Barney and I love to just lounge on the sofa watching tv. He huddles on my chest, close to my neck as I give him scritches. He is a wonderful stress-reliever and would love to just be with me 24/7. he will occasionally go to my husband if he has some goodies to share - like bananas, wheat thins, grapes, apple juice...

I can't believe it has been so long since my last post!

Well, Barney is doing very well with us. He has really become bonded with me and will go easily to anyone else, especially if he knows that, that person will bring him to me. :-) when he is on his cage however, he has a tendency to be a bit territorial to anyone but me. with me, he comes running to my shoulder.

Barney has been successfully eating zupreem fruit pellets since his conversion from seeds to pellets. he has now shown interest in eating harrison's pellets! which is optimal. so i will start slowly converting him to an all harrison's pellet diet.

he still loves tomatoes freshly picked from the garden, including any lettuce, snow peas, beans I also grow. he has learned to drink from a cup. we have tried offering some sugar free fruit popsicles to him but he still finds them either a bit too scary or a bit too cold to come near.

he's a wonderful companion and he loves to follow me around like a puppy dog. :-)

here is barney playing around...

Barney had is vet appointment yesterday. He is getting tested for pretty much everything just to be safe - liver profile, chlammydia (sp?), pacheco's disease, CBC, any bacterial infections, etc.

he got his nails trimmed and his beak cleaned.

the dr. said that knowing that he was on an all-seed diet, his feather condition was to be expected (it is not as healthy as it could be). and even though he was on an all-seed diet, the dr. was slightly surprised that barney didn't have any weight problems or any eye problems (being on a seed diet would normally raise the cholesterol levels in a bird, which would tend to make parrots (especially amazons) obese. High cholesterol levels in the blood can also lead to cholesterol deposits being left in the eye, which can eventually cause blindness.

but barney's weight is good, there are no signs of fatty, lumpy deposits around his body, eyes are clear, nose is clear (although the dr. mentioned something about the hairs around his nostrils). no abnormal signs of growth in his mouth, ears are clear.

we should be getting some results back by tomorrow.

poor barney was so exhausted after that vet visit...but he was a good boy. didn't bite a thing except for the towel that he was wrapped in. i bought him a pretty cool new toy at the vet's office (wow, they have a great selection of cool toys!). i decided not to give it to him yesterday after all that stress, but i will introduce him to it during the weekend.

Barney is a great, perfect bird for me. he lets me grab him without a fuss if he gets into "bad" areas, he won't fuss when i take him outside with me and keep me company as i do my garden work, and he doesn't beg for food like the other birds do in our house (thank the hubby for that!).

it has been 6 weeks since we welcomed him into our home as a member of the family, so he is technically out of quarantine. my schedule has been so busy lately i have not been able to set a vet date for his wellness checkup, but he is now set for one - september 4th at 3pm with the vet that we really like (and who we use with our own parrots).

we are not sure about whether he plays well with other parrots, but we do know now that he doesn't really care for another blue front amazon that we are currently fostering. he got into a little skirmish with the other guy (barney actually started this). luckily no one was hurt. just a little lunging and feet going up.

we will probably try to introduce the other amazons in this house to him, one at a time - strictly supervised - but slowly. i will let barney just hang out on my shoulder while sitting in the living room with the other parrots on their own play areas....just for him to get used to seeing them from afar.

barney doesn't really care for the showers we take, but he takes it. he loves tomatoes, jalapenos, pasta, wheat thins...OH, and a BIG change has happened! barney is now COMPLETELY converted to pellets! YEP! okay, not the best kind of pellets - he is eating the zupreem fruit blend pellets (he loves the yellow ones) - but better than an all-seed diet! he gets a few seeds as a treat and if he feels like foraging in certain areas of his cage (i hide them) but none in his main food dish. i've noticed that his poop is a lot better formed since the conversion.

anyways, that is what's new with barney. i will be sure to post some new pics of him soon!

barney enjoying the outdoors with me...

Barney hanging out with me in the garden

Barney is just such a wonderful bird. Every day when I come home from work, I take him out of his cage and we wander around my backyard garden together. He coos, whistles and sings as we pass by all the veggies growing in the gardens, and he even tastes the produce to make sure they are ready for harvest (he has found enjoyment in eating fresh jalapenos!).

He did bite my husband once, but only because he was trying to have Barney step up onto his hand from my shoulder. I should've known that was going to happen. Other than that, they have been doing well together.

