, purposefully swinging across & grabbing his tail.  The striking thing was that this was done in the name of play.  Bizarrely, Bezukhov appeared to just go along with it & did not seem to mind Dalai grabbing his tail & almost hanging off him.

On another occasion, Phineas was on the landing platform & was tucking into a slice of apple that I was holding.  Dalai noticed this but was torn between wanting to eat the apple too (flock mentality) & not wanting to eat it because I was holding it (not tame) so in the end, pulled Phinny’s tail as if to physically drag Phinny away so no one could eat the apple!  This took Phinny by surprise but he was too big to budge so Dalai gave up.

Bezukhov with bent tail

Dalai (with bent tail) & Phineas

A Taming Tool

Three years ago I posted on the joys of curly paper (click here).   The latest recruit is Dalai.  He loves curly paper!

 

He quickly makes short work of what I peg up for him.  The floor underneath him is littered with chewed up bits.  I thought that curly paper may be the thing that helps with taming.  (I say ‘taming’ but I really mean getting Dalai to not be scared of my hand.)

As soon as my hand goes into the cage, Dalai usually retreats to behind a mirror, whether it is his red mirror or the mirror on the swing.  Food did not seem to entice him out.  Curly paper has.  I hold up a strip & let it wave & wobble & gradually his curiosity gets the better of him & he stretches out to chew it.  As he tears off the paper, he has to get nearer my fingers.  After a few days of doing this, he got to within about 3 inches of my fingers which was a breakthrough, given that he would usually hide.  With a little more patience, he tentatively touched the tip of my finger with his beak!

We are now at the stage where he nibbles the tips of my two fingers that are holding what is left of the curly paper.  He still does this from the safety of the swing.

I want him to associate nice things with my hand/fingers.  I did not think that curly paper would be my ally in this task!

 

Blue seed?

Phineas still regurgitates to my finger, or thumb, a lot.  Many times a day, every day.

Recently he made some changes & regurgitated blue seed:

Blue regurgitated seed

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“What’s going on here?”, I wondered!

A little investigation revealed he had been chewing on the blue munch ball of the chewy toy arrangement on top of the Manor.

Phineas chewing the blue munch ball

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With inedible things, I often tell them to chew & spit but clearly Phinny had not been listening to me & had been ingesting instead of spitting it out.  He moved onto the red munch ball after that so you can imagine how colourful his regurgitated seed looked then. 🙂

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Chewy toy x 2.5

New chewy toys

Not so long ago, I wrote about Cagney & Bezukhov’s favourite chewy toy that has become threadbare.  I have been adjusting the remaining stringy bits to provide maximum illusion of bulk but it was starting to look rather ridiculous when one or other of them attempted to “hide” behind it.  I decided it was time to upgrade!  Unfortunately, I could not remember where I bought the original one so I had a major internet search ahead of me.

The new one had to be the same as the existing one, albeit in its original form.  There are many chewy toys around, made out of similar materials but I inspected the photo of each contender closely as I knew the slightest deviation from the original could  mean yet another toy to go in the Rejected Toys box.

Fortunately, I found them!  I was so pleased, I bought two!  One for current chew & one for future chew.

The new chewy toy has been placed where the threadbare one usually is & the threadbare one has been moved along the perch a bit.  I thought that if they were quite close together, Cagney & Bezukhov could each sleep behind one, even if one would be more hidden than the other.

I should perhaps add that the preferred bedtime sleeping spot is ‘behind the chewy toy’ & there is still a rota of sorts on whose turn it is.  (Cagney probably sleeps behind it an average of 7 out of 10 times).  Having two chewy toys may reduce the nightly bedtime faffing routine.

 

Bezukhov & Cagney sleeping behind chewy toys

Phineas modelling chewy toys

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You can see in the last photo that a section of the new chewy toy has already been chewed off, exposing the knot & the first in-between piece of red string.

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Threadbare chewy toy

Cagney & Bezukhov’s favourite chewy toy is now a bit threadbare.  It has faithfully been a place to sleep & snooze behind for some time.  The toyboys take turns to sleep behind it of a night, although the rota, to my eye, is somewhat random.

Sadly, the chewy toy is now not so good for hiding behind.  Not that this stops them.  I think they think it has magical qualities & the position behind it is a safe one, regardless of the state of the toy itself.

Compare the above photos to this photo on a previous post from around 6 months ago.

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