I woke up early on Sunday, but didn’t want to get the bird up too early. I’d hate to get him used to getting up with the sunrise in case I actually want to sleep in one weekend. I went down a little after 8am and spoke to him a bit. Then I decided I’d let him come out and hang out on the couch and eat some apple. It would be nice to have some quiet time with him while the rest of the house slept.
Well, he let me reach in and get him out of the cage, but he really didn’t seem to interested in being near me–he just wanted to be out. I set him up on the back of the couch and got the apple. He didn’t want the apple and didn’t want to stay on the towel. As he went off the towel I picked him up and he reached down and bit my hand. OUCH!!! It left this big indent on my hand for about 2 hours and broke the skin a little on the top. I didn’t give in though. “No, no biting!”, I told him in a scoldy voice. I held him a bit longer just to make my point that he wasn’t getting away from me that way.
All day long, the litle rascal was nippy. He didn’t want to be near us. He liked being on his cage, but didn’t want to be handled. He even gave Dave a bit of a hard time (so much for being the favored person). We tried to carry on and show we were nice people. He even had some corn on the cob like Michael for dinner.
We’ve noticed a few things about him. He’s a little clumsy still. He’s not sure where to place his beak as he climbs around and ends up in some weird positions. He also loves to stretch and flap his wings. He even glided down from his cage across the family room and living room. He’s really funny when he wants to fly. He hunches down and pulls out his wings. If he’s on the couch, he’ll even walk around hunched over like that. Once he gets up his courage, he takes off. He doesn’t do too bad considering he’s a baby and has partially clipped wings.
Anyway, I’m going to not hold his actions today against the bird. He’s still adjusting and has to get used to us. Besides, we all have bad days. I sure hope he’s happy to see me tomorrow though when I get home from work. Maybe he just needs a little more quiet time to himself. I don’t think he’s used to be handled all day long, but he needs to get used to us since we’re now his flock. Tomorrow’s another day and we’ll start fresh then.
Our African Grey Parrot
Michael by the African Grey on its cage