Barney loooovvvveeessss to preen my hair, stand on my shoulder and coo, and look out the window and passing neighbors and cars. I also find there are times where he will just LOVE to get head scritches. These are times when the house is quiet (usually just after lunch time when the amazons take a nap) and he is getting a little sleepy (either on his cage or on my shoulder). He will bow down his head and signal he would like a head scritch by scratching around his head himself with a foot. i join in and this could last for as long as 30 minutes or more. We had a great scritch-session on sunday as I did some work in his room. what a cutie!

oh, and his latest toy love? a red whiffle ball that contains a bell within it. if i roll this ball near Barney, he jumps on it, bites it, rings it as if its the craziest thing in the world. i've never seen him so energetic and passionate about something except for this ringing whiffle ball. its amazing. i don't roll this ball anymore in his direction, just in case he is attacking it because he is afraid of it. i roll it past him and he just follows it wherever it goes! i will try to get this on camera. (other than that, he doesn't seem too interested in any of the toys so far).

barney and i hanging out before bedtime

Lazy Weekend Bonding

Barney has been doing very well so far. I have not seen him drink from his water bowl yet (I will monitor this), but I have seen him pick through his food bowl. And, just as I hoped, Barney seems to be more bonded with me than with my husband. My husband has stated that when he goes to visit with Barney, Barney would look past him in hopes to see me right behind him. ;-) What a cutie.

On Sunday, we started the day with a quick shower. I gave Barney a shower by letting the water from the showerhead hit my hand and spray him just a bit. He wasn't so sure if he liked it or not. I may try a spray bottle next time.

It was a really beautiful day outside, so after the shower, we sat together on the patio to dry off and warm up in the sun. Barney just sat on my shoulder and mumbled words I couldn't understand and hummed a musical note which I thought was so cute...he did it with a falsetto too. When it started getting a bit too hot, we went inside and I let Barney "play by himself" in his room. Usually I don't think he plays, but instead just sits on his opened cage door and watches the neighbors through his window.

His window is usually left open, which has a screen protecting him from the outside world. He can watch cars and people past buy. (Our house is 15 feet from the curb, so no one really gets close to the windows without us knowing it). On Saturday, an owner with his dog passed by and Barney started to imitate a bark!

I also spent some time with him in his room - either doing my own thing while he sat on his cage, him sitting on my shoulder or us interacting directly with eachother. One time, while Barney was sitting on his cage door, he started to slowly scratch his head with his own foot. I decided to "join in" and I slowly raised my hand to scratch the other side of his head. Happily, he allowed me without missing a beat from his own foot-head-scratch. So, there we were, him scratching his head on one side with his foot, and me scratching his head on the other side. Too cute! Too bad I didn't get that on camera.

Oh, if you are waiting for that video I talked about the other day, I'm sorry. I'm having problems loading that video to YouTube. I am trying again today and it should be going up soon. (keeping fingers crossed!)...yay, now it's up!

Barney does allow me to touch him pretty much anywhere. With scratching around his head, he needs to be in the mood for it, but is usually kind in letting me know by just moving his head away.

He was very captivated with my laptop. Especially after I played the video I made of him doing the wolf whistle. It looked like he was trying to find the mysterious bird that lived inside my laptop.

We have supplied Barney a radio to listen to when we are not at home. I hope he is okay with that. He steps up wonderfully for my husband and myself without any coaxing..he really wants to be with his flock!

Since he is doing so well with adapting to his new home, I am thinking about taking him to an avian vet possibly next week instead of waiting 2 weeks. His possible high stress levels is what I was worried about and wanted to wait 2 weeks so that he can get more comfortable, but wow...Barney is such a great bird! I don't think he really stresses about anything. Oh, there was one thing he got scared of...when I moved the spray bottle, we use to clean his cage, too close to him, he did freak out a bit. but other than that, no problems.

Homecoming

Barney was brought to my home today. It was hard for his previous caretaker to part with him, but I can't blame her. Barney is indeed a unique parrot with amazing personality. I have not regretted a single second for adopting this wonderful bird.

I was thinking about leaving Barney to settle down for a few hours, but after one hour or so, I had to go into his room to get something and all he did was follow me around the room with his eyes. I had is complete attention and he tried to peek at what I was doing with his large, beautiful eyes. I just had to let him out and see what he would do.

I let him climb on top of his cage door and I offered him a pumpkin seed, which he took happily. He climbed all over the top of his domed cage, peer this way and that. He easily stepped up on my hand, but I could tell he wanted nothing more than to see what there was to discover on the top of his cage.

