What Quality Time Means to Your Parrot
April 12th, 2009Jamieleigh
Dave and I sat down to watch some TV and take a night off when we decided it might do Storm some good to hang out with us. He stayed out for a couple hours?and was very content being with us both in the same room which I felt was amazing progress. There wasn’t any aggressive behavior towards Dave, who was sitting on the couch and he was still fine with me being up and about and sitting down, too.
Although he was concerned when I left the room at times, he never screamed as I think he still felt Dave was there and that was some kind of sense of security somehow.
This is something we try to do with all our birds who can be mellow around the TV. Like Cressi, our African Grey. She and Dave have taken naps together before, it’s incredibly cute.
Don’t underestimate the power of quality time with your parrots at home. It is a love language in humans, after all, and I’m sure it fits right into the birdie love languages, too.
I started like this with my adopted African Grey,Parker and we watched TV every night. Then she also spent time with me when I took a nap,and she sat on her perch. One night I decided to see if she would like to sleep with me. We have never looked back.
I never house trained her, but anywhere on my bed she is house trained and she just crawls under the covers and lies down next to me, snuggled up to my body. She always kisses me good night. If we wake up before it is time to get up, she spends time cuddling me and snuggling under my chin, and gives me more kisses. So if you like this idea, it is a great way to spend even more quality time with your Parrot and it gives you six to eight hours of love time together, body against body. I believe this is very important to African Greys who spend time in the wild in very close contact with their own kind. They also nest in holes in the darkest places, and do quite a bit of digging. When we took our naps, she started climbing down off her perch and digging under the covers, and that was what she loved,so sleeping all night seemed to be the next step. This has also nearly stopped all her feather trimming, which for three years, I was unable to control.
When you say feather trimming are you talking about when they nip off the tip of the feathers? My Grey, Zaney, does that too… but she also picks to nothing the feathers on her chest, tummy & shoulders… she goes thru times when she stops and they all grow back but then she does it again.
Working on more trials to get her to stop… finished up the nutrition end of it and have that all squared away although i’m always trying to introduce her to new things..ha.. shes not a fan… now i have full spectrum lighting every day for a couple hours throughout the day and just bought a clicker training book suggested by Birdtricks.com…
We have a perch our room, in our office and her cage, nicknamed the birdy hilton cuz its big, in a spot in the dining area that can be seen from the kitchen and living room.
I am hoping that the training will help her with the picking… shes crazy smart and caught on in a few seconds to what the clicker was all about but my husband and are reading this book first before we start the real training.
I think i’m going to let her flight feathers come back in again too… we go back n forth.. i start to worry that she’ll get spooked and i’ll lose her but we never leave the doors open.