My friend R read this blog for the first time the other day. While she was impressed at how handsome Harley is, she asked for more pictures of the Finsters. I explained that it's hard to take photos of the little guys, since they're scared of me and fly away when I open the door. Plus, they usually go to the right side of the cage when I open the door — and since the perch on that side takes two people to change easily, it doesn't get cleaned as often. Which you can tell in the picture I just took:

But that's okay, since we'll be cleaning the whole Finsterium soon, on account of we'll be moving soon. On Tuesday, in fact. Um, that would be tomorrow. Yikes!

To be honest, we've been moving things for the past few weeks — including Bob, who has not fared well at all, despite being in a much brighter space. Harley has even visited a couple of times, although apart from the closets, which are fascinating, he still seems a little nervous. That should change tomorrow, though, since we're having some people help us move the big stuff, including beds, couches and the birds' cages. We won't have everything transported by Tuesday, but once you've moved beds, the big TV, the birds and your underpants, it's pretty safe to say that you're living in a new place.

What with moving boxes of things across town every day, trying to keep track of where the checkbook is, getting used to stairs again, and trying not to panic over having more than one bathroom to clean, I suppose I can be forgiven for not noting the very important fact that Harley has been living with us for a year since April 20.

A YEAR!

It's a little hard to believe, frankly.

In some ways, it feels like he's been with us forever, and in other ways it feels like we're still getting to know one another. I guess the same can be said of many relationships, though.

We're looking forward to spending time with Harley in the new place, since it's much bigger than this apartment. I think he's been getting a little bored here, with so few places he can be safely without supervision. We plan to set up Harley Stations in most rooms, so he can climb around and play with toys in different spots. Bruce suspects we'll need a computer and a TV in every room, as well. He might be right.

When Harley became reluctant to spend much time on his perch on the stove after Oolong died, I started bribing him to stay there. The typical reward is a toasted pumpkin or squash seed. This doesn't always work, since — I'm sure you'll agree — a whole tub of seedy goodness is hard to resist. (Don't be fooled by the cottage cheese tub. Reuse, people reuse!)

But as time goes by, he's gotten more willing to stay on that perch. Now, despite the inherent dangers involved in having a bird on the stove, this is a good thing, since it means I can clean his cage more easily. But gone are the days of playing Bag on the stove:

Lucky for all of us, Harley still likes to play Bag on the bed:

Last night at bedtime, Harley really didn't want to go to bed. Sure, some nights he'll want five more minutes of scritches and Loves. But usually we keep him up a little later than he'd like, so he's pretty good about going to bed. Not last night. No matter what we did, or who brought him to his cage, or how many times we tried, he did NOT want to go to bed.

We're sure it's because he got so spooked by the earthquake the night/morning before.

No bed for him, he just wanted to be with us — well, Bruce, mostly. On the one hand, it was such a sweet experience, knowing he felt safer with us than alone. On the other hand, it was getting really late.

Finally, we turned the lights out, Bruce gave him scritches until he was pretty much asleep, and gently deposited him on his perch, still mostly asleep. He stayed there all night. Lucky for us, there were no more earthquakes.

We'll see how it goes tonight.

There was an earthquake this morning at 5:36 a.m. ET, centered in Southern Illinois. Harley felt it, woke up, fell off his perch, squawked and yelled, rolled out of his cage when I went running to "save" him, lurched around on the floor for a bit, and finally settled in with us when we brought him into the bedroom.

I'm not sure if I've described this before, but early morning is one of my favorite times with Harley: we live in a small apartment building so we are careful to keep him quiet when we can — or at least when we figure our neighbors want quiet. He wakes up when the Finsters' light goes on at 7 a.m., not that early, but perhaps early enough. So to keep him from calling out to us, loudly, "Hello!," we take him out of his cage, wait for him to poop his ginormous Morning Poop, and take him into the bedroom with us. Occasionally he'll try to bite my toes, so we get up for breakfast. But usually he'll sit on somebody's knee for awhile, and we all doze and listen to the news. Very sweet.

This morning, much earlier than normal, the news people informed us that there was an earthquake in Illinois, measuring at a magnitude of 5.2. I was surprised that Harley would have felt it from so far away, but comments on an internet forum I visit proved that many birds felt the quake from far away. Amazing!

Harley recovered from the shock, although he lost a couple of feathers in the mayhem. Here he is calmly having a snack, about mid-morning:

He's on his Snack Spot in this photo. The ghastly mostly pink rubbery perch broke awhile ago, so this is a new cotton perch right near his Art Project. This is his favorite place to eat snacks. He'll find a snack in his Art Project, and then climb to this Spot to eat it.

The other day, while he was chewing up a box on The Most Uncomfortable Couch In The World (see:

and:

for two examples), he found a snack hiding inside. Bonus! So he backed out of the box carrying the snack in his beak, and tried to climb up the side of his cage to his Snack Spot to eat it. That was pretty tough to do, with a nut in his beak. So I lifted him up to his Spot, and all was well.

This couch has a long and uninteresting history. Despite the fact that it's become the most uncomfortable couch in the world, it still calls out to people and birds alike: "Come and sit on me!" Harley likes to chew its edges, and drop snack squeezins on it from his Art Project. He also likes to get scritches — well, anywhere, so why not on the Eating Couch? Here he is getting some scritches from me:

And here he is, sitting on the Eating Corner (you'll notice the crumbs), getting stick scritches from Bruce:

Maybe we should start calling it the Scritch Couch.

