Camelot Macaw

Some birds have the strangest fears: a certain color, a leather jacket, a particular chair, sunglasses, flies.  As random as these might seem, each of my birds has had nightmares over one of the items on this list at one time or another. Fear of toys is frustrating because it leaves your bird with nothing to do all day while you’re away.  Many resort to feather destructive behaviors, and worse.  Such was the case with Theo, my rehomed goffins cockatoo.

When I took her in, she had never been ...

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When Storm the blue front Amazon parrot came to us he was too unhealthy to even dream about flying – weighing a whopping 580 grams! He has now been weighing at a steady 440 grams for the past week and continues to stay around 440 grams and a little above. Today, for instance, he was 445 grams. And in that week he has been experimenting with flying in his new aviary environment!

His aviary is 6′ diameter and ...

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Dave and I spent the day cleaning out the aviaries (so excuse the still mess in the background of the video sometimes)… we raked them all out and changed out toys from all the aviaries. And in the moment, since we moved our three smaller parrots inside for the cleaning… I decided, why not try Storm outside now?

We hadn’t planned on moving him out there that early but decided ...

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Although we had the set back of the Spring season kick into gear for Storm, we are still making progress with him! Dave and I left for 3 days while Storm and the rest of the flock stayed home.

When we got back, I saw little red wood chips all over the bottom of Storm’s cage and realized he was picking at his wood parrot toys while we were away! I think a little “alone time” was good for him because it encouraged him to self-entertain ...

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I decided to do a video blog about the changes we made to Storm’s environment in an effort to set him up for better success in his time here with us. So please take a look!

Tip to take home: Setting an animal up for success just means putting the odds in his favor. For example, if you’re going to train your bird a new trick, you don’t want to start at your neighbor’s house, ...

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You’re all probably wondering what happened with Storm?! Well, I will tell you…

In my attempt to let Storm spend more time with me, I brought him out in the morning to watch me work out. He can watch me from his cage, but I thought some “out of cage” time was even better. The quality time trick had worked so well the day before that I thought… why not?

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