Amazing day yesterday with the group from ‘Parrots and Birds of East Anglia’ at our meet up, taking along Bonnie, Woody and Dillon.
Left to Right: Bonnie, Woody, Dillon
We love the barn as it gives us the opportunity to work on recall in a massive safe area and an opportunity to fly, as well as to talk to other parrot owners and gain more knowledge from their experiences.
Kembrooke Kennels Barn we use for flying.
Bonnie is getting more confident now and loved hanging out on me lap and shoulder although she was reluctant to fly but I think the heat didn’t help.
Beautiful Bonnie beak grinding to the camera.
Woody on the other hand – reinforced my need to harness train, but certainly got her exercise quota, opened the door and off she went, forgetting every recall practice we had done, denying every bribe. Thankfully she got tired and was eventually persuaded to come back for a drink.
Finally Woody rejoined the group.
Dillon was surprisingly well behaved, happily clinging to Alan’s shoulder the entire time and he didn’t bite ANYONE! I’m starting to think I need to give him more credit really.
Dillon did so well not biting a single person or bird!!
Absolutely sweltering in the barn so we enjoyed cooling off a little outdoors, watching some of the beautiful free flyers show off their fabulous moves and giving an opportunity for Alan to get some amazing pics for his photography page PN Photography
Just enjoying some fresh air and Maccy D’sBeautiful free flight, done right.
Credit to Lissey Quartez for the unwatermarked pictures included and to PN Photography.
Please welcome Woody the Derbyan Parakeet to the #livingwithbirbs flock. An unexpected but very welcome addition comes to us from a very loving home but unfortunately circumstances of the world right now have had a knock on effect and her owners have followed my flock and have asked if I could give her the same life I offer all of our flock. How could I not? Already extremely tame and friendly I’m sure she will fit right in 🥰
Ok so here at the madhouse we have many members of our flock and since starting we have grown madly. We had our quail hatch and watched them grow into maturity and now my eldest son has a group of 5 Chinese Painted Quail and my daughter has a group of 3 Japanese Quail. We believe children should be allowed to help look after animals from a young age to teach correct handling and responsibility, all of my children are now pet owners in their own right. We have also been joined by two rescue pigeons who will be enjoying the new outside aviary when it’s completed but for now are making the most of comfy life indoors. So we have certainly kept ourselves busy over lockdown but thats not all…
Because someone was really, really naughty yesterday. We have been weighing it up for a few months now that we could potentially have the attention to give to one more feathered friend and we met a couple of wonderful birds but for various reasons didn’t find the right fit. We are very conscientious of upsetting the balance here at the mad house as we have worked our backsides off together to all get on as well as we do here and don’t want to compromise any of our current training so we decided to wait until the time was right. Until yesterday that is when looking for Twankey’s new friend. Please welcome Mabel she’s a Pineapple Greencheek Conure, it was a case of love at first sight and Rachel is no longer allowed to visit pet stores when they have babies 😅
Baby Mabel Pineapple Green-Cheek Conure
Hope you are all keeping safe and well please feel free to get in contact if you have any questions.
Another glorious day of sunshine today so I thought I’d try and take Sparkie outside on the Harness for some fresh air and some training.
Innocent Sparkie, the baby of the flock.
I’m hoping that by showing Bonnie how another parrot can wear a harness without an issue, hoping it will help with his harness training (Monkey see, Monkey do).
Sparkie will wear a harness with no issues and is happy for me to get it on and off with no fuss. Not a fan of the other parrots so much, he prefers human company so he is easy to take everywhere, with minimal planning, unlike some of the others.
Garden has seen better days but we are ready for a play.
We went into the Garden to begin with as the hooman kids wanted to put on a play to entertain us, but as always with children it didn’t go as planned, so we ended up just going out for a stroll to our local park to see the ducks.
Bonnie looking for SwansScritches in the sun with Sparkie
Unfortunately we didn’t find the swans with their Signets but we enjoyed the sunshine and said hello to a few people so it was a nice trip out.
Hope you are all having a good week and enjoying the sunshine.
After 3 months of being stuck indoors I decided enough was enough and decided I had to get out of these four walls, if for no other reason, but to give me something for content.
Sure I’ve been in the garden a couple of times but frankly our garden is a state right now and it’s not easily accessible for my wheelchair.
Mental cabin fever has struck, so I decided to take a stroll down to the seafront.
I’ve been wanting to show Bonnie the seafront since her arrival but a mix of winter and then pandemic has put it off but no more!
We are still working with harness training (Bonnie) so we knew he’d have to go in a carrier but thankfully that’s one thing we have got down confidently.
