Dear university,
Please excuse StyleyGeek from working on her dissertation this afternoon. She is having difficult typing with her right hand after an unfortunate incident with an overly enthusiastic cockatoo.
PS: Hand-feeding wild birds is overrated.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Success! (Of a sort)
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15 Comments:
Interesting...you said earlier, "they are slightly too big and pointy-beaked for me to include them in my hand-feeding ambitions."!
I was bitten by a cockatoo once. I thought at first it was just being curious/friendly, but it was trying to see if I was good to eat! I wonder what it concluded.
Yeah, it wasn't entirely planned. I actually went outside to try and defend Geekman's strawberry plant from the cockatoo that was sitting on it. But when I walked right up to it and went "shoo" and it just cocked its head at me curiously, I thought I should probably see just how tame it was. So I scooped up a handful of seed and held it out. The first few pecks actually took some seed, but then it got a mouthful of fingers by mistake. My shriek freaked it out, and it tried to fly away, but was still holding onto the finger. There was a lot of flapping and hand waving, and then a very traumatised bird and an equally traumatised me.
I had no idea they could be so ornery! Hope you feel better!!!
What happened to the finger? Did you win it back?
:-p
Ouch! I hope your fingers aren't hurt too badly.
I won the fingers back in the end, but it did break the skin. It doesn't look bad this morning: just like a paper cut, but yesterday it was red and hot and SORE.
I tamed a couple of conures on different occasions, and even though they were both little (especially compared to a cockatoo), they could really bite HARD!
They both became very friendly and cuddly, but one liked to play rough. The game was that I'd wave a towel around and he'd fly across the room, straight into the towel, and give it what for. Wrestling with the towel ensued. He could draw blood through two layers of towel, easy. (He didn't just randomly attack towels; just as well since he loved the shower.)
Next time, maybe use a couple pieces of fruit, so that there's something larger and more obvious to eat?
That's probably a good idea, Bardiac. I assume cockatoos eat fruit... All parrots do, right?
Wow. I know multiple bloggers who have fed wild birds. Very cool and interesting.
I hope your hand continues to heal quickly!
Hee hee!
Hand flat, fingers tightly together. Like feeding a horse, except horses don't peck.
When I was 5, I was bitten by a sea gull. We were on a ferry boat. Others were feeding the birds all sorts of horrid human food. My mother held me up and I fed them cheetos. That is, until one bit my thumb. I still do not like sea gulls.
I did, Badaunt! But their beaks are huge. It took pretty much my whole hand in its mouth (from the side).
And Bardiac, I tried feeding it apple yesterday. But absolutely no interest. I don't think it recognises it as food, since it's not at all similar to anything they eat here in the wild. I even put some pieces in the feeder with the seeds, but it just picked them up and threw them onto the ground, just like they do with the leaves and sticks that get in there.
So what local fruits are there?
My bird in SA was wildly into bananas of all sorts, but also was pretty much willing to eat anything I was eating (which got disturbing when I was eating chicken soup). But I don't imagine it got many bananas in the wild, since they're so well wrapped and mine was a small bird.
Hmmm, try a piece of orange?
I'll try some orange. I think the only fruits the local cockatoos usually get to eat in the wild are berries and maybe plums. And those are too expensive right now for me to "waste" them on a cockatoo!
Maybe they have some sort of genetic memory of tropical fruit, though, so maybe I should try a banana :)
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