krosp

Oh that's so sad he is really beautiful. Sorry to hear that.

Wow birdluv, I love your signature picture! How did you do that? Yeah, I think I will have to continue taming them both after they're introduced (although Cosmo is super tame, but I mustn't assume he will stay that way). It will be exciting to see them together but a little sad in a way as there's no going back to having our "only child" haha

Update... Taming hasn't increased as rapidly as my last update. He tends to have a sharp improvement followed by a plateau, in all stages of taming so far. But that's okay. I guess it's because I haven't been able to spend anywhere near as much time with him as we did with Cosmo.. we had 3 guests staying with us the past two weeks and kept Piccolo in our room... Cosmo was in the lounge and was the centre of attention. We haven't been able to have Piccolo too near where the main activity in the house is because that's where Cosmo lives and they were in quarantine. Piccolo is basically... quite comfortable on or near me, with my hand, stepping up, and he can sit on me and sometimes even let me scratch him on the head. But he is still quite flighty and has a short attention span. Usually he'll only sit on me a little while before suddenly taking off. I can tell when he's thinking of flying away and once he's decided to, nothing can distract him- he'll do it sooner or later. So I'm a bit concerned that he will make Cosmo flighty too, because Cosmo isn't like that at all, he can sit in the one place for ages if I can get him comfortable! Quarantine is over next week, and I think it would help the taming process to have Piccolo out of our room, where there is little activity, big unavoidable mirrors, and previous experience of being taken out of the cage etc... but unfortunately, to have him and Cosmo visible to each other could also hinder the taming at the same time. I am really not too sure what to do. I don't think I can progress much further trying to tame Piccolo in our room, but I am sure that once they're together they'll both go down in tameness too. I am hoping that I can just spend a lot more time with both of them when they're both allowed to be in the lounge room, and that I will just have to work extra hard at the taming and not just give up because they have bonded.

:rofl: eek... I think you are right because I have read up a little since then and the gagging thing is a symptom. Feeling very relieved.... and like a bit of an idiot because this is the second time in a month that I've had to rescue him from my own stupidity! At least I respond quickly to my own mistakes lol. And both this and the paint incident are two mistakes I will never make again! I can hear the precious little guy chattering away right now and am so thankful.

Last night we had guests over and I was making waffles with my waffle maker for dessert. With all the franticness of making waffles for 8 people while trying to share the kitchen with people... I forgot to turn it off at the wall, so the hot panels were still on. So for a period of maybe 10 or 15 minutes, there was teflon fumes being emitted from our kitchen. Cosmo's cage is kind of near the kitchen but not extremely close, but because it is winter, everything was closed up. I was very paranoid about it. I went over to his cage and saw that he was looking very sleepy and fluffy (normal for 8:30pm of course, but I was paranoid!) I opened all the windows downstairs and took Cosmo out of his cage. He was doing this funny thing with his beak - gagging a bit like when they're trying to regurgitate a seed that won't come out. After about 10 minutes he suddenly sparked up and started talking and chattering non stop. We wondered if maybe he was picking up now that there was fresh air and the teflon fumes were leaving the house. I will never know if he was getting affected by the fumes or not, but I didn't want to find out. It was just a scary reminder. I hope that he's no longer in danger now that it's the next day. I don't know how it works but yeah... glad I didn't have to find that out the hard way, and I'm glad that I was paranoid!

That happened to me when I was taming Cosmo, but it worked out okay in the end

Oh no that is so devastating he was with you for such a short time but the love you all had for him was so obvious in the things you wrote I am so so so sorry.

Looking great more please!

mattdog2 is passionate about birds' health :rofl:

I would say they are both female.

He is so incredibly special :yes: Just like a cat or dog! How long have you had him? What was his background?

I can see all the pics except my own! :yes: not sure why, but oh well. It wouldn't let me save it as high res, so I have saved it as a bmp instead. So now you have the jpeg and the bmp to choose from..... not sure how much it improved the quality but I think it might have to some extent. Here's the bmp

I see my name but I don't see my picture! I am assuming it was meant to be there then. Would you like me to save it in a higher resolution? It seems to have gone grainy. Let me know if you want me to. Yes you have my permission to use it.... it is

Awww that is adorable, I would love to see some photos Not spoiling him are you?

