scwritinglady wrote:

Tell me about it! And we're hand feeding the babies. I have to keep a rotating schedule. But they are precious. :-)

Figured I'd let the video we shot tonight do the talking on the feeding. It's kinda funny watching the Rosie eat. I think she's about weaned. The Ekkie still need some time; even though we thought she was weaned. We had this same process with Kiwi, so we know the routine.

Oh you guys! Thats so cool, lovely video. All I can say is I'm glad your're in your own house and not an apartment with the noise. Does the rosie let you handle her. More videos coming??????

The rosie is a real sweet bird, we can handle her a lot. Our breeder told us she's still only about 2/3rd grown which surprised me. She said even Leila will thicken up a good bit over time; and she's also a very sweet bird (much better than Kiwi was as a baby. Kiwi has always been so paranoid of hands moving around). Both are fledged too, something Kiwi never really was (so he can't really fly; kinda sad ).

Will be sure to post a few other videos, like bath time. I especially love the Cockatiels all taking a bath, it's pretty hilarious.

Nice video John

Do they take Dirt Baths?

Buff'O & the (smaller) native birds in my area dig small holes & lay in them & kick the dirt up under their wings while eating the pebbles.
I notice new pot holes in the garden every day.

Most of the parrots we own are from the rain forests of New Guinea or north Australia, so they tend to have the mindset of, the higher the perch, the better. Now the Cockatiels and Budgies are more open grassland birds in their native Australian habitat, so I'm not sure what they'd do with dust. They might love it.

The Chinchillas love their dust baths; in fact, it's the only bath they can take. If water gets on them it's hard to dry them out - their hairs per follicle is insane.

I've been under the believe that birds do the dust bath to rid themselves of ticks, etc.
Our sparrows love to mess up our newly planted garden. The grouse also dust themselves.
My cockatiels love a dish of water on the floor to bath in. No dust for them,lol

Our chickens always loved it too, so did the geese. But I think most parrot-like birds aren't into the whole dust thing

Now here's a mystery for you. Why on earth do almost all large parrots want to take a bath when the vacuum cleaner comes on? It makes them go crazy and start going through the bath-time motions. At first I thought Kiwi was crazy when he first did it, but then I heard hundreds of parrot owners have the same phenomenon with their birds. Quite strange.

Here's two YouTube videos of what birds do with the vacuum on, LOL

The first is a Galah (like ours) and the other is of course an African Grey.

ya my cockatiel do that with the little dustbuster even.

I just thought of something, I wonder if it sounds like a waterfall to them?

I've heard folks suggest that or the rain. But my vacuum sure doesn't remind me of rain, LOL. A tornado maybe.