That's a nice Major Mitchell in your avatar!
Yuki was hand-raised by a Parrot Place affiliate. She seems sort of meloncholy most of the time. She sits perched on her play top cage for hours, eats now and then, and otherwise gives off sad whistles when anyone is nearby. The sad sounds stop when her head is being scritched with two fingers, or when she is on either mine or my wife's lap. I think she still misses her sibling brother, from whom she was separated when their owners took the birds home. I'm still working on getting her to come 'out of her shell', but it's been only a week that she's been living with us, so she's probably doing pretty well for the short time since separation.
I'm still working on 'step up' with her--she is reluctant to get off her perch and needs quite a bit of coaxing. She's had many opportunities to bite me, but has never done so. In the video, she is being very gentle with the toy goose. She didn't so much as leave a mark on it. Pretty amazing for what is essentially a hedge cutter with wings.
She has flown off the perch a couple of times and walks to the kitchen and sits in front of the lazy Susan and just faces it, waiting. She seems to know there's grain foods in there, as it's the only place she chooses to walk to once roaming the house.
I am a bit concerned that she observes my close relationship with my cockatiel and may feel that a relationship with me is off-limits. It's like the 'fat girl in high school that likes to hang around me' syndrome--the pretty girl may think you're in a relationship with Heavy Debbie and not take you seriously. Maybe it's not that way with parrots, but Clyde the cockatiel is like the annoying fat girl that hangs around me all the time, spoiling my chances of making out with the prettier girl, so to speak.
I hope she lightens up a bit in the coming weeks, because she seems rather a loner and a bit mushy and sad most of the time.
I have a playstand in my studio office, but she does not like to perch on it and flies down to the floor and roams around. I put her on the stand 4 times and that many times she flew off it and I finally let her stand on a paper towl under my desk. She eventually tried to climb my leg, so I let her sleep on my lap. My cockatiel was on my right knee and the African Grey was on my left side of my lap. It was challenging to get work done with such a large bird on my lap. Clyde fits himself under the keyboard drawer and likes to sleep there, but Yuki needs a large space. She's huge for a 13 week old CAG at 500gms in weight. The parrot place tells me average normal weight is 454gms for most of the CAGs they have raised over the years. This is the largest CAG she has had through her facility.
I think it takes 12-18 months for the eye color to turn the light yellow of adults. Right now they are dark grey, almost black irises, in color. It's going to be interesting to see how Yuki's behavior progresses. I'm starting to work on normalizing her diet and adding more variety. She didn't show any interest in sweet potato this evening, though the parrot place recommends it for a nourishing treat. She is mainly eating natural pellets and a mix of fruit pellets. I tried to offer Avicakes, but she's not yet too interested in them. I'll probably introduce Tropimix in the next day or two and see what happens.
