I didn't do it! I'm not really locked up here most of the time but for reasons I do not disclose, I really enjoy being in here and refuse to come out on my own, even if the door is open, I know how to fly, and I really need to poop. Did I mention, I refuse to poop in here?
I got new food recently. This stuff is too big for me to chomp normally, so I have to hold it and chew it piece by piece.
Micah has been going to an indoor fly group recently. We just started, and we have missed several times due to (my) illness or being out of town, but we've been practicing some things at home and Micah enjoys our time there.
First, let me update on the flight thing. When Micah molted all her clipped flight feathers out, it was my intention to clip them again due to her love of the outdoors, our small house and the fact that Jennifer always clipped her and I doubted Micah was a competent flyer and feared for her safety. However, it was right after her big molt she started laying eggs. The longer she had her full flight feathers, the worse I felt about taking them away from her.
Then, one day I realized how truly sedentary she is. Her main daily activity is sitting in her polly dolly cuddling it. Most birds spend time flapping their wings as they play with their toys. She does not do that. The only times she flaps her wings on her own is when she is on a perch chewing on something and loss her balance OR if she was upset with me, she would climb up to the corner of her cage, grab hold of the bars on the side and top, and flap away. Flapping always gets her some attention, so she learned if she wanted to get me over to her cage in a hurry, she just has to start flapping her wings like a crazy bird. Other than that, Micah's in-cage activities centered around cuddling and preening her polly dolly, eating, ringing her bell, preening and sometimes chewing on the toys and perches.
We took her to a vet I don't really like, and the vet scared the poop out of us saying stuff like Micah has little tiny birdy cataracts, which is to be expected, but only of a bird much older than she is. The vet basically made us believe Micah was creaky and unhealthy and whatnot, which is not really true. She's a healthy and happy bird.
BUT she is sedentary, and though right NOW she appears healthy and happy, if she continues spending the majority of her time just sitting around, she won't stay healthy and won't live as long.
Now, I have made a point of exercising her as much as I could by spinning her around and letting her flap her wings (an activity that is also done to tell her to/help her to poop), but there's only so much of that she'll take, and Matthew is a big sucker. I ask him, "Did you exercise her?" and he replies, "She doesn't like it!" And I groan. Anyway, this is not really enough.
So, at some point, I thought, well... crap. How do I get her more active? She doesn't really like to climb all over the place. If given a series of perches or other climby-type objects, she'll pick one she likes and sit. And stay.
Normal birds in the wild get all their exercise via flight. They fly all over the place all the time. Wings are to birds as legs are to humans. Of course. Everyone knows this. But many clip their companion bird's wings.
The problems I had with Micah flying were mainly her lack of skill introducing possible danger, our small house introducing birdy dangers and the results of a suddenly spooked Micah while outdoors. Birds just take off when they're frightened. Micah has ended up in trees before and not easily retrieved. We live in a pretty urban area. There are more dangers than just trees. She also has no idea that not all people are nice.
Every one of those problems can be overcome with training. The goal being that we train Micah how to fly skillfully and to return to us when we call her.
The problem with THAT is, how on earth would I train Micah to fly?? My house is WAY too small for that. And, I didn't even know where to start! I was about to decide to clip her wings come spring when we found a group of people who fly their birds weekly in the Lake City Community Center. Which is right by my house!
SO.
That gives us an opportunity to teach her to fly, give her good exercise every week at minimum, give her socialization with other birds and humans and hopefully give us some good methods of training.
When we first started going, Micah would not even flap her wings when we tried to run her around. There's a lovely cockatoo who is not flighted due to abuse by prior owners, so his foster mom runs him around in a circle and he flaps his wings. Micah took a HUGE liking to this woman (which is unusual because she's the archetype of the shape and size of people she Does Not Like), so this lady tried to do the same run-around with Micah. Micah just hung on tight and sat.
Micah would NOT let go of us to fly. She was excited to see other birds fly, but she was scared to fly herself.
Whenever we finally managed to launch her into the air, her flight was almost panicked - she would fly VERY fast, and often had to loop around and hover to get to her destination. This is the same way she would fly at home when she decided to fly at home. Which is why we didn't want to try to teach her to fly at home - she flies FAR too fast and I was very afraid she would lose control and slam into something and injure herself quite badly.