As Bonnie has got quite a powerful beak, should he ever decided to use it, I quickly realised the usual lightweight mesh carrier wasn’t going to be suitable, but thankfully we have a heavy duty carrier that is fairly lap friendly (I write ignoring the stripes of bruises that resulted) and is large and strong enough to transport either Bonnie or Dillon.
All locked and loaded we set off to enjoy the bank holiday sun. We first took a walk down to the sea front but realised it was too busy to maintain social distancing so we decided to carry on until we found a quiet spot.
Stopped by the seafront Bonnie loved saying hello to everyone who strolled past, as soon as spotted Bonnie would start whistling and call out “hey Bonnie, hey boys” to everybody who stopped.
Bonnies first visit to the beach, safe to say he loved it.
We decided to take the long walk back home and detoured via my favourite spot in our home town to show Bonnie and Alan managed to capture this beautiful pic with a rainbow. I’m taking as a sign of better things to come and this was a lovely mental pick me up.
By the time we got home we were completely shattered and Bonnie spent the entire evening beak grinding so I call that a win. I’m looking forward to the day we can do it on a harness as I feel Bonnie will get more from it but I’m not going to rush and we can always adapt so everyone gets to enjoy these experiences.
Signs of better things to come?Looking at all the scenery.
Hopefully I will be getting out and about a little more with the flock as lockdown eases, so if you see a wheelie with a parrot on her shoulder come and say “hi!”
Top left to right: Sparkie, Bonnie, Mumble, Twankey.
Bottom left to right: Dillon, Marvin, Hero, Muffin.
So my obsession with Parrots started whilst growing up and my next door neighbour had a Rosella aviary and an African Grey, I was fascinated with their behaviours and vocal skills.
I took Dillon, the African Grey, in around 4 years ago as a rehome, he instantly fell in love with Alan and has hated me ever since. He is a cantankerous old boy, but loves nothing more than to chat along and shred up his wood drawers, not very social.
Hero, our cockatiel, joined us around a year later, bought as a hand-reared baby, he was already very tame and will sit with anyone, until Alan is in the room and then it’s all about him, Hero and Alan have a very special bond and he loves going everywhere with Alan on his harness whenever he can.
Mumble, the first of my trio of Quakers, joined us last year, I fell in love instantly and bought him home with me. Despite the name Mumble he is a fantastic talker and has a wide variety of vocabulary. A hand-reared baby he loves everyone and it’s because of him we are here today.
Muffin, our yellow Quaker, well Muffin is the boss and he likes to let everyone know it. Very intelligent little boy, his favourite game is colour matching. He has formed a lovely bond with my daughter but even a hand-reared baby can grow to be a handful if you’re not prepared, but with the right amount of time and trust he has become a fairly steady boy.
Marvin, my little buddy, our blue Quaker, again the same breeder as Mumble and Marvin. He is adorable, loves to explore and cuddle, usually first in the bath, noisiest of all of my flock but so funny. He loves everyone and will happily go to anyone.
Twankey our little lone lovebird, she did have a partner but unfortunately we lost him shortly after arrival. An aviary bird I just let her do her own thing but she’s formed a friendship with the Quakers and plays with them during the day, because of how tame the others are, Twankey soon learnt humans were no threat and happily will come sit on anyone. She just wants to be friends with everyone now and is a very adorable little bird.
Sparkie, our 2nd cockatiel, we got Sparkie because Hero doesn’t really like any of the others and was lonely, such a sweet little baby he loves a head scritch but is actually very shy and hates every other bird, he loves humans though (the downside of hand-reared babies some get very reliant on human interaction and can become needy). Sparkie has however bonded with my son and we are working on his nervousness.
Bonnie, our beautiful Galah, she was rehome to me at the start of the year, I do not recommend cockatoos as pets but if you’re going to get one, then Bonnie is jackpot, she loves me completely and I can do so much with her, loves a cuddle and is surprisingly quiet. She does tolerate the smaller birds very well under close supervision and so far is good with most people, she has however bonded to me and so sort of hates Alan getting to close, so we are currently working on that.
Pidgey and Sparro ft Hope
Beautiful pair of Diamond Doves who arrived at the beginning of this international crisis, apparently sex unknown but never had eggs, so assumed female. However two weeks in I found peeked a pair of eggs, then the nest was abandoned a few days later and one egg was broken. The other egg was cracked slightly so I candled it and it was very much growing a baby. So after a mad rush to source an incubator we now have Hope our little egg. Diamond doves are difficult to hand-rear so I’m not the most optimistic but I am prepared, we will find out soon enough.
Living with Birbs 