I am pleased to announce that my book, Cockatiel Lessons, is now available as an audio book, narrated by Gale Cruz.

Yes -- just in time for the holidays!

Now you have your choice of three versions of Cockatiel Lessons:

paperback from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble

e-reader form from Smashwords

audio book from Audible.com

And don't forget
The Parrot Reckonings: A Look at Real Life with Parrots

Other Toys

Charli is a paper chewer. She'll chew on wood once in awhile, but she much prefers paper. She adores chewing on my personal and valuable books, so it's a constant battle keeping her away from my bookshelves.

 Her most favorite toy is a simple roll of blank adding machine tape. I buy it in boxes of 12 rolls, and stick one roll on a pencil, which I then thread through the bars of her cage. Immediately she begins chewing on it.

 Slowly and methodically, she chews and gnaws on the roll until the paper begins to fall in long drapes of ribbon down to the floor of the cage.

Of course, there are always lots and lots of little bits of paper that fall outside the cage, which I cannot avoid walking in and tracking all over the house so that within a day or so my entire house looks like it has been in a snow storm.

No matter. The tightly wound paper rolls make Charli happy. 

And that makes me happy.  

Toys

The whole point of a bird toy is for the parrot to chew it up, dismantle and destroy it.  This is why so many of us buy all manner of toys -- hanging toys, foot toys, big and small, some with bells or buzzers, expensive, cheap . . .

It's also why my house is littered with dozens of toys my birds are not the least bit interested in.  Well, until Cheb came along, that is.

He has shown great determination in chewing up each toy he comes across, especially the ones that Flash has ignored for years.

I haven't seem him show a preference for paper over textiles or big over small.  If it's with beak's reach it needs to be chewed on immediately.  Maybe now I can finally put some of these dozens of parrot toys to good use!

Cleaning, Cleaning, Cleaning

It never ends with parrots!  Flight feathers, down feathers, tiny bits of dust, seed husks, pellet crumbs, splinters of wood from toys . . . .

And the cages. Paper has to be changed, bars need to be wiped down, water and food dishes need to be washed and dried, perches cleaned of poop splatters . . . .

I do my best but it never seems good enough.  If I had larger birds that threw their food onto the walls I don't know what I'd do.

It's bad enough I feel my parrot slave friends are judging my bad cage cleaning habits, but then I remind myself that they're as bad as me. We're all too busy and frazzled to keep spotless bird cages.  So I clean hard enough and frequently enough to keep the bacteria factor at bay, then sit back and watch my parrots mess everything up again . . . .

Feeding Birdies

My birds seem to like Harrison's birdie bread -- that is, they chow down as soon as I give them a bowl of it, but they never seem to want seconds.  I don't think I'm giving them too much because I've seen how many Nutriberries they can scarf down without taking a breath.

If you're familiar with Pat Sund's blog Parrot Nation, you probably already know about chop.  Pat didn't invent chop, but she has brought it to everyone's attention -- so much so that nearly every parrot slave has at least a few packages of chop in the depths of their freezers. 

Of course, I've made a couple of batches of chop myself.  It's not necessarily difficult but it does require some thought and planning.  For example, I was making it for two small birds but there's no graceful way to purchase half or quarter of a cabbage at the grocery.  Flax seed is easy to measure from those big containers at the local food co-op but canned black-eyed peas not so much.  So I ended up with a huge amount of chop I figured would last me at least a year.  Honestly, I froze it in tiny amounts of less than two tablespoons.

My parrots eat it with about the same enthusiasm as they do birdie bread.  They love it for one meal, then they want something else.  This used to worry me until I decided to look at it in a different way.

They all eat Harrison's as their basic diet, plus whatever table food I share with them plus Nutriberries plus chop or birdie bread.  My avian vet has assured me they're all healthy.  So I'm thinking now that they aren't overly interested in second helpings of anything because their diet is pretty much balanced (as far as any of us really know about parrot diets).  The only thing they ever want seconds of is Nutriberries.  The only thing I usually want seconds of is ice cream, so I understand.

I think next I'm going to try one of Pat's grain bakes.  I'll let you know how that turns out, too.