Sally's Flock
Drawings by Sally Blanchard

African Grey - Whodeedo

Several weeks after Bongo Marie, my elderly African grey parrot, passed away I received a call from Julie Murad of the Gabriel Foundation. She called to express her condolences and tell me, if I was ready, she had a young African Grey who needed a new home. He had been in at least two homes because he had supposedly become a vicious biter. Julie has quoted me many times as saying "biting is the easiest behavioral problem to solve," so she knew I would be up to the challenge. I know I will never be able to replace Bongo Marie but there is an incredible coincidence — the Grey’s name is Bongo.

He arrived at the end of February, 1999—right before I came down with the nasty flu everyone was getting. Because I was sick for close to a month, he got to spend some quiet time with me. He quickly learned to cough and blow his nose. As he was getting used to his new home, his energy started increasing, I was feeling better and my energy was also increasing so we were in sync with each other. Interestingly, he has never tried to bite me—a few minor tests with his beak that I passed quite successfully, but no real bites.

We have bonded very nicely—he is quite the handsome boy and is also full of himself (as was Bongo Marie). As I get to know him better, I can’t imagine anyone ever giving up on this wonderful guy. He is very affectionate, loves his spray showers, is a glutton eating almost everything I feed him, talks more and more every day, and is an excellent hugger and smacky-beak kisser.

He is a very different parrot than my African grey parrot, the late great Bongo Marie and, of course, there are aspects of Bongo Marie that will never be replaced. I will always miss her but I look forward to the adventure of spending the rest of my life with my new Bongo! The new Bongo has a really sweet voice but is quite a silly bird. I suppose it will take a number of years of living with me for him to become as sarcastic and/or maniacal as Bongo Marie. He is working on it though. A week or so ago I was sitting in the office working on the computer when I heard a very familiar, but somewhat, wicked sounding laugh. My immediate thought was that it was Bongo Marie. Then I was amazed. How could the new Bongo learn Bongo Marie’s laugh? As I was pondering this conundrum, a voice in my head said, "Hey stupid, that’s your laugh that she used to imitate!"

A New Silly Name?
Out of who-knows-where the new Bongo started saying an enthusiastic "Who-dee-do" as his absolute favorite expression. It really sounds cute when he says it and after thinking about it for quite some time, I decided to him Sir Bongo Whodeedo Little Lord Puffalump (silly huh but it suits him!) — Whodeedo for short. It took some getting used to but both Whodeedo and I are now comfortable with his silly new name.

 Whodeedo is a nonstop chatterer and mostly likes to make a lot of nonsense noises. My mother gave me a wild-bird clock for Christmas and he has almost all the calls learned. This, of course, means we can never tell what time it is by the bird sounds. His newest phrase is "Um, that’s a good kiss!" which he finishes with a big smacking sound. Whodeedoo is not the least bit aggressive with me (remember he was supposed to be such a bad biter??).

Whodeedo has also become one of those infamous African grey parrots who become boneless when you want to put them back in the cage. He turns into a total "puffalump" getting shorter and shorter until he falls over backwards into my hand. It is almost impossible to put him on his perch this way. It’s his way of asking for more skritching. He mostly loves to get raspberries in his wing pit. It is a fun game and I let him play it if there is no hurry. Whodeedo really enjoyed himself at the 1999 PBR Convention. He turned out to be a real social butterfly chattering and meowing for everyone.

One thing for sure, Sir Bongo Whodeedo is a definite keeper!

Is Whodeedo Time Magazine's Parrot of the Year or an imposter? In a Time Magazine article about Animal Intelligence featuring Eugene Linden's book, The Parrot's Lament, there was a sidebar featuring the Bongo Marie and the Cornish Game Hen story. Since Bongo Marie had passed away, Whodee stood in for her and his photograph appeared in Time Magazine.

Double Yellow Headed Amazons
- Paco & Pascal   

Paco (hatched in 1976), Sally's hen double-yellow headed Amazon was the first baby raised by Sally’s breeder friends when she lived in the Midwest. The breeders were convinced their ‘first-hatched’ was a male and named her Paco. Sally helped in her handfeeding and she came to live with Sally shortly after she was weaned. At the time, Sally desperately tried to find information about the proper raising of a handfed baby parrot but there was none. So she set about raising the young bird developing her own ideas as she went along. Paco became a very well-socialized bird. It seemed to make sense to Sally, who was a dog owner, that it would help to use verbal commands with the intelligent little parrot. From the very beginning, Paco was a part of many of Sally’s activities, including invitations to dinner at friend’s houses. Once Sally began to realize that Paco was a hen, it was too late to change the loquacious bird’s name. Paco has always been a cuddly affectionate Amazon. Her favorite greeting has always been a rendition of Paco, Paco, Paco, Paco—each time pronouncing her name with a different emphasis. Her real name is now Pacarita but everyone still calls her Paco, Paco, Paco, Paco including her brother, Rascal.

