Fire Alarm

I had a friend over from Davis. Anyway, she thought I need to take more photos with Manzi. I did not get Maui in the photo shoot. Here is one of the photos.

Maui did something interesting this morning. She was preening and a tail feather came out. She then grabbed the tail feather in her foot and used it to scratch her head. She did that for about 10 minutes until I pressed record on the video camera. At that point she dropped the feather and refused to pick it up again when I handed it to her.
When I first got Maui, she didn't know how to properly use her preening gland. It is a gland which makes oils to keep their feathers conditioned and water proof. She would move her head towards the gland, but not make contact, nor would she spread the oil around. Just last week she finally started using her preening gland. She must have watched Manzi and picked it up. Maybe now her feathers will begin to darken to Manzi's color.

Manzi and Maui went through a stage a couple of weeks ago of fighting a lot, but they are doing better again. Manzi has been harassing Maui, but not so bad. Sometimes when she is on the ground, Manzi will chase her around. She usually flies back up to her cage when this happens. I was pretty ticked at Manzi a couple weeks ago. I was making some beaded earrings. He was playing on his cage when he decided to go to the ground. That was fine, but I didn't realize Maui was already on the ground. Next thing I heard her shriek terribly afraid. I jumped up and realized that Maui was on the ground cornered by the cabinets, but charging at Manzi. Manzi backed down as Maui stood her ground. She was fine, but the worst part was that when I jumped up, startled, I accidentally tipped over my container of beads spilling hundreds of them on the carpet. That took a while to fix.

Lastly, on Friday I was not happy with the birds. I came home and they were making the incredibly loud shriek over and over all evening. I had to move (I am about 10' closer to the sky, but the exact same longitude and latitude), so I had a couple people over that were complaining that their ears were hurting. I didn't know why the birds were making that noise, until a neighbor came over wondering how the birds dealt with the fire alarm that went off that day. I found out it was going off for 1/2 hour before it finally got shut off. I found out that it happened a couple of months before too, about the time they first started making that noise. Their cages are right below the alarm. That is why they were making that noise. Hopefully it goes away. They have already been making it less since Friday, but it takes about six months for them to drop a noise.