Yay! I love birds!
I no longer live at my parents house, but I am still slave to their cockatiel, Dexter. Dexter is afraid of hands, feisty, and likes to play peek-a-boo. He also likes the kiss game - Say I’m standing next to my mom and she has the bird. He’ll kiss her, she’ll hold him near me, he’ll kiss me, she’ll bring him back to her, he’ll kiss her - he LOVES that shit.
This is Dexter, doing his first product endorsement.
~Tasha
They almost NEVER bite like a dog or cat, i.e., chomp down and take a bit of flesh. They bite to warn, not to show rage, so what they normally do is take a good nip at your finger. It does hurt, but normally it shouldn’t draw blood, especially if you have trained them right. You are supposed to, when they’re young, let them nip you lightly, and then when it hurts, say OW! and make a big fuss so they know the limit. I had the most spoiled-rotten pionus and she never did more than give me a nip to let me know she needed time or whatever.
Also, you never ever shake your finger at them. That is just way too tempting of a target. Flat palm out towards them and a good firm NO! But that doesn’t mean they’ll get it and if they get it, it doesn’t mean they’ll always listen. Parrots are less domesticated than dogs and cats and more inclined to do their own thing…but they do love their owners.
I have a question for all you bird owners. I was looking at the website for a bird store around here, and I was surprised at the longevity of some of these birds. I mean, 70-90 years for a Macaw! What happens to the birds when the owners get very ill, die, etc.? Do you will them to someone? It really sounds like a commitment to be a bird owner–I have a great deal of respect for people with happy birds.
It is a huge commitment. Even medium parrots will live longer than 15-20 years. The big ones - yes, you must will them to someone or some organization that is willing to take them.
It is a lifelong committment for a macaw or other large bird.
People that own the big birds need to keep them well socialized so that the birds have people who would love to have them if you can no longer care for them.
Anaamika is correct about biting, but greys also do their own thing.
Zahzoo will occasionally pinch a little, but mostly expresses displeasure by screaming like a woman and falling over (this is pretty traumatic for humans)
The wondertwins grumble, but rarely even pretend they want to nip. They sort of beak-fence and smack you with the side of the beak.
Steve exhibits warning behaviors and postures that you Must Take Seriously. He has 2 bite techniques: an fast piercing chomp with determined chewing from the lower beak, and worse, a rattlesnake fast snap and slash that you don’t even feel until you start bleeding. You get lots of warning, so you have to work hard to get Steve to bite. You have to be pretty much touching him for him to hurt you anyway.
It may sound odd when you look at what I just wrote, but Steve is a very calm, predictable, even-tempered bird. He can be safely held by strangers, as long as no one is playing country music The biggest risk they face is his habit of begging for kisses and attempting to slip them the tongue
I’ve only had budgies, and now I have cats, so I don’t have birds currently. However, one thing to remember is that birds with hooked beaks frequently use the beak and tongue to feel things, such as fingers, eyeglasses, watches, watch STEMS, etc. They are very curious animals, and love to investigate things.
I’d be scared to own an African Grey. Those are very smart birds. I would sort of like to have birds in the house again, but I don’t want to tempt fate with birds AND cats in the house.
Lovely plummage.
I try to work in one Monty Python quote a day.
We love birds, especially African greys. Here’s my birds (they’re my mother’s, actually, but I like them too).
That’s the age they can live to - but if they get sick, all bets are off. Birds don’t tend to show that they’re sick until they’re on death’s doorstep.
My dad had a conure named J. Edgar Shithead (I’m dead serious here) who got some version of a cold that killed that bird dead so fast. My dad was heartbroken - he loved that bird.
Small side story about J. Edgar Shithead, so you all can know how awsome of a bird he was. He could talk, as a lot of birds can, and he loved red licorice and fried chicken (don’t ask). If you were eating either of them, he’d sit on your shoulder and repeatedly say “Gimme some!” If you didn’t comply, he’d hook his beak around the side of your mouth, pull your head around, and eat the food out of your mouth. I’m not sure what kind of bird it was, but it was BIG, and if you have a bird that big grabbing you by the corner of your mouth, you listen, lemme tell you.
~Tasha
Mobo85-- Marshall is a what? Not a Senegal-- some other poicephalus? A Meyers or Ruppels or something?
Yes, Marshall is a Myers.