Two years later, Sally purchased a chick from Paco’s gorgeous parents' Charo and Chongo’s third clutch, and helped in the hand-feeding. Rascal developed his own unique personality and became an incredible talker. When he was a youngster, one of his favorite expressions was ‘who do you think you are?’ and he would sit on his perch and practice saying it over and over, each time a different way. One time when a friend (who did not have birds) was visiting Sally for the first time, Rascal, whose cage was in another room, said the expression several times. The visitor looked puzzled and then in explaining the situation to her own satisfaction started to tell Sally about how her elderly grandmother had also lived with her and had become quite eccentric (or perhaps the word should be deranged from the repetitive tone of Rascal’s voice?).

Before I moved to California, Paco and Rascal lived together in their own bird-safe closed in porch. They have a cage but most of the time they have free range of their special habitat with lots of toys, swings, multiple perches, and several feeding stations. Occasionally they bicker but get along exceptionally well most of the time. Rascal is not as tame as he once was but still responds readily to the "UP" command. Paco still loves her human attention. Both love to carry-on together and sing their silly duets. Every night when they are put in their cage, as soon as the lights go out, Rascal says "G’night Rackleburger" as part of his bedtime ritual.

Shortly before I moved to Colorado, Shari Beaudoin from Parrot Island in Minnesota came for a visit. Rascal and she were smitten with each other and Shari was able to handle Rascal in ways that I was never really able to handle him. Rascal and Paco had been compatible for many years but had become a more "combatible" couple. Shari suggested that she take Rascal home with her to lessen my moving responsibilities.  Once she got him home, her son, Troy, and Rascal hit it off and very quickly Rascal became Troy's best buddy. At that point it was logical that Rascal should stay with the Beaudoins. I figure that if someone my age can find an excellent home for a parrot with someone in their early twenties, it is best to go for it.

Double-yellow Head - Pascal

Pascal is the unplanned daughter of Paco and Rascal.  In about 1989 when my father was sick and dying, I had to spend a great deal of time in Southern California helping my parents move to a retirement village where my father could be in a skilled nursing facility. Paco and Rascal went to live temporarily with a woman who was starting to breed parrots. I had no intention of breeding them because they are sister and brother but the breeder set them up with a nestbox. The result was Pascal. The breeder raised her and when she was weaned, she went to live with a couple with three sons. I was spending so much time away that I only saw her once and she was just feathering out. A dozen or so years later, I received a call from the woman who had Pascal. Their kids had grown up and left home and she and her husband wanted to travel more so they wanted to place their parrots.  I helped her place the other birds and Pascal came home to live with me.

My first dilemma was to figure out what she was saying. Her favorite words sounded like, "Nahoma, Josan." I thought they might be Chinese because of the way she said them. It turns out that Pascal spent a great deal of time at the couple's beaded jewelry factory. Her cage was next to a Chinese woman's work station and the woman was quite fond of the parrot so Pascal quickly learned the greeting she received every morning.

Pascal required a lot of work. She was not on a good diet, rarely if ever had baths, and had never learned to play with toys. Now she eats like a piglet, loves her baths, and plays with all sorts of toys.

Pascal is a funky little Amazon with a very exuberant personality. Unfortunately she tends to love almost anyone else who comes here but when anyone else is around, she will be quite aggressive to me.

Black-headed Caique - Spikey Le Bec - The Celebrity Caique

Spikey Le Bec, a Black-headed Caique, who has lived with Sally since 1989, is one of the most popular parrots in America. He loves to do tricks when we travel. He has never been food deprived in his trick training and performs for love and most of all for the applause. After a few years on the road, he developed his own wing spreading, bowing, and swaying routine in response to the audience’s applause. Cover boy Spike is now the PBR mascot and he is an incredible ambassador making friends where ever he goes. In all of her programs where Spike is the ‘living visual aid,’ Sally always makes sure that she explains that Caiques are high energy parrots who need a great deal of guidance from the people in their lives to stay as delightful as this celebrity Caique is. Spike's safety is a major concern for Sally and she does not take him to events where there will be other birds.

Spike came to live with Sally when he was about 9 months old. His previous owner had not set any rules for the Caique and he was not a ‘well-behaved’ parrot. He was also on a bad diet which seemed to consist of seed, fruit loops and Pepsi-Cola. It took several months of feeding a healthy varied diet to turn Spike into a little glutton—he will eat almost anything now but particularly loves his high vitamin A veggies, especially his mashed sweet potatoes. After a few months of ‘Nurturing Guidance’ the swaggering little guy also began to realize he was not in total control of his own destiny. Over the years, he has become a wonderful companion and loves his ‘in-your-face’ cuddling time with Sally. He has a large cage in the house and a smaller one in the office. Both have dozens of toys and he enjoys playing with them all on a daily basis.

