Artichokes

Turns out that the birds love artichoke. I was eating it a couple days ago and Manzi flew to the table to check it out. I handed him a leaf and he loved it. I gave him several more.

Maui is usually more picky than Manzi. She will eat a lot, but sometimes I struggle to get her to try things whereas Manzi will try anything. Despite that, when I gave Maui artichoke, she loved it as well.

The following day, I tried some with Hercules. He wasn't quite a keen as the birds, so I gave him only half and gave the birds each a quarter. The birds quickly went through the artichoke.

In this picture, Maui only has one leaf left and finished the heart already:

Manzi usually eats faster, but he was more thorough than Maui, so he still has a way to go with his section: 

Attack of the killer balloons

Yesterday I had a party at my place. One couple brought their 10-month old daughter. She was interested in the balloons at first, until her dad bounced a few nearby. Then she panicked and was scared to death of the balloons after that, wanting to be held the rest of the time.

I left the birds in their cage, as usual when a group of people are around. After everyone left, I brought the birds in. They were just as terrified as the little girl. It didn't help that they both began flapping frantically. Then the balloons moved with the current created by the flapping. Which made the whole situation even more terrifying. Maui, once she made it safely to my hand, kept a death grip on my poor hand. Manzi came to me, but when I went near a balloon he abandoned ship and flew towards the closet where he sleeps. I opened the door and he ran in. I've never seen him so eager to get to bed.


It seems that I have a couple of pansies for birds. My husband pointed out that their fear of balloons is not unlike mine of spiders. Maybe he has a point.

Update

The New Year has been hectic. I've slacked off flight training, but even after missing a couple weeks, we had a great session today. Both Manzi and Maui did many flights. Manzi was tempermental/stubborn at first and didn't feel like doing his flights. When he doesn't want to fly, he puts his head down and bites at his perch. When that happens, an easy fix is to go to Maui. She was perfectly happy to do her flights. After two of them, Manzi was begging me to let him fly to me. He knows he doesn't get a treat if he flies without be called. So he will hold his wings out, looking at me waiting for me to call him. Then he does show Maui up by bolting straight to me.

I have been impressed by Maui's flights. She can do 5-6 of them. She is still having to make lots of conscious, mid-air corrections (like accidentally going to high, then slowing her flapping to lower down, or over/under shooting my hand by a couple inches). Manzi doesn't do that at all, but when I did ask him to fly down, he missed the landing and then wouldn't even try again. I need to work with him at that. We have stairs, which is the perfect place to practice.

Hercules is doing well. His grass patch is growing and he is loving the sunny days. Southern California is a better location for him and the birds, weather-wise, than the Twin Cities.

Beach Flying

So far, beach flying has been unsuccessful, due to operator error. We've only been twice, but I still have a lot of hope. The first flight was fantastic. Manzi did some loops, never hit the end of the line, then circled nicely back to me for a light landing. I was very hopeful. The fishing line got a bit tangled, but that was because I wasn't sure how to use it with a flying bird.

After fixing the line, I sent Manzi out again, but this time he bee lined away from us. With the fishing reel, it no longer snaps him and instead slows him down at the end, so he landed nicely in the sand. I called Manzi back, but he didn't come back and instead stood in the sand angrily biting his foot leash. We sat down, but after about 10 minutes I went towards him. Then he did fly to me.

I went back a few days later. This time when I first released Manzi, he bee lined away from us and then landed in the sand 80 yards away. I went and got him and tried again. This time he did a half circle, but then flew away again. I was irritated with him, so we left him a long ways off and hung out waiting. I didn't want Manzi to learn that he can just fly away and expect me to come get him. After about 20 minutes, I went to get him. As I approached him, I was horrified and seeing that he did unclip his leg leash and was sitting about a foot away from it. He happily came to me and I reclipped it.

Okay, so here's a major error:
Manzi has lost his confidence, due to my over expectations. I had him do more technically difficult flights by expecting him to circle around and land on me. The beach is breezing, new, with lots of seagulls and other birds. He's never been in that environment, so he is afraid. I expected Manzi to be as good as before, when he used to free fly, but it has been 4 years, so he needs to build up the muscle, manueverability and confidence.

We'll go back to the beach, but next time I'll only do a few a - b flights. Then do that for a few days before asking for higher difficulties, like turns and circles.

Update on Maui:
She's been doing well. She enjoys the outside cage a bit more than Manzi. At first, they both loved being outside, but now the novelty of it has worn off. So they still spend a lot of the day inside. I did get Maui a permanent, large bath in the outside cage, so she does bathe every day in it. Manzi has yet to pick up on that habit. I also supply Maui with all the boxes she can handle outside so she also spends at least an hour or so shredding those. Yesterday, in addition to shredding outside boxes, she went inside and wandered over to Manzi's sleeping cage. Then she spent an hour inside shredding up his newspaper for him (he isn't interested in shredding boxes/newspaper). Now both their sleeping cages have nicely shredded bedding.

Lastly, we bought one of those yucca wood toys for the birds. They loved that, but only for 30 minutes or so until it was completely gone. I would like to find yucca wood to make my own toys out of it, without paying an arm and a leg. If anyone has ideas, let me know. The bulk ones sold online are for parrots and likewise are ridiculously marked up.
They do have a treasure chest my sister sent me a few years ago. I've been putting treats in it and that has also kept them really occupied. I may get another one of those because they often fight over the one in their outside cage.

Gone fishin'

So, I have plans to fly Manzi. I'm going to scout out one more location. I heard it was a great place. Was using fishing line as a leash so Manzi could fly quite a ways from me without any problems. I would then manually wind up the fishing line, despite the difficulty of winding up over a hundred yards of tangled line. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me before, but I could have been using a fishing reel and pole for that. In addition, a reel will allow give without making Manzi come to a hard stop at the end.

So, I ordered the reel and it came yesterday. I have that ready to go, but I'm waiting for the fishing rod (to anchor the reel). I don't know much about fishing, so I'm hoping that the reel and rod work together. Some responses found on google, about which rod will fit which reel, made me laugh:

"As long as it's not a ridiculous mismatch like I stated at first, you should have no problem."

I'm not sure what is considered a "ridiculous mismatch" but hopefully my ability to read specs helped out somewhat. The rod will come sometime next week and then I'll give it a go.

I watch the parrot documentary, "Parrot Confidential" last night. It was excellent, but very sad as well about parrots kept as pets.

On Maui:

Her trick training has been a fail. I thought we were doing so well. She put on a perfect show for some visitors, doing on of her tricks on cue. Then suddenly, she regressed. Now, all she does is say, "work, work, work" while turning around. She won't do anything else, not even shout "Charge!" after doing a charge whistle. The last one was one of her most dependable tricks before. It is now like she is a broken record. Her flying has not regressed though. Now she flies to me a lot more confidently on command and she is even doing very small flights back to her perch. Eventually, I'm hoping she'll fly back and forth between me and her perch like Manzi does.

Manzi is pretty good about knowing not to fly to me when I call Maui. Maui does often fly when I call Manzi though. She really needs to work on her specificity of commands.

Stairs:

This is the first time I've lived in  a place with stairs. I didn't think they would be a big deal, but apparently they are very difficult for Manzi. He cannot fly up or down the stairs yet. He tries and only makes it about 2/3 the way up before he lands. At that point, he will wait for me to get him. He also struggles to fly down the stairs. It is too steep and too narrow, so instead of using momentum, he must muscle his way up and down.