I think boy too.

I am getting a little sick of the amount of people who don't get quarantine who make a big deal out of it. "What - is your other bird STILL in quarantine? But it's not actually sick right? Don't you think it's been long enough already?" "Quarantine-- why did you buy a sick bird?" "Awww come on please put them together, they look healthy enough, I want to see them play together" "Can't you just put them near each other so I can see what they do when they see each other for the first time?" and so on :grbud: I am sure you have all had the same experiences. I don't really know why someone who has no experience in bird keeping thinks that it is crazy or overprotective or strange to do something with their birds they've never heard of being done before -- as people with no interest in birds, would they expect to know best about what do with a new bird?

Hehe are you a spice girls fan by any chance? He is so cute :grbud:

Am I understanding it right that there might be several winners and their emblems would be rotated month to month? Or is it that some will be shortlisted and we'll vote for a winning one?

I can't cover up these mirrors, they are on our built ins and go from ceiling to floor Not sure I want to actually remove the doors or stick anything to them though since we're renting. It's gotten a little better though -- it's still on his mind but he stays with me much longer. Last night he even let me give him a very short scratch on his head.

so sorry to hear that What about the little ones in your signature? (if you don't mind me asking)

Well I think the biggest hurdle in taming is over now that Piccolo has mastered the step up! We have now had him for 19 days and I feel like the biggest progress has happened over the last three or four days. Now that he steps up the taming is coming along really nicely. The biggest barrier is that we have huge mirrors in every room of our house--- except the room we keep Cosmo in. And they're still in quarantine so we can only tame Piccolo in a room with a mirror (the study is easiest, as we can be doing other things at the same time and have him get comfortable to just being around us when we do stuff) So of course every few minutes he goes back to the mirror and I have to go get him again. He's actually very good natured, but more timid than Cosmo and a lot more gentle and placid. Will be interesting to see how they go together. Meanwhile, Cosmo is super tame. He runs over the the side of the cage whenever we're in the room and when we put our hand in he just jumps straight onto it and runs up our arm. He's become such a sook that I can actually cradle him in my hands and give him a big neck scratch. My plan is to continue taming Piccolo throughout quarantine. We will have guests with us for the next two weeks and I don't want to put them together during that time although we may get pressured to because people might think it would be 'cute' to see them together. But quarantine is quarantine, so too bad I expect the taming may slow down or even go a little backwards with other people around and less time to spend alone with Piccolo, so I will probably spend at least another week or maybe longer before gradually introducing them... that would bring it to about 2 months quarantine, but I'll extend it if I feel the need.

I clipped his wings for his safety while taming. When he flew head first into a mirror I knew it was the right thing to do. There are heaps of threads on here about wing clipping if you really want to know why it can be a good idea in certain situations. If your birds can be safe without it then that is even better, but I have no regrets clipping my birds' wings.

Thanks Liv.... I thought so! :rofl:

I know you've already buried her... but was that long ago? Sorry for the horrible suggestion... but if it was me I would probably want the bird autopsied. I mean you can (and probably should) get the others tested, but if they find nothing wrong with them, you'll still never know what happened to the one that did die.

I haven't had any cause to worry about Piccolo yet, but now that I've been getting him out of the cage more I have noticed one thing that I find unusual. When he flies, sometimes he makes a bit of a high pitched sound. I think it might be like how pigeons wings make that noise when they take off really quickly. It does seem to be when he's flying further or faster and it does sound like pigeons a little. As I said it's not every time he flies, more when he's taking off very suddenly in a fright. He is quite young and his wings are clipped and he doesn't seem to have quite mastered the clipped wing thing yet, poor little guy :rofl: so he can be a bit clumsy sometimes. My gut feeling is that he'll grow out of the wing noise thing, but just wanted to check with you guys that I shouldn't be worried about it. Especially after MariaL's post about the hen that makes a funny noise-- but this isn't like that.