Harley is a smart bird, and knows that when we pull out the crackers, there's often some cheese to go with them. He's good at finding the tiniest bits of cheesy goodness, even when there isn't actually any on the plate yet.

The same goes for salad: Harley knows we often put grated parmesan in our salad, so he'll go running over to the bowl to try to find some. Here he's flicked out some of the salad bits to find some cheese.

It also looks like Harley is looking for cheese in the picture below. Why else would he pick through a pile of vegetables, right? But in fact, he's drinking the freshly cut carrots. He likes thawed, frozen carrots better, since they're softer, and he can squish them in his beak and drink the juice. But freshly cut carrots are pretty interesting while they're still wet.

This freshly-rinsed broccolini is still quite wet, and great for drinking. In fact, all forms of broccoli make a good toy: first, you drink it, and then you tear it into little pieces to try to find more water. The bigger the piece of vegetable, the more fun it is!


Kale is also a good vegetable for drinking. Harley chews up the ribs and drinks them. When the leaves are wet, they hold a lot of good drinking water. Plus, you never know when the curly ends might be hiding a tiny piece of tasty cheese.

On those days that Harley can't stay still for more than two minutes at a stretch (which would be most days) I occasionally let him explore what is currently a mostly-empty drawer in the Peanut Memorial Shelving Unit. If it were completely empty, it might not be such an interesting place, but as it is, and particularly with the addition of a toy or two inside he can just reach, this drawer can keep him occupied for a good ten to twelve minutes. Not bad for a regular old piece of furniture!

The good thing about Enrichment Unit #3 is that Harley can't get anywhere from it, and get into trouble. He can't even climb inside, since it's too deep.

This means I can put Harley there for a few minutes while I'm trying to clean his house, or talk on the phone, or juggle sharp knives. As it turns out, Harley's Awesome Beak Of Biting can dent the material a bit. But the dents aren't big, and I figure it's a small price to pay for a few minutes of peace.

These photos are from a few weeks ago, but I've been too lazy to post them. Here's proof that Harley fits quite well on top of the canned tomatoes, thank you very much!

You can see he's already chewed up the blue box to his left, which has pasta noodles and spitballs inside.

Next is a close up of Harley on the second shelf, considering the best way to destroy the yellow box to his left:

That box has cornbread mix inside; a little sweet for my taste, but not bad for an "instant" mix.

It's a little odd having your meals dictated by the chewing whims of a grey bird, but that's not the only reason we've stopped letting Harley play in the cupboard. He was getting a little too interested in playing there, if you know what I mean — this was probably related to nesting behavior. A small, enclosed space, things to chew, one of us was always there with him (as a potential mate). Mind you, he exhibits some of these behaviors in other instances, but something about the cupboard was "special," and we decided to stop letting him go inside.

Intense nesting behavior is a little more dangerous for a female bird, since they can start laying eggs, and become unhealthy if they don't have enough nutrients to support egg production. Sometimes the best way to get a female "over" this behavior is to let her sit on the egg(s), or she might continue to lay. Of course, most birds pair up to hatch eggs, and if the female is inclined to sit "tightly" on her eggs, she could get further malnourished if she doesn't have a male to help feed her while she's sitting, or sit on the eggs while she goes off to feed herself.

On the other hand, intense nesting behavior for a male bird is mostly annoying. (I find there are some interesting parallels in human behavior, but that's a different story.) They get territorial, and very aggressive to the people around them — particularly someone who hasn't been chosen as an ideal "mate." Um, that would be me. Go figure. So the cupboard is now off-limits, although occasionally Bruce still lifts Harley on top of the refrigerator. Bruce is very weak.

Apart from general nesting behavior, it seems that birds have different triggers that "turn them on." Most bird behavior specialists warn people not to pet birds anywhere but on their heads, since anywhere lower could be perceived as sexual. Other birds get excited when you touch their feet. Birds have foot fetishes! Who knew?!?

I'm not sure what turns Harley on yet. I'm guessing it's fat chicks.

The elusive Spring Runners were out today! Decked in blue with small flashes of yellow (often called "maize"), they were spotted, briefly, resting at the top of a hill. This pack of males, numbering at about a dozen, had apparently finished their Hunka Hunka Burning Love dances, and were resting — deciding whether to dance again, or go home as no females had been seen and the sun was waning. Note that no Hunka Hunka Burning Love songs have been recorded, although there are numerous rumors about them, ranging from off-tune humming to staccato yelps.

The Spring Runners dance, as has been recorded in several different sources (see Nasser, et al., 1999), is a simple — but intense — sprint up a hill in the vicinity of Spring Runners females. This particular hill is one of the highest in Southeastern Michigan, so should be a popular mating spot. Unfortunately for these males, the females have not been seen this early in the season.

Here we see a particularly brilliant display (note the bare legs!) from a pale-skinned male:

Surprisingly, this flashy male left the hill soon after this photo was taken, with most of the rest of the herd. Instead, a dark-skinned male, fully-clothed and wearing a hat, stayed the longest, dancing up the hill well into the twilight.