I had a veggie burger for lunch today, on a little bun with sesame seeds on it.

Peanut had sesame seeds for lunch today. We had a race to see who could eat the bun first. Even though I gave him a head start, I won, since my mouth is much bigger.

In fact, I've recently realized that my life is completely controlled by a creature small enough to fit into my mouth, whole.

You can click here for a close up of Peanut snacking on sesame seeds.

Speaking of lunch, Earl Grey, who loves tofu, has taught Oolong to eat it, too! She may like it almost as much as he does. They were both snacking away today, flicking little bits of it all over in their tofu zeal!

Bruce has been learning how to fly. He's human, so he's using a plane. But since he's having a bit of a hard time with the landings (what with gravity, and all), he decided to go to the source, and ask Peanut for some tips.

Unfortunately, every time Bruce sits down with him for a serious conversation, Peanut uses his Awesome Powers of Mind Control to get tasty seeds. One minute Bruce is trying to understand the mindset of a small, green bird, and the next minute he's giving that bird a sunflower seed. Or two. Or three. Whatever it is that Bruce is learning from Peanut, I don't think it has anything to do with landing an airplane.

There are days when even tiny birds are beset by heavy pockets of gravity. In this short series of photos, you can see Goober being overcome by a particularly strong gravity event as she Defends The Realm. That's Earl Grey in the nest box behind her.

Don't worry, she didn't actually fall.

You can see bigger versions of these photos if you'd like: first, second, third.

What is it, do you suppose, that makes the right seed tower (not the left one, mind you) so good for standing on and pooping? I used to think this was one of Goober's peculiar habits, but as it turns out, one or two of the Spice finches do it, as well. You can't tell in this photo, since I just cleaned it. (Um, thank goodness.)

Oh, and I suppose you can file this under "Things I didn't really want to know about birds."

Although it's not the best choice for bird feet (that would be natural branches), I use dowels as perches in the Finsterium. In order to provide various widths for the birds to stand on, I use several sizes of dowels. A few days ago, I gave them a clean new perch with a new design.

It's Evil.

This design is different from their other perches in two ways. First, because the dowel is only 1/4 inches in diameter, I had to insert it into short pieces of a thicker dowel in order to attach the fixtures to each end. Second, because it's so narrow, it gives a little when the birds land on it. These differences have made the perch Evil enough that for a day and a half or so, nobody would land on it. Instead, they'd fly toward it, see how Evil it was, turn around in mid-air and land on the other side of the Finsterium.

Entertaining as that was, I hate to make the birds uncomfortable. It surprises me how much they get spooked by new things. I try to keep new, scary things to a minimum, but I suppose that by trying to protect them I could be making them soft, in the end. On the other hand, when I replace a disgusting, poopy nest box with a clean one that is almost exactly the same, in almost exactly the same spot, and they think it's EVIL — well, what's a girl to do? Freak 'em out, I suppose.

A few days later, and the new perch has stopped being quite so Evil. Most of the birds have sat on it at least once, and many seem to be sitting on it for lengths of time willingly. That is, except for Frank, who still thinks it's Evil. EEEEEEVILLLLL. This wouldn't be so bad, except that the (now) thick part at the very end of the Evil perch shown in this photo used to be his favorite spot to sit and nap. Oh well, either he'll get used to it, or it'll get poopy, and I'll change it out with a clean, "normal" perch for awhile.

Jen and Bug gave me the idea of eating pistachios, cleaning the shells, and using them as toys. Peanut likes them! I took a few movies using my digital camera; the quality is pretty low, but gives a glimpse of the fun Peanut had. In the first clip, you can see the fun of flicking the shells around. In the second clip, Peanut has hopped off the cup onto the table, only to realize he isn't quite big enough to climb back on the cup. After a hand up, the third clip shows the fun of picking up the shells and dropping them, and — about three quarters of the way through — how much he LOVES them.

Yes, that's Peanut regurgitating to the cup of pistachio shells.

But, it is that time of the year, after all. Despite the cold and snow in some parts of the world, it's almost Spring, and time to think about procreation. Nance from Florida reports one of her finches laid an egg yesterday, the red-tailed hawks in Manhattan appear to be sitting on eggs, and Peanut thinks that pistachio shells are really, really HOT.

Don't think I'm jealous of pistachio shells, Peanut regurgitates for me, too. Mmmmm, bird puke!

Actually, what with a couple of major cage cleanings, some new (Evil) nest boxes, perch cleaning, and trying our best to take care of Ovaltine, the honeymoon was over a long time ago. But today was the first time (why? because I'm lazy) I opened the Finsterium door just a crack to take a few pictures since all the new birds moved in. This one of (probably) Cinnamon (half inside) and Ginger (on the porch) proves that during the day, the new plastic nest box is pretty nice. (At night, unless they're hiding inside, the box remains untouched.) You can click here for a bigger version of the picture. And since the photo just barely shows off Ginger's crested feather, you can click here for a close up of Ginger's head, with glowing goodness!

This scene of Goober (half out of the box) and Earl Grey Defending The Realm is familiar. You can click here for a big version. They're probably a little quick to Defend these days since I haven't opened the Finsterium door much lately. In contrast, Goober has been almost comfortable with my presence when she's on the ground Ready To Snack, and I'm reaching into the Finsterium to put new snacks on the floor. Once she even snacked on the end of the lettuce leaf while I was still holding it!

The third photo I took is a good example of what we fondly call the "Head on a Stick" phenomenon. When a bird has fairly significant feather damage around its neck, and stretches up tall to intimidate its foes or picture takers during scary situations, it looks like this. If you take a close look at the photo of Cinnamon and Ginger, you'll notice that Ginger has some feather damage around her neck — those feathers are much more rumpled than Cinnamon's front. But Ginger doesn't have enough feather damage to have a Head on a Stick. The bird in this photo could be Szechwan (Pepper), Peppercorn (Mélènge), or Nutmeg — I really can't tell for sure. You can click here for a big version. It's a little gruesome, but don't worry — it's larger than life.

I visited Kiki for a day. This was my second visit with him. He's a 15 year old maroon bellied conure who eats a few things he probably shouldn't, talks a bit, and will mostly poop on request. He pooped on me a couple of times, since I don't know him well enough to understand when he says "have to go poopy." He liked that I invited him on my shoulder at every opportunity, and stuck my tongue out (at the baby, but that's a different story). I liked it that he jumped on my shoulder at every chance, and nudged my face once for some scritches.

The woman in Kiki's life decided that if anything ever happened to her, I should take care of Kiki. It's a big responsibility, but one I'll accept. It's always important to have a person picked out in case the bird needs a new home. Not everyone knows about birds, after all.

Just don't tell Peanut.