Lady

Lady’s confidence has shot up over the past few months, she’s starting to get used to different toys, and will happily travel around the house on my shoulder.

The biggest change in her confidence is with my children and other animals in the house, and it seems she has decided that she is not at the bottom of the pecking order!!!!!!

Lady will chase the kids, dog and cats off the sofa, she will also at times fly at them to attack, she has also started to chase and attack my Amazon too. Now as frightening as that seems, and as problematic as it can be, I can’t help but look upon it as a positive!!

It just shows me how confident she has become, and how well she has settled into our family by establishing her position with us.

The main reason why I’m looking at this so positively, is because in the new year, the birds will have their very own room, so they will be away from the kids and the other animals, their main interaction will be with me, and their new room and toys. Of course they will still be very much a big part of our family, and will still be very much a part of family life, as the parrot room will be adjoined to the kitchen, where I will spend most of my time, and they will also have use of the kitchen space too, on their very own play area. Contact with my children and other pets will be quite minimal, which the parrots should be happy with as they don’t like the kids.

There will be a lot of changes for Lady and my other birds over the coming months, but they will be slow and steady, and I have every faith that Lady will be able to cope with the changes because of her increased confidence.

Here is an updated photo.

Lady has been with us since June, and has settled in brilliantly. Over the past few months we have had the pleasure of getting to know her personality, and boy is she cheeky!!!

Lady likes to help me sort through the washing pile, so I’ll place the odd socks on my lap until I find the matching ones, and she will sit on my knee and chuck the odd socks on the floor!

She loves to play Tug O War with a small towel, during which she will throw her head around, and pretend she’s a head banger by bobbing her head up and down!

Lady is quite quiet, and I am trying to encourage her to be louder, which is working. Sometimes I can hear her from upstairs! She will shout hello, and will call out Laaaaadyyyyyyy, and she does what sounds like a medium pitched, grunting dog bark! She speaks well but sometimes she speaks so quietly, and she always does it when I’m talking, so can never make out what she’s saying! She does say, hello, hello Lady, what ya doing and bye bye, she can whistle but it’s so very quiet.

I was hoping to have her screaming the housing down by now, but I’m still working on it! I’m still hoping she’ll give my Amazon a run for her money one day

In the previous blog post, I explained how I was leaving Lady, pretty much to her own devices during the day, and that I had introduced her to some wooden blocks to entertain herself with.

Lady has coped extremely well with this method, she has interacted with all the different wooden blocks, and cardboard boxes that I have placed on her play top, and I even managed to introduce a new colorful wooden toy!

Lady’s confidence has grown so much, she now chases my Amazon off her cage, and will now enter different rooms around the house whilst she is with me.

I’m so pleased with Lady, she has come on in leaps and bounds, and is becoming quite a character!

Here are some photos!

Lady is very frightened of new toys, and has been reluctant to interact with the few toys she has. She can be quite demanding for human interaction, mainly from me.
Both my Amazon and my Grey have learn’t to interact with their toys. With my Grey, this was natural, as he is a baby, it was a different story with my Amazon, who is quite the little perch potato, but she got there in the end.

This week I have been trying to get Lady to play with one of her toys. I placed the toy on top of my Amazon’s sleep cage (which Lady likes to go on), and Lady has been happily chewing the wooden shapes and undoing the shapes from their knots.
I then introduced a cardboard box, which I placed on top of her play top cage. Seeing that Lady liked chewing the wooden shapes from her toy, I decided to place some different wooden shapes all across her play top grill.

There was one key factor in doing this! Which was to leave Lady to her own devices, with very little interaction from me throughout the day!
This probably sounds like a crazy thing to have done, but there was method behind my madness!
By the end of this year, my birds will have their very own live in, playroom! Therefore, it is essential that Lady learns to interact and play.

I am so very proud of Lady this week, she has chewed, thrown, and played with everything that was placed on top of her cage!
There is still a long way to go, but I am so pleased with the progress she is making.

Lady has been with us for a while now, and has settled in well. She is a very cheeky girl, but can be nervous around new toys and surroundings. She is still plucking unfortunately, but this is being worked on, and will take time. Lady may never stop plucking, but if I gain a more confident, happy bird, I will be over the moon.
Day by day, Lady is growing in confidence, and is becoming louder, and is even starting to play with some of her toys.
We have placed Lady in the same room as my Amazon, as they have very similar personalities, and she is starting to settle down in the company of another bird.
There are many things that need to be worked on with Lady, but I’m am taking it one day at a time, it’s going to be a long process, but it will be worth it.