In the few weeks since we started going to the fly group and practicing things at home, Micah has changed a lot! We've taught her that if she is sitting on our thumb, she flaps her wings. We want to teach her that if we put her on our thumb we want her to fly, but we'll take what we can get for now. We have been practicing with the concept of, "Birds use their wings when they want to go somewhere!" So instead of just ferrying Micah around wherever she wants to go all the time, sometimes we will instead pick her up, put her on our thumb, and she will flap her wings... and so long as she is flapping her wings, we will walk her to her destination. If she stops flapping her wings, we stop moving. Then when we get to our destination, she gets a little tiny treat and a lot of praise.
Sometimes, we will make her fly to her cage when she wants to go. She can't hold on to our arms very well, so we try to put her on our arm (it is difficult!), and then with a little movement of our arm, she loses her footing and flies to her cage. Then we make a big deal out of it, clapping and cheering and giving her a little tiny treat.
Over the weeks, her flying has become markedly less panicked. She doesn't flap her wings as quickly, so her progress to her cage is more reasonable, she doesn't need to loop around, and she doesn't seem upset by it. There have been times when I made her fly to her cage that she was scared by the experience and it broke my heart. She makes this little trilling noise when she is afraid, and she made it once when I made her fly to her cage, and I almost cried I felt so bad.
Anyway, right now her landings are okay because she can hover REALLY well, but it takes her some time to actually land. If she didn't know how to hover, she would be crashing a lot. I know that soon she will figure out how to land smoothly, but I haven't seen any improvement there yet.
I think the big difference I see is that she has immediately begun to grasp the concept of "birds use their wings to do important things!" Now when she is on a perch chewing on something (the poo palace and the bathroom shower perch both have chewy things in sort of inconvenient locations that require her to bend over to chew them) and begins to lose her balance, she no longer actually begins to slip and then panic and flap her wings. NOW, she extends her wing and balances herself to avoid slipping. I had never seen her use her wings for that before.
Another thing Matthew and I both noticed was Micah has started to settle down again. After she laid her eggs, she hasn't been quite the same. A bit more aggressive, demanding, anxious. Today she was like the bird we knew before she started laying eggs! Maybe it's just because better weather is coming again, it's warmer and prettier and the hours of light are longer, but it could also be better exercise make for a healthier, happier bird. It makes sense.
In other news, Micah likes the dryer. Specifically, being IN the dryer.
And for your video enjoyment, Micah clicking to me from inside the dryer.
I took a few photos of Micah outside on our new trellis that Matthew built for the kiwi vines.
(she LOVES sitting on the trellis when the sun is out, like it was yesterday. She also loves chewing off bits of the trellis.)
I also took a photo of Micah with her polly dolly for halation. This is basically just a mass of strips of fabric interspersed with bits of wood on thick strings. Recently, she's begun to chew the wood up, which thrills me because it's the first time since she's come here that she's shown interest in REALLY chewing on things (other than proffered toilet paper tubes and the like), especially things made of wood, like her perches, which she's also begun chewing on. I'm happy because this is what happy, healthy, adjusted and normal birds like her are SUPPOSED to want to do. I was mildly worried before because she just wasn't showing interest, but I feel better now.
I snapped a pic of Micah's cage just for the heck of it. I should take a photo of the lay of the land in the livingroom, but I'd have to do that with a real camera, when the light isn't so harsh.
Inside the cage you can see the polly dolly in the upper left, then on the far right is the bell she rings for service, and in the middle is her new favorite toy, a big preening toy made up of a bunch of strings. She loves this thing. Threaded in the cage bars are are straw-like chewy things called "Shredders" that she only sometimes chews, oh well. She seemed to like it in the store, but she was pretty excited to be in the store at the time so anything was fair chew game, I guess. She likes it when *I* play with a bit of the stuff, she gets very excited when I play with her toys.