In his cage, he hasn't really done much exploring yet. I think he is a little wary of what certain things are, so that will take some time to get used to. I have put some of his seed food in containers around his cage so that he can spend some time foraging, but I don't think he will get to that till later in the week. In his food bowl has a mix of his regular seed mix and some roudybush pellets, which more of our other birds eat.

While uploading the pictures for this blog, Barney seemed to have either recognized himself, or thought there was a bird that looks like him in my computer. He was on top of the door of his cage and I was lying down on the bed next to his cage, uploading these pictures and Barney climbed down to me, stepped up nicely on my hand when I offered it and just looked really closely at my screen, at the pictures of himself. It was really cute. He also shown interest in the movie that I also uploaded to this blog as I played it. I don't know if he was "friendly" interested or in "attack mode", but it kinda looked like Barney would have lunged at the guy on the screen. But we'll see. As soon as he completes a vet visit and gets the "a-ok" he will be hanging out with the other birds.

Barney has a very interesting array of words and sounds, and this is only the first day! So far, I have heard him say "good boy", "hi Barney", "hey Barney", and "hello". He also has a wonderful wolf whistle, as well as chirps, shrills, kisses, barks (yes, he "barked" at a dog who was walking past with his owner), and what I call "laser beams". These are what I call "great extras" because his ability to speak human-speak is not a necessity for me when I was looking for a bird. Companionship was #1, and Barney fits the bill...and then some.

I have not tried to touch him...that may be asking too much on the first day. I am really pleased that he looked comfortable stepping up on my hand and allowing me to transport him to various points in the room. This was more than I expected from a bird in a new atmosphere.

Okay, well, enough of the ramblings. Here are more pictures of this handsome fella...





The first video of Barney - wolf whistling:

Part One:



Part Two:

How We Met...

I thought I would add some background to this story:

I first saw Barney's picture in a craigslist post, whose poster was trying to look for a new home for him. I was just smitten with his good looks! As an added bonus, the poster wrote that he was very friendly and would warm up almost anyone.

I wrote back to the poster and inquired about Barney - asked more about his personality, vet history, eating habits, etc. Come to find out he is a very people-friendly bird who has only once gone to the vet (around when he was born) and he prefers greens over fruit (weird, huh?!).

It was after a few emails when I decided I would like meet Barney in person. His current companion brought him out to my home and we got to spend some time with him. To my surprise, he easily stepped up on my hand, as well as my husband's, and felt so comfortable with me that he fluffed himself twice on my hand. It could've been him being on his best behavior in an unfamiliar setting, but he just looked comfortable. He made noises and talked for us, he even did a great wolf whistle! And if I even started the wolf whistle, he would finish it for me. It was really cute!

Barney allowed me to hold his feet between my fingers, which was great - shows me that I can restrain him on my hand if we were to go outside and i can prevent him from flying off (although his wings are clipped).

Barney was very inquisitive - probably wondering where all the other birds (who were making a bunch of noises) were. He also tried to climb down a cage we use as a playstand out in our living room, which his companion said he normally never tries to do (climb to the ground).

Comparing him to Bentley and Herkimer (two blue front foster parrots that we take care of), Barney is small in size, with proportionally smaller feet and feathers. What did I first think? Perfect for my smaller hands! :-) Barney was just awesome. I truely believe we can offer him a good home. We sometimes like to go on outings with the birds, and Barney will definitely be a wonderful addition. He will help us to inform people about parrot personality and adopting from rescue organizations (although Barney is not a rescue bird - to make that clear. He just needed a new home).

In two weeks after receiving Barney, I will take him to his first avian vet visit with us. Since we have other birds in our home, we want to make sure that he doesn't have any internal problems with viruses or other things. I will wait 2 weeks because if I were to take him to the vet soon after getting him, his stress levels could cause a false positive for infection.

Tonight, we will be getting the cage ready and filling it up with toys. We have a radio which just needs some fresh batteries (Barney's companion person said that he really liked listening to music or watching cartoons...when we are not home, he can listen to some tunes on the radio).

Okay, next post will be after Barney comes "home". :-) I will post pictures of him then.

The Anticipation

We have decided to add a new member to our family. He (we think he's a he) is 10 yrs old, about 12 inches tall, green all over and incredibly handsome! We are excited to be adopting Barney - a blue front amazon who has a charming personality. He will be coming to our home this coming Saturday, so there is some work to do to get everything set up for his anticipated arrival.

This blog is to document his first year with us and see how he grows as a member of our family of 2 humans (my husband and myself), a 20 yr old yellow naped amazon and 2 green cheek conures.