My Son and his girlfriend didn’t seem to mind having bird pooh all over their clothing  “BUT THE WASHING”!! The Birdbib has stopped that and Charlie loves it when he sees one of us with one on.  He gets so excited as he knows that he is going for a ride. I have friends who at first were at a bit hesitant to put a birdbib on.  But now they wouldn’t even think of not, it’s a great clothing protector. Our pet bird “Charlie” who is a Quaker Parrot just loves to sit around on our shoulders, he doesn’t like to miss out on anything! My son kept putting Charlie on my shoulders, but I would always put him right back on the bird cage, as I couldn’t stand the mess that he made all over my clothes.  I kept feeling sorry for him though!  So I came up with the idea for a Birdbib and now Charlie is happier then ever. Where ever I go around the house, so does Charlie! He thinks I’m the prefect bird toy! This is a great pet bird accessory that you definitely need!

We have Charlie on our shoulders quite a lot now as he is not making our clothes messy.  I wish I had come up with this idea sooner.  It’s one of the best bird accessories we have. He is hardly ever sitting on his parrot perches or bird stands that we have scattered around the house any more. Not only does the birdbib stop pooh from getting on your clothes it is also a good bird feeder.  When Charlie eats he leaves a mess everywhere, so the birdbibs catch that as well.  He loves to have a nibble of what we are eating as well as bird food. It was only today that I was going outside and went to get Charlie, the top I had on was strapless and I thought I’m just going to put him outside on his bird gym, as we call it, so I won’t put a birdbib on.  Well he wouldn’t get on at all as he doesn’t like bare skin, I then put the birdbib on and he hopped straight onto my shoulder.

Well! Charlie our pet bird (Quaker parrot) is in a crabby mood with me today.  He seems to like everyone else except me!  He goes to bite me when I go near him. BUT  when I put my shoulder birdbib on he still climbs on, excited about going for a ride I suppose.  He then realized it was me and went to peck my neck, I growled at him and he stopped for a little while then went to peck me again. When I go to give him some fruit or vegies he makes a lot of noise, shakes his head and really grabs the food and turns his back on me!  Apparently some birds do that from time to time. He has done it before to my son and my self.  He is usually ok the next day, but I do wonder why he does this.

It was interesting though, that when he saw the birdbib he forgot that he was crabby with me and just hopped onto my shoulder!  Since having the birdbibs I don’t let him onto my shoulder without having one on as I can’t stand having bird pooh on my clothing anymore, they are great!!  We use 3 shoulder bibs.  One for putting on, one as a spare and one in the wash.

Well it is bedtime for Charlie now, but HE doesn’t think it is!  He just doesn’t want to get into his bird cage.  He is squawking and grabbing the cage and running onto the top of it.  This is what he does at EVERY bedtime!  When we finally get him in, he pecks at the door and shakes it.  The door is left open all day, it is only closed at bedtime. We had to put pegs on both doors and where his food and water goes as he opens them up.  Once we put his cover over him and turn the light off he settles down and doesn’t make a sound! (until morning).

My son and his girlfriend are so patient with him, but I think he is just spoilt.  They keep talking to him and saying over and over again, it’s bedtime Charlie, come on Charlie, go to bed Charlie. They expect him to just walk in there and sit on the perch and go to sleep, I think they eventually want to say go to bed Charlie and he will go himself!! (I say, just put him in there)!  He is only 9 months old and not saying many words at the moment, I hate to think what he will say when he learns to talk!  He already shakes him head when he doesn’t want to do something.

Charlie, our quaker parrot loves to get outside on his outdoor gym, as we call it.  He climbs all over it, listening to the other wild birds, neighbouring parakeets and parrots close by.  He mimics the sounds and whistles that the pet birds make.  He is getting quite good at whistling, still not so good at talking, although we think he says tucker when food is coming, then thank you.  We also think he says good boy, maybe other people don’t think that is what he is saying but as long as we do that’s all that matters.

He does the wolf whistle, if that is what it is.  It’s the whistle that was quite well known for workers on building sites to whistle to women as they walked past, he does that well.

We are trying to teach him to say bib, short for birdbib which is the shoulder bib that we use as a clothing protector from birds pooh when Charlie is on our shoulders. He loves to get onto our shoulders but we won’t let him unless we have a birdbib on.  We thought he could start asking for one when he wants to go for a ride. We have not been very successful as yet, but we will keep trying.

When Charlie is on his outdoor gym he also wanders down onto the grass when he feels like it to have a bath, which is waiting for him on the grass.  He loves his bird bath.  He flaps his wings and turns and turns and dunks, he has a great time.  When he has had enough he gets out and climbs back onto his gym, to groom himself. He is a very proud bird.

Should I clip a bird’s wings? Well this is a question that many ask, including us.  When we bought our pet bird, Charlie, our Quaker Parrot, nearly a year ago now, he had already had 1 wing clipped.  The bird breeder suggested that one wing is all that is needed to be clipped and it would be much safer for him and that most pet birds have this done.  We left Charlie with only one wing clipped for many months, it took quite a long time to grow, but in that time he would try to fly off quite often, especially when something startled him or if we weren’t paying him enough attention.  He loves to sit on our shoulders on our birdbib, which is a clothes protector from bird droppings.  If we didn’t put him on our shoulders enough he would fly off.  He would always crash land and often hurt the side of his face, always the same side which happened to be the side that the wing had been cut.  It would bleed and take awhile to heal.  My son Luke, his girlfriend, Sarah and my self didn’t like this at all, we were worried that he would hurt himself permanently.  We would panic every time he flew off.