Yeah, parrots can live a very long time. Ollie is over 25 years old, I believe- he used to live in a pet store until my mother acquired him. I remember reading a story about a parrot that lives in England who is like 60 or 70 years old that can say “Fuck Hitler” in Winston Churchill’s voice- although Churchill’s decendants claim that the bird was not his.
They use the tongue to feel everything. With the greys I have you can easily see when they are planning to use their beak and tongue to touch things, it doesn’t look anything like a bite
you beat me to the punch, mobo! 
was gonna mention that bird. the jury’s still out on whether that’s an urban legend or not.
the divemaster is on trigger, his second greenwing macaw (conan, the first one, passed away several years ago due to complications from a cat bite).
word to any newbie bird owners who might not know: NEVER let your birds get near a cat, if you have any. the bite is usually fatal (we knew that, but the dive master’s mother, who was housesitting for us at the time, obviously didn’t. he forgot to remind her about keeping cats and bird separated, as we found out much to our sorrow).
but i digress.
macaws will live forever it seems. the dive master is 44 and i’m 50, therefore trigger who’s around five or so years old, will certainly outlive us both by a wide margin. he’s actually made a provision in his will for her care and for whatever other animals he owns at the time of his death.
i’ll post a picture as soon as i can get him to email one to me. she’s some bird, weighing in at a whopping four pounds and with a three-foot wingspan.
aka ‘bad-ass bird,’ she rules the household with an iron wing. 
Questions:
Greys being extremely intelligent birds, how do you keep them from getting bored or frustrated while you’re at work? How do you entertain them during the evening? What sort of toys do you give them?
Do they know to eliminate only inside their cage?
Did you actively teach them to talk or did they learn it on their own?
My Grey was my mother-in-law’s, and my husband says they’ve had him just about as long as he can remember. He (my husband) is almost 40, so I figure the bird is at least 35 (we don’t know exactly how old the bird was when my MIL acquired him). I joke sometimes that we HAD to have kids, so we would have someone to inherit the bird when we die!
:smack:
:smack: :smack:
:smack: :smack: :smack:
After two years, I just figured out your username is Conure Pete, not internet punning on “Can you repeat?”
Cute birds. Smarter than me, I bet.
They don’t mind me going to work, but I am at work by 7 am, my husband leaves for work around 11 am, and they always nap in the early afternoon. After the seista, we let them stay up till 9:30 or 10. We give them bells, wooden toys, rolls of adding machine tape, toys that hold treats, big pine cone treats and almonds in the shell. They mostly seem entertained by hanging out watching us, movies, begging to touch my husband, talking and throwing things at the cat. They love live music, and my husband is in a band, they really like the loudness. I teach them some tricks, but they all have figured out novel actions and sounds get them attention, so they seem to spend time trying to think of new ways to be odd. This results in things like the “parrot kazoo” where one holds Steve up to one’s face, he stretches his neck out and you hum REALLY LOUD into his neck, and Steve harmonizes with buzzing yodeling sounds.
Steve and Zahzoo are housebroken, but that just means they will try to eliminate when asked . It is the responsibility of the human to put them on a basket and request. I have heard parrots will hurt themselves trying to hold it if you are too rigid about them only eliminating in designated areas. They do not like to poop in the cage, they live there.
We tried to teach them to talk, but they did not pick up anything we tried to teach. Mostly we just talk to them like people, and they learn what they feel like. Zahzoo likes to pretend to be me, making phone calls. He will ask for a kiss or to “step up”, and coos like a dove. He also likes to imitate technology, but that may be because he acts like he thinks that cellphones and remotes are people and they will pet him or give him a kiss . Steve can talk in complete sentences and ask for things, like being picked up, calling for people by Name (the name HE gave them, not always the name they call themselves) or for food items. Mostly he prefers to click, whistle elaborately, and explode like a hand grenade in a WWII movie. Both birds impersonate the cat. I do not really know how they chose the words they say, both of them will often throw phrase into conversation once and never repeat it again.
The wondertwins are too new here to have said much, but I have heard chirps, an “MMMmmmMM” sound, and some baritone muttering from them.
I almost forgot, you have to dance with them. They love to dance. They rock out like Paul Anka at Lollapalooza
oh, boy do they!
like her predecesor, trigger lurves her some jimmy buffett.
i put on a CD, crank it up - and we shark dance, baby!