Shortly after he first arrived here, we decided to try Harley out on some air-popped popcorn. I couldn't remember if popcorn was on the list of things Harley's former Mom said he liked, but we figured it was worth a try. As it turned out, Harley knew exactly what to do with popcorn: commandeer the bowl!

Although he never actually climbed into the bowl, it was pretty clear he had claimed ownership of everything it held, a little like Daffy Duck in Ali Baba Bunny. We carefully picked a few pieces from our side of the bowl, while Harley had at it with the rest. The thing is, apart from licking most of the kernels, and breaking them up into smaller pieces, it wasn't entirely clear what he was doing.

Subsequent forays into The Joys Of Popcorn looked more like experiments in static electricity than an actual meal (not the greatest photo). Was he eating the popcorn, or was he mostly playing with it? We couldn't really tell.

And it's the same thing with most foods. Sure, he loves a few nuts (pistachios, almonds, peanuts), but he's a pretty messy eater. Unlike Peanut, who would eat his favorite things down to dust, Harley ends up dropping a lot of food, and ignoring pieces considerably larger than I'd expect.

He likes apples, but he mostly takes bites, squishes the fruit around in his beak, drinks the liquid, and drops the food. He eats drinks grapes the same way. He'll tear up greens, but it's part game and part drink. Here he is "eating" carrot tops (no, not the comedian, the green plant on the top of a carrot):

(Note that the camera focused on the greens, not the bird.) I wove the greens around the bars of his cage, wet. It looks like Harley is eating the vegetable, and he did tear it into smaller pieces, but those pieces ended up on the floor of the cage. Mostly he was drinking the water that was still clinging to the carrot top after I'd rinsed it off. He does the same to most greens: he'll tear them up, drink the water clinging to the leaves, and — in the case of something like bok choy or dandelion greens — chew the rib or vein of the vegetable into small pieces, squish them around in his beak, and drink them, dropping the bite on the ground.

In fact, his favorite form of carrot is thawed, frozen pieces, which also get squished around in his beak and drunk. The vegetable itself is dropped on the ground.

Peas are pretty popular, in all shapes and forms. Frozen, thawed peas get hulled (you did realize that peas have little membranes around them, holding in all the Tasty Pea Goodness, right?), and mostly eaten — sometimes I'll see bits of pea left behind on the plate. Snap peas have been a fun discovery:

Once he gets past the pea's pod, he hulls the pea itself, and ends up eating maybe half of each pea — the fresh ones aren't as soft as the thawed, frozen ones, and we leave them raw. Since this photograph was taken, he's learned to chew the pod apart to get to the peas inside, and just in the past day or two he's started holding the pod himself to eat the peas. Of course, they still seem to taste the best when we hold the pod for him, or give him individual peas by hand.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Harley is that he doesn't eat sunflower seeds. I've offered them in the shell, out of the shell, sprouted in the shell, sprouted out of the shell, as well as actual, green-leafed sprouts. Apart from the sprouted greens, which warrant a bite or two if I hold them for him, he doesn't touch sunflower seeds. But having been trained so well by Peanut that sunflower seeds are The Best Thing Since Warm Toasties, it's a little hard to believe that Harley doesn't eat them at all. (Don't tell anyone, but sometimes I wonder if he's even really a bird.)

Oh! But cheese? No question, that he eats. Cheese gets SWALLOWED. It completely disappears. All of it. And all of Bruce's, too.

Remembering Peanut's love of Lunch (search on "progression" to read how Peanut progressively took over our lunch — although the entries are out of order), when Harley first moved in we invited him to eat with us. Oh, we didn't expect Harley to eat what we ate, but we figured he'd enjoy eating at the same time that we did.

As it turns out, Harley totally wants to eat what we eat, as long as that includes cheese. Harley's favorite meals are pasta with cheese sprinkled on top, and salad with cheese mixed in. His favorite cheese is a nice, sharp cheddar, but Parmesan is pretty good, too.

Should birds eat cheese? Not so much. First, they're lactose intolerant, and second, cheese is a high-fat food that — like seeds — is best eaten in moderation. But Harley doesn't seem to care, and he's very quickly Mind Controlled Bruce into sharing his meals with him. You know, any meals with cheese.

And unlike most fruits and vegetables, which he squishes around in his beak, drinks, and drops, Harley actually swallows cheese. Quickly. Which has helped Bruce lose a bit of weight, since Harley is quite capable of inhaling the cheese sprinkled on top faster than Bruce can eat the food it's sprinkled on.

I've also been eating less cheese than I used to. While I'm not as weak as Bruce is, I still feel the weight of Harley's stare while I'm eating it. Gone are the days when cheese-and-crackers was my favorite, easy meal to eat with Peanut sleeping in one hand. Now it's a furtive snack, gulped down with my back to the bird, a little guilty for being so mean.