FEATURE And now ...
The old Amazons have resumed their peaceful life.With Casper indoors and their flight door open, they receive several visits during the day from the Timnehs and the parakeets not the young Amazons. Recently Archie let me stroke his breast feathers – what a joy! After her frightening experiences, will Lena lay eggs next year, I wonder? It is not always an idyll in the old Amazons’ flight; sometimes they squabble like any other long-married couple but their closeness to one another provides an example to any long standing marriage. Are Amazons particularly good spouses? Archie and Lena are and this is also true of my second pair who arrived in June 08. [To be continued...].
Two new Amazons arrive ‘Not another one!’ If you are a parrot person with a non-parrot spouse you’ve heard that remark before. Long suffering Wal, my husband of many years, has stipulated no more than four birds indoors (there are five at the moment). He minds less about how many birds live in the aviary so when a good friend of mine asked me to rehome a pair of Orange-winged Amazons I agreed.
The owners, moving house after five years, wanted the bonded pair to stay together. They’d never produced eggs or chicks, nor were they hand tame. Again details of their past history were sparse. The previous owners had first seen both birds crammed into a tiny cage. They wore no rings and were supposed to be one-year old. She and
her husband felt they had to rehome them. They built them a 9-foot outdoor flight, cared for them well but had little time for taming. ‘They must come here with a certificate from a vet,’ I told Kathrynne. Although the birds seemed healthy – disaster! Cybil the hen tested positive for Psittacosis. It took six weeks of treatment and a horrendous vet bill to produce a clear bill of health. Eventually, in June instead of March, the two Orange wings arrived. Kathrynne was so caring she stayed overnight to settle them in.
Although the parakeets in the aviary are not tame the parrots are. I didn’t want Cybil and Basil loose in the aviary if I had to net them to catch them. I put them in a 15-foot flight at one end which can be closed off from the main section. The flight has an upper and a lower door. I gave them plenty of enrichment, a nest box, swings and cut branches.
Early training
I have studied positive reinforcement training since starting with parrots. One of the main tenets as I understand it - is that the bird makes a choice to comply with your requests. Remove the favourite food from the diet and the bird (in principle) quickly learns to work for you to earn the reward. Of course training a bird that is loose in an aviary is more complicated because the bird can simply fly away. Neither Amazon had a step up. However, once I established that peanuts in their shell were Basil’s favourite treat, within a couple of
BIRD SCENE 39
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