Lucy has started to think of more creative ways to destroy things. Recently, she's picked up on a new habit.

There's a piece on the playstand with a red bell attached to it, that tends to be a little slippery, and Lucy has just recently discovered it. So what she will do is pull out said piece and then drop it, making a very loud noise.

The funny thing about it is that she will only do it when no one is watching, and when it's really quiet. I've once watched her from one room over (she didn't seem to notice me). She'll take it out, hold onto it with her foot for a few seconds, and then drop it.

I wonder what it is with birds and dropping things on purpose?

It's called avian fetch, and it's the opposite of dog fetch. The bird throws things for the human to pick up, and it's a VERY popular game. Dweezil is stronger than the tiels so I have to watch out to make sure he doesn't throw something like a glass dish on the floor that's too heavy for the tiels to toss.

In a way it's just like human toddlers. It must feel great to be able to control the environment--create a noise, and maybe get a reaction from the nearby human.

They're definitely like toddlers. Lucy and Alex both have personality traits that are similar to kids.

As I've mentioned before, Lucy seems to be quite task oriented, doing things for the sake of doing them. One thing she likes to do with the play stand (other than trying to dismantle it) is weave the string with the two acryllic beads on the ends between the rungs of the latter it's attached to.

She's starting to learn how to climb around on the playstand. She seems to still be having trouble going from top latter to bottom later and such. In all fairness, cockatiel anatomy seems to make it harder for them to hang in certain ways that other parrots do. She has trouble going around and getting on the other side of a latter she climbs on; something I've noticed both her and Alex struggle with.

I try not to help her get to the areas too much. I like to see her figure out things by herself. Maybe at some point, she will get better navigating the playstand. Alex on the other hand, I'm not so sure. He probably could if he showed more interest in the playstand, but he thinks that climbing on me and chewing on whatever he can find (buttons, my glasses, etc.) is much more fun.

Cockatiels are ground foragers so they don't need the acrobatic skills that tree foraging birds need. I suspect that their limited ability to use their foot as a hand is part of this - a bird in a tree needs to be able to grip its food skillfully, because it's a long way down to the ground if it drops the food. A bird on the ground can retrieve dropped food by just bending down a little bit, so they don't need the same foot skills.

They also don't need branch-dangling abilities to get hold of their food in the first place. They need SOME tree-maneuvering skills of course since they nest in trees, and the amount of skill that they do have makes me wonder if their ancestors were tree foragers. But their current foraging needs call for them to be able to walk around on the ground easily, so their hip and leg structure would be more geared to that.

That is true. Though it does make me wonder if cockatiels are actually partial ground foragers, and actually do eat from trees to some extant. One would think that if food in a tree was easy enough to access, they would probably try eating it. I once had a plum tree in the yard, where even the doves would just eat from the plums directly, just because they were easy enough to access.

plus if you look at pictures of wild cockatiels in trees, they do seem to have somewhat of a tree-dangling skill. They're able to hang on verticals branches.


On a somewhat related but almost entirely unrelated note, Lucy just proved her intelligence in the funniest way today. She climbed up the side of the playstand, up onto one of the highest points. However, she can't really go many places from there. So after a while, she just hung out. I started paying attention to Alex, talking to him and giving him scritches. Lucy started pacing the little spot she was on, trying to find a way to get down. Eventually, I gave in and decided to help her. So I put my finger in front of her to step up, and what does she do?

She lowers her head and asks for scritches.

She knows I'm a total sucker.