Shodu is magic.

My birds tend to like baths when they are outside either in an aviary or in a cage. Maybe you can see if he'll actually do a bath dance if he is outside in his cage of course. The weather here seems to be much warmer than yesterday. We'll see how tomorrow is.

I love that picture Carolyn!

Glad someone has warmth out-side!
Its -3 today.... darn cold and the
wind is freezing... snow on the hills,
but not lower down as yet!

Its still chilly todays. Its not going to be good for a bath. My birds are going to hate the winter because they cant get baths. I cant wait for summer air. We only had a day or two of cold so far this winter. The rest was just chilly air. Its 61F right now.

That's a beautiful aviary Carolyn!

Thanks! I built it last winter and the birds love it. It's basically a play area not a place for them to live. There are too many hawks and bobcats in the yard for the cockatiels to be outside without a human nearby to provide some supervision.

It's weird, I feel like I know every speck of Coyote, but I can't ever tell who he is in your pics when he's with all of his brothers and sisters. I loved when you sent me the pics of him with his siblings when they were tiny little fuzzy chicks and you were all, "He's the medium sized on in the middle" or whatever and I was like, "Oh yeah, of course!" while inside I was like, "um, they're different sizes?" haha I seriously cannot tell one from the other. I think you're right though, he's the second one from the right on that perch in the background, looking all soggy and mad about it.

Yesterday, I washed dishes with his play gym next to me to get him to stop squawking for me and he ended up on my shoulder, very interested in what I was doing. So once the dishes were done, I put the water on low and sort of got him a mini shower with it. He's very trusting of me, which I abuse mercilessly, poor guy. He'd scramble up my arm (everyone at work was asking me about my arm scratches today) and I'd have him hop back up on my other finger and put him back near or under the water. I'm considering it therapy, like when I had to teach my baby boy to not hate the stroller, by forcing him in it for a while and then letting him out for a bit. Eventually it worked, so I'll let you know if the same technique works for Coyote.

It sounds sort of abusive the way I'm describing it, but it's not. Kinda mean, maybe, but not abusive, if that makes any sense. LOL The thing is, I've got to get him to accept getting a good bath on a fairly regular basis because his feather down dust is something I have difficult dealing with. I'm a little allergic to it, it makes my throat hurt and it smells awful to me. I realize that the powder is part of the deal, I just need to be able to keep it down to a reasonable level where everyone's as happy with it as is possible.

Ok, here's my current brag: I have figured out an ultimate setup for the budgies and Coyote that they all love to death. I figured out how to use one of the plastic perches that come with the Vision cage to hang the boing outside their cage so it doesn't bang against anything and now they all love it. I just setup another one of those perches outside their cage to hold another swing that Coyote has been ignoring that he has now claimed as his. The budgies, being happy with the boing setup, are now checking out the play gym and everyone is happy, happy, happy. Except for Syrus, my poor cat who is banished in my son's room until it's time for the budgies to go back into their cage.

I make my birds do stuff they don't want to do all the time and Coyote got his share of that when he was with me. Sometimes it's for their own good and other times it's for my good, but it isn't anything that's going to harm them. Birds aren't nicey-nice to each other all the time so a little aggravation is part of their normal social environment, and as long as you have a positive relationship overall it'll be fine.

So all this bath "therapy" was with the thought that I could eventually just put him under the shower for a few minutes, and that all of this was like working up to that or something. So yesterday, I thought to heck with it and just tried the shower and low and behold, he was totally fine with it. He didn't do that bath dance that they sometimes do, but he didn't scramble away from it. I took Haim's advice and just sort of swung my hand (that he was perched on) back and forth under the shower water instead of just having the water on him steadily and he actually seemed to enjoy it. I mean, I assumed he enjoyed it since he didn't seemed bothered by it, but he obviously didn't LOVE it because he didn't do the shower dance. Regardless, I am now just going to use the shower for his baths since that was the easiest thing ever and way more effective than anything else I've tried. Yay!

Side note: Coyote now likes to take advantage of the time the budgies are locked in their cage (because the cat is out and about in the house) by clinging to the side of their cage and whistling happy and you know it loudly to their faces. It's really funny, I need to get it on video.

Sometimes birds just aren't in the mood for a bath. They might warm up to the idea after a few minutes of being spritzed or they might sit there looking mad until you give up and stop sprinkling them. Some cockatiels are happy to take a bath every day, but my flock is usually happier if the frequency is less than once a week.