travel kitties

My parent's cats, Angus and Trouble, show how very stressful it is to travel.

Friday Bird Blogging

Meet Kianga: Kianga is a Congo African grey, hatched here in Washington in March of 1991.
"I'm eeeeeeevul!"

Meet Koga:

Koga is a wild caught, imported Timneh African grey. She is just as tame as a hand-raised bird, so we think she must have been caught very young, perhaps when she was still a chick in the nest, and had some hand-rearing before she was sent to the U.S. She has a USDA quarantine band that tells us she was legally imported. We got Koga at a pet store, she was being sold on consignment because the previous owner had just had a baby, and Koga and the baby were not compatible in the same house. I saw her in the store in early April 1991 when I was cage shopping for the Congo chick I was going to be getting in a few weeks. I asked if she was tame, and they said "Sure, you wanna see?" They put her on my hand, she ran up my arm onto my shoulder, and leaned over to give me a kiss. Sold! I've never regretted it; I hope she hasn't.

Friday parrot update

Kianga is still sitting very tightly on her eggs. Once again, she stopped at two: the second one was laid about September 25 and was, as usual, smaller than the first. I am going to let her sit for 10-14 more days until she gets it out of her system. Fortunately, though she has been somewhat less interactive, she has not lost her sense of humor, as she still talks and laughs and makes rude noises at us, in the evenings especially. The rest of the time, however, she looks very serious and tries to make herself look as scary as possible to anyone trying to attend to "trivial" things like food, water, and cage cleaning!

Friday bird blogging

Not my birds, today....but I thought I would share this clip from David Attenborough's The Life of Birds.

This is a QuickTime clip of a lekking Superb Lyrebird, from Southern Australia. Lek describes a mating system in which males call and display their plumage in order to attract females, often in an arena scratched out on the ground, or sometimes perched in trees. Sometimes it is done competitively (lots of males within sight of each other), in other cases the males are solitary. Lots of different birds (and apparently even some mammals) use this mating system, from the grouse and peacock to the kakapo (a flightless parrot from New Zealand).

Friday parrot blogging

Meet Kelele:

Kelele is a male, wild-caught timneh African grey. He was about 2 years old when I got him in 1992, so he's about 17 now. A breeder had purchased him out of quarantine, but he was too young, so she put and ad in the paper. I felt sorry for him - the breeder kept her birds in her garage, they got no natural sunlight, so I bought him. He was still so wild at that time, that he growled at us whenever we approached. Even after all this time, he's still wild enough that he isn't hand-tamed; however, he will take food from our hands, and the couple of times I have had to man-handle him, he's never tried to bite. He also is a good talker and makes a variety of lovely whistles and clicks, and loves the attention he gets. We named him 'Kelele' which is Swahili for "uproar" because of the way he would growl all the time when we first got him.



Here is a picture of Aziza in her favorite spot on the headboard of the bed. She is working her beak, trying to look as fierce as possible. If you look closely, you might be able to see that her under-tail coverts are missing - the were all plucked out for her surgery. You can't see her "bubble" though, in this photo.

parrot and egg blogging

I am not sure if I have posted any picture of Aziza yet, but here is a decent one from this last summer:


I got the chance to pull both eggs, and photograph them next to each other to compare sizes:

I was actually really surprised - the eggs are actually pretty proportional to the weights of the birds. Kianga's egg looks to be about twice the size of Aziza's.

Friday parrot blogging: egg edition

We still have a few stray snowflakes drifting around this morning, but spring must be on the way. I had quite a surprise last night....

Now that Aziza is slowly on the mend from her eggbinding, Kianga, my Congo African grey (who will be sweet 16 on March 31), decided to get in on the egg act as well. When I turned out the lights for bed, she climbed down off her perch to the bottom of the cage. I knew something was up. "Kianga, whatcha doin'?" I asked a couple of times, but she was quiet. After about twenty minutes, though, I heard it - a familiar sound since Aziza's egg-binding incident - the sound of a parrot pushing on an egg. I was thinking, "oh no, this is just what I need - another egg-bound hen having to go to the emergency vet." But it didn't sound like the stressed pushing that Aziza had been doing, so I just listened. She pushed and grunted a few more times, at several minute intervals, and after about ten minutes, I heard the sound of something hitting the metal tray on the floor of her cage. "Kianga! Are you done already?!" I got up and turned on the light, and sure enough, there she was, looking at the egg and starting to pull it underneath her.

I got a box top and put some paper in, then the egg, and turned the lights back out. She eventually got in the makeshift nest and started sitting. This morning, she was looking pretty proud of herself:


If I get the opportunity, I'm going to put her egg side-by-side with Aziza's and get a picture. I think Aziza's egg is almost as large as Kianga's. (Aziza weighs about a half pound, Kianga about a pound.)

It seems so odd that I never heard Kianga laying any of her previous four eggs, but I do hear her laying this one, and right after having gone through hearing Aziza try and try to lay hers. I guess I know now what normal and abnormal sound like. (And I'm extremely thankful that Kianga didn't have any problems.)

Friday bird blogging: Koga

(I know it isn't Friday quite yet, but bear with me).

This is Koga. She is a wild-caught African Grey parrot, of the timneh subspecies. She is quite interested in the camera, now that I've turned off the flash.

















Here is Koga more at ease:



She is at least in her early 20s, but she has lived with us since April of 1991.





























I accidentally set the camera to black-and-white, and got this picture of Koga. We were told that Koga is the Cherokee word for "crow," and she does resemble one a little, except for the maroon tail and the parrot beak. Watch out!