Things that unhinge the delicate parrotlet mind II: Food edition

Things that unhinge the delicate parrotlet mind II: Food edition

Edamame: ran to the top perch, making "predator" alarm tweets for 2 minutes

Raspberry: did not approach food dish for 24 hours after the first recon mission identified a raspberry behind the piece of broccoli

The hand that feeds

Update
dry figs: elixir of the Gods
fresh figs: spawn of the devil

App for Parrotlet: "Peaceful Pond"

Falcon Fest

Falcons are always so poised and in control, like some kind of super processor is managing the bird thing. At the falcon souq, falcons patiently watch us come and go from their fancy perches, monitoring our every move with military precision. It's like the falcon brain's only purpose is to assess the feasibility of something becoming prey. I did some Qbasic back in grade school, and this is the way I imagine falcons were programed by the Cylons:
                                                                                                        Y = Attack!
IF moving object smaller than Falcon <                                                                   N = Hypnotize                                                                                                                                                                                   
Go google some images of falcons, and know that this is so. Falcons don't look cute. Falcons don't derp. Falcons are the Sauron eye of winged things, blessed with a ratio of eye-to-brain size that makes little sense.

All this to say that the Qatar annual Falcon Festival took place this month somewhere in the desert. We were tanking around dunes when we saw the signs. How on EARTH did they manage to find the one and only falcon in the world that looks so, so... lacking in chromosomal coherence, so to speak?

"What planet is this...?"

Infinite adorableness

Parrolito comes out of the cage to say hi to "the other bird"

Things that unhinge the delicate parrotlet mind:

bells, obviously

water bottles in the vicinity of the cage, less obviously

hands

Parrotlet grows up, still questions gravity

It appears that spending the entire Christmas holiday with a pair of African Greys, the most intelligent parrots in the world, has not helped clarify this whole gravity thing. 

Nama saya Parrolito*

The other day I thought of an excellent bird name, which I will henceforth consider as my "secret bird name". You can't have it, get your own bird name. But it made me reminisce about the time when we officially named the bird, and the subsequent times that we unofficially changed his name. Parrolito was born Ricochet Gigantes. I agreed to the name Ricochet in a desperate attempt to dissuade my husband from ever using "Rico" as a child's name. Then the SF Giants won the World Series around the time when we brought him home, so I had to agree to "Gigantes", a spin commemorating the parrot's Hispanic heritage.

All in all, it never mattered, since on the drive back from the breeder's place in Santa Cruz, I accidentally called the bird "Parrolito", which is a mashup of parrot and lorito. That stuck. Then came a series of stupid adorable names that we come up with on a daily basis. When we moved to Qatar, I tried to give the parrot an honourable Arab name, "Maimun Saleh", the first pilot of Aceh. This did not fly (pun intended) with the husband. But it will backfire, since the name must go back to the pile of bird names, the pile waiting for MORE pet birds.

*this post is in honour of my dear friend Nit who suka burung juga.