One Dog and Two Birds

A lot of people visit our site, looking for tips on adopting birds, mostly conures of course. Though we have been meaning to write about adopting birds, we can tell you this right now: It is not easy to keep two of them busy.

Pepper is a quite girl and hardly ever makes any noise, she calls to us if she wants food or need to go to bed. However, Nikko is a entirely different story. He is young, very healthy and has loads of energy. It is a challenge to come up with ideas that would help him burn off some of that excess energy, if he is not tired, is directed towards me (mostly with anger). Nikko did not grow up with toys and doesn’t care for them. I have tried to get him interested in them, but we haven’t had any luck yet. However, he likes to shred (Pepper too) and thats one way to keep him busy.

I gave him this card board box, about a month back. Pepper tends to keep away from new things, whereas Nikko loves to investigate them. So, as he came near, I threw in some seeds inside the box (I had cut a hole for him to get in) and in a few minutes he was inside.

The first day, he shredded all the flaps of the box inside and threw the box off the cage a couple of times, and scattered shredded cardboard all over the place.

Pepper joined him from day 2, she liked to shred from the outside and did not want to venture in.

Watch out for happened to the box in 6 days!!!

Nikko and Pepper love peanuts. Equivalent to Amy’s Kong, we have a peanut holder for the birdies, that stimulates them and they play around with it to get to the yummy nuts. Pepper usually tries to reach and grab with her beak, and uses one of her legs to hold it steady, while she works her way through.

Nikko gets really excited when he sees peanuts even before I get to put them in the toy. He runs around the cage, trying different ways to get to them. His best shot on it is by hanging upside down. I will go for anything that keeps him busy.

Nikko has not been very happy that he doesn’t get enough coverage on the blog and has been a little envious of Amy getting all the attention. Here he is, complaining about what and all we make him do for a little spotlight

Does this qualify?

How about this?

Stepping Up and Saying Hello

As mentioned in every single pet-bird manual, the first thing we trained Nikko is to Step Up on a dowel. The idea is he to get him familiarized with the stick, and if he climbs on it, then treat him. Before we discovered his passion for sunflower seeds, I used grapes for his training. It was a hard process, as his goal seemed to be to avoid the stick and still get the grape!

Once he learned the idea of doing something for a treat, the process got much better. It didn’t take long for Nikko to step up, both on a stick and on the finger! But when he thinks he doesn’t have the right balance on the finger – he uses his beak to get it and many a time results in a bleed, from the finger, of course! Once we got into the mode of training Nikko, we started the process of Clicker Training and he has made wonderful progress.

Here is Nikko, Waving at you, saying Hello!

Some of you may wonder: Why train pet birds?

This is what About.com has to say:

Birds are complex creatures that sometimes behave in ways that are difficult for us to understand. While some quirky behaviors are normal and acceptable, owners need to know the proper ways to manage undesirable behaviors such as biting, chewing, and screaming.

And Lianne McLeod, has this to say:

Training pet parrots has benefits that extend well beyond the entertainment value of a parrot that can talk and do tricks. Training will strengthen the bond you have with your parrot, who will look forward to the one-on-one attention involved in training sessions, especially when success means lots of praise and attention along with favorite treats. In addition, teaching some simple commands will make handling your parrot easier.

For us, it was simple - we wanted to train him, so that he is comfortable with us and we are comfortable with him and we all have fun! Training him has made our interaction much more wonderful. We know and understand him better and he has a meaningful way of interacting with us. We all have some other activity to look forward to, other than having him just sit with / on us. It is also a good way of distracting him from unwanted behavior. A lot of people are surprised when I say I interact with Nikko over the phone. It is hard to think of a bird being smart enough to understand someone over the phone, but I think that all the time spent with him, training and having fun has added so much more to our relationship!

These are part of what constitutes birdie heaven for Nikko:

Sitting on Dad’s shoulder and nibbling at his ears. The left side is better, as Pepper is on the right these days!

Getting kisses from mom

Rolled back on her lap

Or climbing on her shoulder

On the bed, when Dad wakes up

And, eating cake frosting!

Nikko likes to be with us or rather, on us, most of the time. When he gets really excited and playful, he likes to ‘Roll Over’ on his back. He has not learned to do so by himself, without the support of a finger. He would lean back on the sheets and give it a try though.

Rolling over on my palm

Now to the sheet

And letting go!