We thought maybe that we would let both wings grow as we thought that it would better for Charlie and safer.  So we looked up different sites on the net and borrowed books from the library to find out more about clipping birds wings.  We ended up being quite confused.  There were so many different opinions.

We decided that letting both wings grow out completely wasn’t a good idea at all.  We read stories like, people that had let their birds grow back both wings and then their bird flew away and was never to be seen again or flew into windows and onto the stove, into fish tanks, into toilets etc.  Another story was that a bird owner let their bird grow back both wings because they felt it wasn’t right to clip them and then their bird flew over their fence into a neighbour’s back yard.  They immediately ran over to their neighbours to collect the bird, but unfortunately the neighbour’s cat had got to the bird first.  Imagine how that would have been.  I felt so sad for that bird and the bird owner and thought that we can’t let Charlie grow both wings.  So should I clip a bird’s wings, yes, we now believe that clipping both wings is the best thing for our pet bird.  It is still probably an individual decision that every one has to make.

We have now cut both wings and have found that Charlie is much happier.  He will still fly off now and then but no where near as often as he used to.  When he does he is much more centred and only flies a short distance.  He lands perfect every time, no more damage to his face.  He doesn’t have enough lift to get over our fence, unless he is high up in one of our trees in the back yard, so we have to watch him all the time when he is outside.

We believe that clipping wings is the best thing for our Quaker Parrot, Charlie.  I also believe that clipping wings is a personal decision that pet owners need to make for all pet birds, including Cockatiels, Budgies and Parrots etc. It is a decision that all bird owners need to make depending on their own circumstances, just like any decision we make for all of our pets.  Our bird loves to get out of his bird cage all of the time and sit on our shoulders on a bird bib and also loves to get outside on his outdoor gym, as we call it.  If we didn’t clip his wings he may not be with us today.

Happy bird, happy owner

Lee-ann Simpson

The parrots of Oz (Australia)

June 5, 9:27 PMBoston Birds and Fish ExaminerGeorge Sommers

Cockatoo and owner demonstrate use of bird bib.

-Photo by Linda Currier

Examiner travels Down Under to interview an Australian aviculturist about wild Australian parrots and the Aussie experience of pet bird ownership. (Well, into our Facebook friends list, anyway!)

Lee-Ann Simpson resides in Queensland, Australia – she’s formerly from Tasmania. (Yes, Tasmania is a real place and yes, Tasmanian devils are real critters – but that’s a different story!) A blue phase Quaker parrot named Charlie lives with her and her son, and in addition she enjoys observing and photographing exotic parrots and birds that we Yanks rarely, if ever see except perhaps in captivity. What’s more, Lee-Ann runs a home based business manufacturing bird bibs for the bird owner whose pet is, errr, not quite toilet trained.  http://tweetyenterprises.com/

“Charlie says ‘tucker’ when we give him food,” says Lee-Ann – tucker being an Aussie colloquialism for food. “It sounds like he says ‘Thank you’ as he snatches it! He says ‘What’ and ‘good boy.’ ‘He also ‘baas’ like a lamb. On the carpet, he walks forward…. turns in a circle, walks backwards, around in a circle, and backwards again. He keeps doing this till he gets where he’s going. A bit strange I think.”

Talk about parrot lovers’ heaven. Rainbow lorikeets visit the mango tree in the “neighbour’s'” backyard (as Lee-Ann writes in proper Australian English0 “When the fruit is ripe they are soooo noisy,” she reports. Charlie copies their whistles.”

“A few cockatoos land in the trees in my neighbour’s yard from time to time. I hear them before I see them.” (Imagine that, muses this ‘too owner.)  “Up the road there are heaps of them morning and night . A neighbour feeds them. When driving to work I often see them flying overhead and they are usually squawking as they fly.”

Other avian visitors include pink galah cockatoos, kookaburras (yes, they DO sit in gum trees, verifies Lee-Ann!) , magpies, butcher birds, ibises, pelicans and cockatiels. Lorikeets drop by for leftovers when son Luke cleans Charlie the Quaker’s cage in the backyard but they have to be careful of the pied curawongs that swoop at Charlie.

Lee-Ann was not always a big pet bird fan. “I used to look after the school’s pet bird Scruffy, which was blind, over the holidays,” while keeping a wary eye on the family cat, she explains. “I enjoyed looking after Scruffy, but found out how messy birds were.” She also acknowledges a bit of guilt about seeing birds cooped in a cage. “That turned me off having a bird as a pet.” It didn’t help that a sister’s cockatoo took a dislike to and would screech and hiss at Lee-Ann; and on top of that, her sister’s sickly cockatiel died on Lee-Ann’s watch.

Pets aren’t technically allowed in Lee-Ann’s apartment, but she came home one day to a surprise – a four foot long fishtank including a red devil fish, paving the way for Charlie. Last year, son Luke and his girlfriend showed up with Charlie. “They kept him in their room for a couple of days waiting for the right time to tell me,” Lee-Ann explains. “I love pets but I don’t want any trouble with the landlord. Well 10 months down the track Charlie is still here and I wouldn’t part with him for anything now. The landlord comes around and mows the lawn and whistles to Charlie and Charlie whistles back. We presume he is okay with it as he hasn’t said anything to us to us about him.”

George Sommers has written a great book  “I Saw Wild Parrots in New York City”  Check it out:- http://www.wigglespress.com/NYCParrots.html is available at Amazon.com – or here:  http://georgesommers.blogspot.com/