More about Spikey Le Bec!

Twiggy- Slender-billed Conure

Twiggy, my Slender-billed Conure, is my only fully-flighted bird who actually flies around the house, but not without very close supervision. One of her irritating habits was flapping her wings furiously while she grabbed on to my finger and pinched it - this hurt. Since I let her fly, she stopped doing that because she can get enough wing exercise without grabbing on to me. Twiggy can be a little pig and will eat anything I give her (in over abundance if she is allowed to). I have heard Slender-billed Conures can have a tendency to become overweight and I can see why because she was getting a bit pudgy before she started to fly. She takes awhile to trust and be comfortable with new people in the house and prefers to spend her time with me. If I leave her in the office on a gym, she will fly into the kitchen and living room looking for me rather than stay with anyone else even if they are actually quite wonderful to her. She does not care for any of the other birds and if I don‚t watch carefully she will go after them. It sometimes appears that her goal is to give one of them a lobotomy with her sharp pointy beak. Twiggy is quite clever and very opinionated. Actually, she is probably my best talker since my African Grey, Whodee, prefers to just make sounds that range from delightful to somewhat obnoxious. Twiggy says several words and expressions. Her favorite is "what are you doing?" but she also calls the dogs and talks to the other birds. She has several greetings and farewells and says a very enthusiastic "HI!" when I greet her. I have some food puzzle toys that I put a few sunflower seeds in. The parrots have to move circles to open compartments to get at the seeds.

Twiggy is clever enough to have every seed eaten before the other birds have even gotten to one of them. Unless I bring her into the office, I usually don't let her fly until after my mother has gone to bed because she takes the two little foo food dogs with her. They don't like a bird flying around the house and try to jump at her. One of her favorite ways to play is something I have not observed in most other birds. She pulls several hanging toys over to her and then hunkers down on her flat platform perch. Then she arranges her body so that the toys are resting on her or even places her wings over one or two of them. She will stay in this position for a few minutes until she decides to rearrange everything. Twiggy has an energy similar to Spike, my caique, in the sense that she seems to view much of life as her personal amusement park. Twiggy loves to swing and be thrown (gently) in the air to circle around the room and come back to me like a boomerang. I bring her out in the office and put her on a chair that rotates. She loves for me to spin the chair around with her sitting on the back. When she comes around closer to me, she exclaims, " Peekaboo." We have a parrot "amusement park" on the ceiling of the office. All the parrots hang out on the various ropes and hanging gyms but Twiggy is the only one who really loves the more physical rides. She will fly over to one of the Bird Toys, Etc. Kitchen Sink hanging gyms and climb down to the ring that hangs on the bottom. Once she is there she will say, "Ready!" until the ride operator (me) gives her full attention. Then she will go from sitting in the ring to hanging from it with both feet. Then I start swinging the hanging gym back and forth and even jerking it around. She holds on for dear life laughing and cackling the whole time. The rougher the ride, the more fun she has. If it does get too much for her, she simply flies off and lands on another perch but she will be right back for more. Since I do have to get my work done, I can't oblige her every time she wants a ride. Bare-eyed Cockatoo - Roxi-anne Roxi is the last parrot to join the family.  She is now a 24-year-old Bare-eyed Cockatoo and is not only the quietest bird I know, but is the quietest cockatoo I have ever met. She greets everyone with the sweetest "Hellos" and will even say, "Goodbye" with an occasional "I love you" in between  Shortly after she came to live with me, she had an accident in her cage at night. I am still not sure what happened but when I heard her screaming and checked her out, her leg was obviously broken. I took her up to U.C.Davis Veterinary School where they set her leg. Unfortunately because of the fact that she was on a seed-only diet for about 21 years before she came to live with me, her femur was too fragile to take the pin. She also developed a serious infection and for awhile it was questionable whether or not she would live. Because of the exceptional medical care shereceived from  Dr. Shannon Riggs and the other veterinarians at U.C. Davis. (If you are interested in more information on Roxi's injury and recovery, back issue #62 contains Roxi-anne: A Journal of a Serious Injury and an update in #63,). In the last couple of years, Roxi has adapted very well to being a one-legged cockatoo. She lives in a special acrylic cage that I designed for her that was built for me by Parrot Island (www.parrotislandinc.). It has an abundance of rope perches running side by side so she can hop and hold on with her beak at the same time. We have worked out special ways to pick her up and hold her so she can easily keep her balance. Roxi-anne loves company and is without a doubt the most gregarious of my parrots. She will let just about anyone hold her and she will make a fine avian ambassador at the Laughing Parrot Gallery.