This week we've been working on having some "cage days", as in, days where Matthew does not spoil her rotten by taking her upstairs with him into the office while he works. Every other day is "cage day" where she hangs out in her cage and plays with her toys and we interact with her while she's in there while we do other things, till we can go for a walk or whatnot. Lately I've been trying to make certain I get some kind of walking in, and if I haven't done it during the course of my workday or whatnot, Micah and I go around the block a couple of times. She's more well behaved when she isn't expecting to be with Matthew 100% of the time. She still gets pretty excitable when she knows he's around but she's not actually ON HIS PERSON or right next to him in the office looking out the window, but I think she's doing a lot better.
I just got tired of having her in her cage while I was working, being all agitated because she wasn't with Matthew. She wasn't really screaming too much, but she would pace in her cage, flap her wings a lot, make agitated noises and say, "Ok" a lot. I can't help but feel bad when she obviously wants something soooo bad. She's a lot better about it now so I don't have to be so tortured or feel like the "bad guy" all the time.
Newest thing though, for us, is I put on a sweater and let her sit on me between my shirt and my sweater. She Adores that with a capital A. Last night we ate dinner this way. Rather, I ate dinner and she hung out in my sweater. After I was done, she came out of my sweater, and gave me a million kisses. This was suspicious (she'll give me a few kisses at a time, but not like THIS), so I wiped my lips off. Less kisses. She was totally trying to lick the remains of dinner off my lips. What a stinker.
She is out with Matthew now while he runs an errand and I better get my butt into the shower for my appointment. Speaking of shower, Matthew caught her taking a bath on tape, so I'll have to upload that.
Julie and Matthew came home yesterday morning. Today Julie took photos of me to send to you. :)
Happy Mother's Day!
P.S. What you can't see in the photos is that I've started to let feathers grow on my butt and in some places under my wings. My three tail feathers are coming in nicely. Everything itches a lot, though, so I still pull out some of the new growth, but other stuff I leave alone. It's itchy, though! I'm trying, really.
I've figured out how to tell when Julie is leaving the house. She always does the same things as she gets ready to go. She moves quickly, fills her water bottle, puts on her glasses and watch, packs away her computer and/or picks up her purse. Or, sometimes she will grab something to eat and eat it quickly. She never eats that quickly unless she's leaving.
However, she has failed to fill out the Permission to Leave the House form. In triplicate. With proper signatures. I'm supposed to approve all departures from the domicile, and she consistently ignores my authoritah. She just picks me up, gives me a kiss and says, "Bye bye, Micah!" and, would you believe it, she just up and leaves! Bah!
I really can't complain too much, though, because we had a shower today and I was all right with that. Also, the two of them were kind of getting on my nerves, so it's nice that they're giving me a little more space recently to do my own thing. I'm used to a little me-time and I get cranky if I don't get it, so sometimes I am relieved when they leave. But don't tell them. They really have the best intentions. They just shouldn't leave me too long, though, because I am holding my poo for them, don't they know that?
Anyway, my day was mainly the shower and getting to look outside the window today. Lots of stuff happens out in the alley behind the house, and Matthew lets me sit on the perch in front of the window and watch it all. I tell him when there are dogs and cats and sometimes when there are other birds depending on how interesting I find them.
And now for photographs:
I AM DRIPPING WET HERE, PEOPLE.
But they put me under the heat lamp in the bathroom so I could fluff and preen and dry off fairly quickly.
I suckered the two of them into giving me a piece of bread they were eating. Bwahaha.
I took some photos of Micah today, and a short video as well.
The video is of Micah rubbing her beak all over my hand with her feathers all fluffed up. She did this for AGES, actually. I was petting the back of her neck and she was rub rub rub rub rubbing her beak all over me.
So, photos:
I am petting her neck here and she is lightly tasting my fingers, even though it looks kinda bitey, Micah is not a biting bird.
Coy birdie.
Half nekkid birdie! :(
She is in a "big flock" mood and wants LOTS of people around right now and I find it very funny she keeps inviting the people she can hear outside to come in with her little "come here" motion. We're both here on our computers, but when she hears the people outside she makes the "come here' motion. No, honey, let's not invite the whole neighborhood into our house, ok?
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
micahbird's journal
sleepy
