Training Your Person: Snacks

Snacking throughout the day is an important activity for a pet parrot, so it is important to train your person to provide you with snacks as needed. For example, if you happen to come across a bowl of tangerines on the table, you should stand and stare at them.  If that doesn't get your person's attention, then touch a tangerine with your beak. If that doesn't do the trick, then just use your beak to start peeling the tangerine yourself. That way your person will surely understand that it is time to peel the tangerine for you and offer you as many slices as you like.

As every pet parrot knows, the best place to eat a tangerine slice is on you person's shoulder.

Training Your Person: Breakfast

Don't you just love oatmeal? It's my favorite breakfast, especially since my people serve it with sunflower seeds and nuts. Sometimes they add berries, which are also very tasty. As you can see, I have trained my person to share his breakfast with me. Some people are easier to train than others, but you've got to keep working at it. I find that a few ear tugs often help my people understand how I want them to behave, and if that doesn't work, a loud squawk or two usually does the trick. Not always, though, alas. I'm having a bit of trouble with my other person. I have tried to train her to share lunch with me but she usually locks me in my cage instead.

Cozy

If you were a parrot. . . you would spend your days cozily snuggled up on the back of your person's neck!

Nailbrush!

My duties as a pet parrot keep me busy from morning till night. My biggest responsibility is protecting my people from predators. It's astounding sometimes how clueless they seem to be about this danger. The other day, one of my people brought this home:

She calls it "nailbrush." But I know that a predator by any other name is still a predator. As soon As I saw that thing sitting on the bathroom counter, I flew out of there as fast as I could go. But my person didn't follow. She stayed right there next to that thing. Lucky for her, it didn't attack. So far, it has been spending its days just sitting there quietly, but you never know with predators. I keep a wary eye on it at all times. Somebody's got to protect my people, after all.

Bird Watching

I spent some time this morning watching a pair of doves foraging in the garden. Why they choose to eat out of the dirt instead of out of their food dishes, I'll never understand.
Later I had a conversation with a blue jay. "Caw," said the blue jay. "Squawk," I replied. This went on for a little while until the blue jay flew away. I guess it finally understood that you can't out squawk a parrot!

The Secret of Life

The Secret of Life, as any pet parrot can tell you, is knowing where the sunflower seeds are kept.
In my case, it's the kitchen cupboard that holds this big old bucket of trail mix.

I have to admit, I don't mind nibbling on the occasional dried cranberry or nut that I might come across, but, fortunately, sunflower seeds make up the largest portion of this mix. Any time my person is in the kitchen, I'm right there with her, pulling on her ear to remind her to open the cabinet and bring out the seeds. Sadly, she doesn't always obey me, but that's a subject for another post.

Parrot Sounds

That gray parrot, Trouble, is visiting again, sitting out there in the living room, talking up a storm.

I don't know why people think she's so interesting just because she can imitate the sounds they make. I'm pretty good at imitating sounds, myself, even if I don't usually choose to copy words. I can whoosh softly like a comb going through hair. I can flick like floss being pulled between teeth. I can beep like a microwave oven or a phone being dialed. And, as far as human sounds go, I can make a pretty good kissing sound, if I do say so myself. So it's not just about words. We professional parrots have quite a wide repertoire of sounds, and we add to it all the time. That is the fun of being  a parrot, after all.