Rob's Birds
Loki

Please read if you love parrots.

Loki is a 13 year old (DNA sexed) male umbrella cockatoo (2006). He was "born" in Washington state, given as a wedding present; hand-raised by his owners, moved with household about 6 months later.

May 2006 --
Loki has finally hit puberty. I believe his body was too depleted by his years of feather-chewing to go through adolesence at the usual age. (He did experience some changes, as evidenced by him attacking the husband -- a major reason he lost his home.) Since he's been here, his weight has increased from 470 grams to 530 grams. Last spring, he did some yelling and wing-flapping, and chewed up more wood than usual.
This spring, it's the whole bit -- he yells, he yodels, he bounces scross the floor like a wind-up toy, he climbs his cage in record time, and jumps from perch to side to floor to door. He bites anything that comes close enough (including me). He jumps straight up from the floor and flies to the top perch with a couple of wingbeats. He chews up more wood in one day than he usually does in 3 or 4.
He's become very territorial about his cage, which makes changing his papers more challenging. Since he would grab the papers, I decided to see if I could get him to help instead of obstruct.. . We play tug-of-war briefly with the old papers, and I encourage him to grab and pull the new papers as I'm sliding them in. By praising him anytime he pulled the papers further into his cage, he's now fairly helpful -- most days. He's in a 3x4x6 cage, like Bert's, and it takes four collections of newspaper to cover the entire bottom of the cage. The day he figured out what I wanted him to do, we got new papers across the entire cage in less than 5 minutes. Loki got lots of praise during and after, and seemed very pleased with himself.
He started biting so often and so hard that taking him out became dangerous. (And he seemed surprised that he'd done it. I sometimes say he has no impulse control...) For a few weeks, I could take him out for cuddles if I did it first thing in the morning, before he got reved up, but that didn't last. So now we "hold hands" through the bars and sweet-talk, and I can scritch him a little if his beak is holding on to a bar. He's starting to act a little lonesome, and I tell him he'll feel better in another couple weeks.

Puberty wasn't the only reason for Loki's exaggerated hormonal season.

March 2004 -- Loki weighed 472 grams.

He is (was, I hope) a feather-chewer/plucker. His previous owner told me he doesn't do it all the time, but now and then something will set him off. (Regardless of what starts feather-picking, it seems to become habitual -- like people who chew their fingernails.)

His chest and abdomen were bare down the center, and sparsely feathered to his sides, mostly just down feathers. He looked as though he had a maribou-edged cape over his "shoulders" because he'd chewed or pulled the surface feathers, leaving only stubble which let the fluffy down feathers show. Many of the remaining feathers had their tips bitten off, and the now V-shaped ends tended to stick out. (Per Dave Flom of Best Pet, it takes three years for a bird to replace all its feathers.)

The first couple of months, Loki kept on chewing off his feathers. But as time passed, he did it less. By May, he got though the whole month without chewing off any feathers, and he started to molt! Then road construction started, on both the roads by my house. One was just resurfacing, the other was complete reconstruction with major earth-moving equipment creating lots of noise and mini-earthquakes. Loki did well for the first week, then we had a short break -- and when the machinery started up again, Loki started chewing feathers again. Luckily, the noisiest equipment kept moving farther away, and Loki stopped chewing feathers. And pretty soon he started growing feathers after his molt.

Loki will bite people's toes -- he used to bite one of their relatives, especially when she wore multicolored socks. He bit me the day I met him. He had been happily snuggling and somersaulting in my lap; when I picked him up and stood, he jumped down to the floor and bit my toe, with dramatic results -- the bite was quick and not painful, but shortly produced an outpouring of blood, so I stuck my bare foot outside in the snow....

Loki was raised with a cockatiel, which flew out the door when Loki was five. Both birds were fully flighted, because Loki was already feather-picking/chewing and their vet recommended not trimming his wing feathers -- and Loki's owner felt it wasn't "fair" to trim the cockatiel when Loki could fly.

Initially Loki talked like a cockatiel, in short little whistles. Both Bert and Alex learned to reproduce Loki's whistle very well. Alex tends to be louder than Loki.
At first, the only times Loki sounded like an umbrella cockatoo were when he was unhappy with me -- like when I started to give him his first spray-bottle bath. He squawked, screeched, and hissed -- then realized it was a bath, and ecstatically "got into it," turning and stretching to get as wet as possible. He was a bit leery of the blowdryer, but quickly decided that was okay too.

The first few days in quarantine, he didn't talk at all, then he started "greeting" me, and giving querying whistles when he could see I was leaving. He kept track of the door, and checked everyone who came in and out.

Loki had been fed primarily Harrison's, and table food. Here, he's happily eating everything the other birds eat, and has become quite fond of Nutriberries and almonds.

Loki lost his previous home because he had taken to attacking the husband -- which probably means he was starting puberty, though he didn't have all the behaviors. Also they had a young child who had grown tall enough to reach into Loki's cage.

August 2004 -- One afternoon, when Bert and Alex and Casey were sounding off, with Jasmine chiming in now and then, I realized there was a new voice in the chorus! Not honking like Bert, not hollering like Alex, but an almost-squawking that could only have come from Loki. Progress! A few days later, when I took Bert out and we stopped to visit Loki, Loki came bouncing across his cage toward us, flashed his crest and said "hello" quite clearly. He must be paying attention when Alex goes through his repertoire.

Loki "asked" for a paper bag to play in (like Bert's) by rolling up the newspapers in the bottom of his cage, and hiding inside the roll. He was thrilled when I gave him one, and loves to play in it. (Paper bags last from a few hours to a few days before they're too wet, dirty, or chewed up to leave.)

