Carly Lu’s Flight Blog

Barbara Heidenreich has published a position statement on marketing practices companion parrot owners may encounter. Buyer beware.

Internet Business Practices that Target Companion Parrot Owners

One thing that’s a sure giveaway that a “professional trainer” is more interested in making money than disseminating knowledge is a total lack of references to other trainers’ resources or qualifications, and claims to have the “secrets!” that others don’t. Respected professional trainers work together, not in competition.

— Carly Lu’s Flight Blog

… soundtrack.

Someday I’ll realize my dream of living in a treehouse.

No screaming parrots, screaming monkeys, or new age flutes on this one (unless they’re in your living room). Half sunny, half rainy. Everyone here is quite relaxed and chattery with it on. Except me, who is quite relaxed and napping with it on.

Miss C gives The Leather Elves her seal of approval.

Wednesday in the late afternoon I took Carly out for a big loop around the park, because she was so energetic and rowdy. She took off on her usual path around the park and over the big eucalyptus, over our apartment complex toward the south part of the park. At that point she’s hidden by trees. But she never came out on the other side.

I looked until dark, all over the park and bordering homes. Somehow I knew this wasn’t a case of her going on an unplanned social visit. I did a couple searches after dark, but figured she would probably not call or fly out, wherever she was, until morning. Odd, I also didn’t put up any posters until the next morning when I set out before it was light, and then only a handful. It’s not just that she has been progressing well in our “super-generalizing” training; I just had a strong feeling she was up in a tree, and if so, she’d be back down to me in time. It was extremely odd that she would stay out past sunset without even a peep or a visit to people in the park; when she hangs out in trees she typically is very vocal.

Before dawn the next morning I started the search path. There was one section where I had a hunch she was, and I put that part of the route at the time when it’s just getting light, when the native birds start calling and flying. Several flocks of crows came flying out from their roosts. One of them had an odd call, and there was Carly in the lead of the flock. She flew down toward me but circled and landed in trees a couple times where she kept looking to one side. This is odd behavior for her, if she’s flying down towards me to not follow through. But she finally flew down and we headed in, eating lots of walnuts.

Inside she went directly to her sleeping perch where Piper was still snoozing, clucked at him and gave him a kiss, then settled in for some water and sleep. That’s when I noticed dried blood on her chest and foot.

I’ll never know what it was, but the vet said she had a foot/talon puncture, one about 1 cm deep and one very small one, with some bruising and swelling. The blood on the foot was from when she was hunched down on it overnight. He cleaned it out and gave her antibiotic and painkiller injections.

She’s doing fine now, it’s healing well, and she was back to her normal self the next morning.

But you should see the hawk (she sez).

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The last two days we have had no feather snipping. What’s changed? A few things, though I don’t know if any of them are related.

• Moisture: I’ve been using the new humidifier a lot this week, including right next to the Grey’s perch at night. Last night we had thick fog — which means we had a relative humidity swing from around 20% to 100% and back again within 24 hours. But at least part of that time was moist.
• Exercise: We’ve flown 3 days in a row, with very good behavior every time. Though flying well may not be directly related to decreased snipping at all, it has resulted in longer outings, which in turn has made her calmer and sleepier in the evening. It also makes me happier and more relaxed being able to allow her more exercise again.
• Even more foraging! I stocked up yesterday at Whole Foods with fun greens like parsley, kale, dandelion greens, whole topped carrots, and have been stuffing them in more places around their cage, toys, and rope net, along with tissue paper for shredding, and a few treats hidden inside. Here’s a new foraging toy I found at Parrot Festival that’s a big hit.



• Preening: more vigorous! Yeah, sounds counter-intuitive. Carly used to preen so rambunctiously that she’d occasionally break feathers. But she does far more damage with the focused, careful preening which often ends with a snip at the end lately. If I encourage her verbally or with physical roughhousing, she can get very excited preening: fluffing and shaking and hanging upside down. So now instead of pleading “pleeeease be careful with your feathers” I ruffle her up or tease her, “careful with those pretty feathers!” The occasional broken feather sure beats going bald.
• Diet change. While providing more intersting foraging, I’ve changed to a less varied base diet of Lafebre’s pellets, which she used to get in small amounts. This was motivated by wanting to increase the value of some of her training treats (see previous post). Again, I don’t know if this is causally related to her snipping. But it does seem to increase her interest in other foods, both those used as treats, and those used for foraging. Both she and Piper are shredding their veggies with gusto, and spending even more time playing in and around their cage and gyms.

So, while I’ve been writing several posts, Carly and Piper have been sitting on me preening for a long time, and not a single feather tip has come floating down. (Though my head is covered in Piper dandruff.) Hoping this continues.





Toys shown in pictures are the refillable Foraging Surprise and Star Bird’s Lovely Bunch of Coconuts. Here is a good sample of the many foraging toys available. But remember, even the good ones are only as good as you make them by filling them up daily!

For background see Carly’s Super-Generalizing Recall Training.

We’ve been continuing to practice regularly before meals indoors, including “emergency recalls” using a whistle and super-treats. We took a beach outings several days this week, each one a bit longer than the last. We’re up to our usual 30-40 min session that we typically have done during the week.

Set-up: We’ve been going out before her first meal, and using sprouts and nuts for rewards, and peanut butter for the super-treat.

Some new changes we’ve made, which seemed a bit counter-intuitive to me at first:

1. I’m letting Carly and Piper stay at home in their cage several days per week instead of bringing them to work. Seems odd, but I get the impression that they often prefer to not be carted back and forth; it’s a lot of moving from place to place, often when they are already content where they are, and which can require visible treat rewards to keep it voluntary. They also seem to be finding their cage a more interesting environment than the office (I’ve been working a lot on their cage activities). And when I’m very busy at work, they are not getting much interaction from me anyway, and certainly not whenever they want it. I was also wondering if Carly might be more likely to stray off for social visits if she is fairly well saturated on being with me so much of the time. (I would be!) So they now get some quiet, private time for 6-8 hrs a few days per week.
2. I’ve switched to feeding a base diet of pellets. Formerly I fed a small amount of pellets to both greys, just because they like them, with a base diet of sprouts and veggies. But sprouts are also a very favored training treat, so to increase their value I am now using the pellets (Lafebre’s) and veggies as the base, and reserving sprouts, nuts and fruit as rewards. We do enough work each day that she will still get a good balance of everything.

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Behavior: Most days she did medium length flights, staying fairly close, with one or two longer ones playing with gulls. On all of them she came directly back to me when finished. Weather has been warm so there have been somewhat more people around. If they stop to talk I let her do her meet-n-greet (fly to them on cue, fly back for treat, repeat). Her body language has remained normal, and it didn’t change her subsequent flying. Yesterday we met a RHG only 2 minutes into our session. She predictably showed interest but didn’t fly to him until cued. I let her do some A-B’s back and forth, and she was fine when we left.

Tried the emergency recall whistle today on a longer flight and she turned immediately and headed back in. But I’ll need to see many more repetitions before I’m confident it’s trained solidly.

Continuing use of jackpot treats at the end of session and while walking back to the car (larger nuts, additional sprouts).

Other notes:

It’s getting fun again, and more relaxing, as she gets back into her old groove!