we just brough home a 7 week old green quaker from a pet shop three days ago. not my ideal place to get a pet, but they were tame(didnt try to rip my hand off when i got close to the cage), hand fed, and i fell in love with him! what else could you do? we visited him and his brother or sister quite often over two or three weeks.

anyway, he didnt know the step up command. the family that raised him allowed the youngsters to pick him up by the body and carry him around like that, so he didnt know a whole lot about choosing to come to you. seemed rather pleased when he figured out i wasnt going to make him come to me. he now steps up really well, and will even jump to me if i wiggle my finger and click at him.

when i scratch his head he will contort his body into some really interesting positions so i can get to just the right spot- until i start laughing, then he jumps up like ‘you didnt see that.’ and ‘STOP LAUGHING AT ME!’

he has ALMOST gotten ‘give kisses’ down, other than the fact that he like to pinch skin when he gives kisses. he doesn’t break the skin, just pinches it. or he will forget what he is supposed to be doing and start preening my eyebrows…

but, it has only been three days, and he wants nothing more than to be in the covered corner of his cage perched on top of the water dish… which makes me have to clean it A LOT. and he has a huge cage. this one little Quaker in a cage made for a macaw, and he has to poop in the water dish. lol.
anyway, when he is perched on my shoulder or not on his playstand he is intently focused on the cage- and will fly to it if i dont get him to it soon enough.

the pet shop here clips their birds flight feathers themselves, and clearly did not do a fantastic job of it on this little guy. he can fly across the room without loosing any altitude- granted he does have to work to GAIN altitude, but he CAN do it. we have a flight suit coming next week for him (got to love the three to five day shipping that takes 8-10 days to get there.)

he made great friends with the young cat we have. she wandered up to me, so i picked her up and held her securely to acquaint the two… and he promptly reached out and latched onto her nose. great friends. the bird wants to eat the cat and the cat is terrified of the bird. what a dysfunctional family i have.

he will step up to the boyfriend, ONLY if i am not holding him already.

anyway, i am very proud of this little guy. he shows great potential of being a very troublesome mastermind. and he is so very loving to have come from a pet shop. (one of four hand tame birds, out of close to thirty) it probably helped a lot that we went to the pet shop A LOT before we brought him home, so he was a little used to us then.

anyway, there are not a lot of bird lovers in my neck of the woods, so i just wanted to share him with you!