Loki's favorite position for chewing his toys is upside-down. I keep him supplied with rope, wood, and plastic to destroy. One of his favorite "toys" is the metal skewer I put his fresh foods on. He whacks it against the side of the cage, threads it through his plastic links, and pushes it up through the top of the cage, sometimes so hard that it ends up on the floor.

A new favorite toy is a heavy old beach towel. I thread one end through the top of his cage, and let it hang down over the outside. Loki climbs it, chews it, fights with it, hides under it, pushes and pulls it through the cage bars. When it's time to go back inside, I fold the towel lengthwise and hold the ends -- Loki grabs hold of the loop in the middle, and I "swing" him around and then into his cage. He thinks it's great fun!

July 2004 -- Loki's new feathers are most visible on his chest and abdomen, but more are coming.
(I know there is no guarantee that these feathers will last. Any day, Loki could decide to chew them all off again. I hope he won't. He seems pretty content, he's started "talking" more, seeking out petting, sitting on my fingers as well as my arm. Time will tell.)

Loki and Bert started getting more interested in each other, touching beaks and tongues through the cage. Loki liked to touch Bert's forehead feathers, but he pulled them instead of grooming. Bert would yelp and jerk his head away, but was willing to let Loki try again. Over time, Loki has learned to gently groom Bert's head-feathers, although some days he just can't resist pulling one.

One evening during his pre-bedtime petting, Loki got hold of a half-grown feather at the top of his chest, and insisted on biting it off. I offered/tried to remove the casing from it, but he wanted to do it himself....He's been doing pretty well, one bitten-off feather every month or so. But I guess since he's been doing it for years, it will take more than a few months for him to stop.

October 2004, Loki says "hello" when I come down, and sometimes "hi" and sometimes "hi-lo" (Alex has always said both hello and hi-lo, so Loki may have picked it up from him or from me saying "hi, Loki.")
He floored me the other day. I had retrieved a couple of his toys and put them back in his cage, and was talking to him a little. Loki was listening and watching me, then he leaned closer and said "I love you" -- his diction wasn't perfect, but the words were plain. I said "I love you, too" and told him what a good bird he was. He preened a little, then looked straight at me and said "I love you" again, more clearly. Oh wow. Instant waterworks. I hadn't said it to him before, but I'm quite sure his first "mom" did.
His first mom said Loki never talked people-talk at their house. Here, he's exposed to Alex who talks a lot, and to Bert and Casey who talk a little, so he's talking too.

Things Loki says

November 2004 -- Isn't he gorgeous? If you compare this photo and the first one on the page with the "crest up" one and the "upside down" one, you'll see that he used to be kind of "fuzzy-looking", now he's smooth and elegant.

What surprised me is that while he's replaced his surface feathers, he hasn't yet replaced the down feathers beneath them (where he was entirely bald) -- so he still can get chilled more easily than the other birds.

Over the last few weeks, I've noticed that Loki seems more comfortable and relaxed. He's easier to handle, and more affectionate, and just seems more content.... It's a definite change, although he didn't seem stressed to me before. (You know, thinking about this, I think the change happened a day or so after Loki bit me. The bite was an accident, he was busy playing, which included chewing on the toys stuck through the corner of his cage. I needed to move his cage a little, and stuck my thumb through the corner.... He instantly released my thumb, realizing it was not one of his toys -- and then was very concerned with my reaction. I told him it was okay, showed him that there was no blood, that the thumb moved normally, that I wasn't mad. He looked so concerned that I had to laugh. My thumb felt like it had been squeezed in a pliers. I went back to what I was doing, Loki went back to playing...)
Loki is being so sweet, it's almost unbelieveable. Very trusting, very gentle.

April 2005 -- Loki has started speaking umbrella cockatoo, a little more every day. His voice is far more melodic than Bert's, fuller, smoother, more vibrant, more lush. Umbrella cockatoos sound rather like woodwinds, clarinets to oboes, "ooo-ooo" sounds with a bit of a yodel.
Unfortunately, Loki has also learned to mimic the really grating raspy squawk Alex does when something is delaying his bedtime. Loki just likes to make the noise, though, he doesn't care why Alex does it. Loki used that as an alarm call on a very windy day with lots of falling leaves blowing past the windows.

Loki has started chewing some feathers again. He is less likely to chew off or pull out his feathers, but he has been chewing on his flight feathers, damaging them and sometimes stripping them down to the center shaft.

January 2005 -- Loki weighs 509 grams.

Loki has started laughing and chuckling, frequently and loudly, whenever Alex is sounding off.

March 14, 2005
This afternoon, Loki displayed for probably the first time in his life!
I had Alex out, and he and Bert were displaying at each other, when suddenly there was a great flapping of wings and raucous screeching. Loki was hanging upside down from the top of his cage, beating his wings intermittantly, and yelling. At first I thought maybe he'd gotten a toe caught, but he was fine. Bert and Alex started displaying back at him, even Chester hollered a few times, and I decided it was safer all around to put Alex back in his cage. Everybody settled down shortly, though Alex and Bert were still excited, Chester was keeping an eye on everybody, and Loki was nearly panting. I told him he was a good bird, that it was okay. He seemed a little confused -- hey, adolesence is tough! Good to know he's now healthy enough for his hormones to kick in.

February 2006 -- Loki weighs 523 grams.

While Loki seldom chews or pulls out his feathers now, he is "over-grooming" which leads to feather-damage. Some of his flight feathers are stripped down to the shaft in places, and most look very worn. The most damage was done while I was gone for surgery last fall. But -- this is better than having him chewing off or pulling out his body feathers.

Alex	Casey	Jasmine	Bert	Loki	Chester	Boo-boo	Tookie
Baby	Others	Things	Foods	Notes	Likes	Start	Store

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Please read if you love parrots.

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