If anyone saw my video of Seymour, the sulfur crested cockatoo, just about an hour ago, you’d know that I finally made a trip to the parrot rescue today.
It’s been probably more than two weeks since I last helped out at the rescue, so I made a point to resolve my guilt and go this morning since I finally have a day of NOT making hamburgers for ungrateful customers. Oh yeah, I work at Wendy’s, by the way.
Weekdays at the rescue are much less… event-filled? than weekends. Most of the volunteers and adopters come around on Saturdays, so my weekday visits are long and dull (well, as dull as a rescue filled with dozens of parrots can get) but most appreciated.
Today, as usual, it was just the owner and me getting the work done. I helped get some extra cleaning done while she took care of the regular routine of food and water changes. I forgot to take a ‘before’ picture, BUT LOOK AT THAT SPOTLESS FLOOR OH MY GOD. THOSE MACAWS HAVE NO MANNERS BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE THERE IS NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF ANYTHING ON THAT FLOOR. OH, DID I MENTION IT’S CARPET?
If there’s one thing I learned from working at Wendy’s, it’s how to sweep crumbs off of a carpet.
I continued the cleaning in the rescue for a good few hours, sweeping and changing the newspaper on the bottom trays of the cages. That would be my least favorite chore in the rescue… if I didn’t get to pick up all of the beautiful feathers in the process:
It seems like almost all of the birds are going through a good molt right now… I hit the jackpot. After probably about 10 months of volunteering, I FINALLY got a Moluccan cockatoo crest feather, and it is amazing - that skinny little orange feather in the middle of the picture. Not that exciting for anyone else, but whatevs.
Please excuse the 3 megapixel quality and the backlight, but I wanted to show you guys one of the silliest birds at the rescue.
This is Seymour, a sulphur crested cockatoo that came to us under less-than-common circumstances. He was actually a show bird at Busch Gardens in Virginia! I don’t remember his whole backstory of how he ended up at our rescue, though (he’s been there since before I started volunteering).
So now he spends his days performing at his own will instead of responding to a trainer’s cue (which we are still trying to decode, with very little success…)
Here, you can hear him very clearly say “Hi, Seymour” and “WHOOO” when he starts shaking his head (:
It’s been at least three weeks since I’ve had the chance to get to the parrot rescue, so needless to say I was pretty excited to be there today (not to mention I finally got to bring my friend ;D ).
Good news! Since my last visit, many of our birds were adopted out! A sun conure, an African grey, an umbrella cockatoo, two cockatiels, a budgie, and a blue & gold macaw all found new homes! Tank, my beloved black-headed caique, is also scheduled to go to his new home next week, so I’m glad I got to see him one last time this weekend. Baww I’m going to miss him. I’ll also miss Apu, the umbrella cockatoo, and his constant “I love youuuuuu’s” although his screaming… it’s a pleasure to have that gone, hahaha. Looks like I’ll have to find a new favorite bird to play with at the rescue, with Apu and Tank gone.
That concludes my rescue recap for this weekend, in case you guys were interested.
ANYWAYS, just announcing that I’m loading up my queue with pictures and possibly videos of pet birds that I would love to own one day. Recently I’ve taken much more of a liking to pets birds rather than wild ones, so if your opinions differ, I apologize. I want to take some requests, though, so leave me a reply or an ask telling me what species you’d like to see me post: pet, wild, or otherwise. (:
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Tank is a Black-headed Caique who, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I would looooove to take home with me. Unless I suddenly decide not to go to college, Tank is currently available for adoption (:
