Carly Lu’s Flight Blog

We’ve mostly been taking it easy and letting Piper get used to his new home and buddies. We’re doing a bit of recall practice indoors each day, as well as targeting which he is great at! As for outdoors, he’s been getting used to the park and beach and his harness. He is relaxing quite quickly, though it still strikes me how different he, being a baby, compared to Carly. I had almost forgotten all they have to learn the first few months to a year. But notice the relaxed, fluffed feathers in many of the photos, even on his first times trying new things.

Here’s his first outing to the beach on August 12, about a week after arriving — surveying the new scene!

And walking around while the big boys flew.

Today we did some recalls on the harness on our park walk. Lookin’ around a bit first…

Then a big fluff.

Ready…. set…..

Go!

Carly is still feeding him when he’ll let her. She’s eating a lot and maintaining her weight, and he just broke 500 grams the other day — a 30 g gain since his arrival a few weeks ago. Carly’s a good mom

This week we’re moving to a different apartment, which is one reason why I’ve taken it pretty easy letting Piper get used to everyone. Wendy’s babies really are confident and happy though. That foundation is quite apparent in the ease with which he adapts to new things.

Photos by Raz’s LG cu500 cell phone, except shoulder shot by Hugh Choi.

The uncut version.

The Amazing Mimicking Bird

Watch Avian Ambassador Kumbi the African Pied Crow in “Manhunt” at the Duke City Shootout filmmaking competition.



Carly thinks he’ll get an academy award.



For those of you looking for a handsome young Pied Crow for your next movie, here’s his head shot.

Name: Kumbi
Represented by: Avian Ambassadors www.avianambassadors.com
Starring roles preferred; supporting roles considered upon script review.

Still photographs of Kumbi by Jill Coulson

Piper arrived with Wendy on August 1st (the day of Carly’s big RHG adventure). Carly was a bit peeved at first, chasing him around and not letting him sit on any of “her” stuff. Over the next few days she fairly rapidly mellowed and began watching him carefully. Then sidling up to him closer. Then trying to regurgitate food! These pictures are from August 6th, the first day they went to my office together. She’s even more protective of her things in my office (just ask Rocco!) But she not only allowed him on her gym, she sat next to him, erped up food, played, and babysat. They were both so good, and it was even easier having the two of them together than Carly alone.

More pictures: Carly & Piper’s First Day at Work with never-before seen exclusive photographs of Carly sharing her dinner bowl!

Piper is a big guy — already 10-20 g heavier than she is and much broader and chunkier. He is unbelievably sweet and friendly, and very confident. A good flyer too, but a real klutz in the house! He’s still learning which things are solid and stable enough to land on.

Yesterday we had our first outing in the park on a harness, which he puts on with no fuss at all. The difference is striking between his confidence and willingness to immediately explore everything around him, and Carly’s physical caution when she was young. I think part of it is definitely a physical confidence from fledging properly, and part is from being raised, socialized and weaned by a real expert in an ideal environment with lots of human and bird interaction. He is just not fazed by anything so far. (Except maybe plane rides. He growled and hissed at Samantha on the other side of the carrier partition before they left Dallas, but when we picked them up in San Diego they were both huddled next to each other in back where the partition is see-through. He was a bit uneasy with the car ride today too, but bounces back so quickly when out of the carrier.)

And not to forget little Rocco — he has a new album too! Photos: the Little Guy Settles In. I wish I’d known years ago how sweet cockatiels can be.

And then there’s Ferg. What’s a cat to do?

photographs by LG CU500 cell phone

In response to queries about our “lost” posting to Craigslist on Friday evening, here are the details of what happened. I will post more later about how we’re dealing with this incident from a training standpoint.

Carly went into full-force femalehood this spring and became obsessed with red-headed guys when we were out. She would want to sit on them (sometimes half an hour before I pulled her away) and literally gazed up into their eyes, nibbled on their ears, wanted head scratches. Then when we would walk away she would often fly right back relentlessly. I had to be careful to keep an eye out for them, and really watch her behavior carefully when she was out flying to see if she was getting into that “mood shift” because it was a hard pattern to break once it got started. I also kept her doing shorter flyabouts and treated frequently for just staying with me and doing little tricks. We also did lots of short A-B recalls with the RHGs that she found, so she could interact with them in a more healthy way. And it had subsided a lot over the last month…. until Friday.

While flying over the houses by La Jolla Shores, she apparently saw a RHG sitting by the pool at one of the condos, and went down to investigate. Strange because she’s been much better with that in the last month, but she found one on the beach earlier who adored her too, and once she gets it in her head…. Also, we were out flying with Wendy Craig and Samantha, who came out to deliver Piper (Carly’s new Grey friend, now 4 months old). Carly was a little perturbed about that at home, but seemed to be behaving just fine at the beach without him around.

Anyway, she disappeared from sight when she ducked behind the condo and I couldn’t find her anywhere. Searched for hours, up until dark, calling, putting up flyers, etc. Turns out that within probably half an hour of her disappearing, the condo manager had been contacted, she contacted a local bird store, they contacted a veterinarian couple who had a missing Grey, and someone drove Carly out to their house. 20 miles from where we live. We were reunited via Craigslist about 10pm last night. She was already settled in to bed, and the couple was coming this way in the morning, so she had a slumber party there with their other grey last night. So the whole 6 hours or so I was searching, she was in someone’s house in La Mesa eating grapes Some of the condo people called this morning, and that’s when I found out, yes, it was a strawberry blond guy.

Now we have to do some more work on this red-headed guy issue. I’d been letting her have a lot of freedom to do very long flies lately since she’s been handling them well, but I’ll go back to keeping her a bit closer and doing some “remedial” recall drills as a refresher, then see how things progress with her little infatuations. And if she is ever is missing again I will not even waste my time thinking she might be sitting outside in a tree somewhere or off exploring! She seemed quite tired when she got home, and was also very cranky until late in the day (keeping to herself, stepping up but then biting, not eating much.) She was driven out to the vet’s house in a laundry basket; not too much to her liking. Ironically, it was these infatuations that orginally got me thinking it might be a good time for Carly to have a grey buddy. She was in better spirits by evening after some alone time and a nap.

As for Piper — not really pals yet, but things seem to be calming down quickly. He is adorable and very sweet, and confident enough to hold his own. I think they’ll work it out just fine. They are already sharing gyms without any trouble, and Carly has been showing a lot of interest in watching him, not just chasing him!

Many thanks to Dr. Cheryl Clark for taking Carly in (and best wishes for finding her lost grey). Cheryl just happens to know Barbara Heidenreich, Susan Friedman, Lee McGuire, and the Gabriel Foundation folks — so Carly was in great hands. Also to the people at the condo — especially the manager — for making the effort to track down an owner, and the staff at Birdland San Diego for their assistance, and several people who called with information after seeing our flyers. (Highly recommended: It was so nice having a big stack of pre-made flyers to put up right away.) All together only about a 6 and a half hour ordeal, but I feel 20 years older!

Pictures and posts on Piper soon!