Busy Christmas!

Hey everyone! Well, it's been a busy Christmas in the Birdroom, as usual! Though since I had a three-day weekend, I shouldn't complain! Many birds have gone to new homes, the young Alex, both Green Cheek Conures, DJ the cockatoo, and both Lorikeets. We still have the Princess from last week and also Mango, the sun conure. He's been making a little bit of progress as I work with him, though he's still hand phobic, once toweled he will sit on me for a while and in now accepting head scratches! Hopefully he'll continue to improve.

Here's some photos!


Cinnamon Green Cheek (Left) and Yellow-sided (Right) Green Cheek Conures.


"Aren't we cute?"


Princess and young Alex - Princess is very friendly and boldly marches up to anyone, even bigger birds, demanding they love her!



"Yum... metal?"

There are a few new birds arriving this week. Three Pineapple Green Cheek Conures, and today we got a Scaly Lorikeet. As always, more photos soon.

Hope everybody is having a safe and happy holidays, even if you don't get much time off! Please remember to keep birds and other pets safe during the New Year's Eve fireworks :)
Take care all!

Lorikeets are silly...

It's funny watching the little day to day squabbles in a lorikeet's life. Even a simple grooming ends up with screeched warnings in between snuggling!








Olive has gone to her new home since these were taken. Also off to new homes are Mo the Moustache, Ruby the Alexandrine, Ollie the Sun Conure, Trouble the Green Cheek, and the baby Galah. Ollie and trouble are both going to homes who already have a Sun and Green Cheek, so they will both have bird and human company!

One Outstanding Lorikeet

Another busy day in the birdroom! We got our Red Collar, and the pineapple Green Cheek, though I didn't get a good photo of the latter. But here's the very handsome Red Collar girl!

Gorgeous girl that she is!

Here she tries to convince Jazz to be friends...

But it's fiesty little Olive who takes the biggest shine to her; it's possible he met her as a younger bird as they came from the same breeder.

She and Olive certianly had fun wrestling, with Olive on his back and letting the Red Collar chew on his ankles!

Speaking of Olive, here he is demolishing a stick bit by bit!

Olive, Jeebie and Jazz during playtime.

Alex with his 'fan club', little girls Ruby and Jade!

Introducing: LoriTube!

Here's Olive with one of his favourite toys! He's only allowed to play with it during Playtime each day, because I can wedge it in with bowls and other big toys. I'm worried the Lorikeets would wind up squashing one another if I left it in their cage with them - no to mention the mess! So Olive typically heads straight to his tube in the mornings. Jeebie likes to play in it too, but Olive is the obsessive one :D

Step One: I have been detected! Act cute immediately!

Step Two: Cuteness in progress!

Step Three: Ohai!

Conure antics and Lorikeet wrestle!

One of my favourite bird activities to watch is a game every young Loirkeet instinctively knows how to play. This is what I call 'Loirkeet Wrestle' and several times a day, an anxious customer comes running to find me to ask me to 'rescue the poor lorikeet that's being killed!' To somebody who had never witnessed Loirkeet Wrestle it could be taken for fighting, but rest assured from the amount of times I've caught countless lorikeets at it over the years, it's the most fun game any lorikeet knows!

For months I've been trying to get a good video of Lorikeet Wrestle. I see my kids play it mostly when in their cage, since my hand-raised loris are kept on flat trays with newspaper over the top and I rarely see a lorikeet secure enough to play wrestle on a cage top or grid, they seem to like a solid surface under them. Finally, today I managed to get a couple of videos of the Rainbow and the Red-collar at Lorikeet Wrestle!

In that one I stood as far from the cage as possible with my arm outstretched, hoping they wouldn't notice me! To get the next one I ducked down under the level of the cabinet, peeping up to crank the door open and catch them at it! You can see the moment they clicked to the fact that I was there at the end :P

In the meantime, Foxtrot (Known affectionately at Foxy) the baby Sun Conure has been up to no end of antics himself. Quite aside from trying to convince every customer to step into the birdroom he is a miserable, neglected little tyke that nobody loves so CUDDLES NOW PLEASE, Foxy has been practicing his balance skills on a branch that sticks out over the edge of their cage top. More of a twig, really...

I must have resized this one oddly since it looked bigger in my preview, but here is is 'hanging around' off the same twig. The last one in this sequence I took about a half-second before he decided to let go and flutter very ungraciously to the floor!

Foxy was bred from Western Australian pied stock, which is why he has his lovely dappled effect on his wings (most babies having primarily green wings). Certainly a handsome little man!

Tango as usual, has one thing on his mind - food.

When he's not stealing the lorikeet's food...

He's playing with his own...

Here's the rainbow and the Red-collar (from the Wrestle videos earlier!) trying to get in a few bites before Tango takes over!

This is the little Scaley in a feat of precarious balance, swinging on around 2 centermeters of stick!

And one of the Musk pair, playing king of the castle on a high twig.

Annnd I think I've finally run out of photos :P I'm on my weekend now, spending two entire days away from these crazy kids. I will however be taking a bit of a working break - I'll be at the Hyde Park Greencross vets this Saturday morning with a little pet parrot enrichment stall for their open day :)