Cooking for the Birds ...

We have a couple of parrots at our house.

One parrot is a 24 year old femaleYellow Nape Amazon named DeDe.  We bought her in San Diego.  The other is a 20 year old male Vosmaeri Eclectus named KalanaAnaOle (Ole for short).  Vosmaeri Eclectuses are from the Solomon Islands, but Ole was hatched on Oahu and was brought to California when he was about 9 weeks old.  We had to hand feed him for a few weeks.

Eclectuses eat fruits and veggies.  When we got Ole we were told not to feed him fatty things like sunflower seeds, so we developed a healthy diet for our birds.  The parrots are fed Rowdy Bush pellets and a fat free seed mix.  They also get a big scoop each day of fresh veggies.  They love the mix that we fix for them, corn, chopped zucchini and yellow squash, carrots, broccoli, and cilantro.

Our parrots are well loved and well cared for.  They each have a large cage.  They have a room to themselves.  The room has a picture window that looks out onto an acre.  Deer, fox, squirrels, and birds come by for their amusement.  Music plays to keep them company when we are away.  Our bloodhound wanders in to visit with them often.

Both parrots talk a lot.  DeDe cries like a newborn baby.  Ole blows me kisses and sneezes like I do.

When Ole reached maturity he did what a lot of caged Eclectuses do.  He plucked his feathers out.  His head is still the beautiful bright green.  He gets new feathers on his wings and chest all the time but quickly plucks them out.  He can't fly anymore but he can strut down the hallway to see where we are.  When he does that, Dulcie the bloodhound follows along behind him.

Have you seen an Eclectus?  The male is beautiful green and the female is gorgeous scarlet.  Here is a site that shows them.  http://www.avianweb.com/vosmaerieclectus.html

Many years ago we got an Umbrella Cockatoo named Katie.  She was beautiful!  She never talked but she was smart and would mind when I told her to get back in her cage.  She didn't fly but she also would walk around the floor if we let her.  I had to watch her though because she liked to chew on the piano legs!  She wasn't fed the great veggie and fat free diet that Ole and DeDe are.  She had a stroke when she was about 40 years old.  We miss her!