In a message dated 3/11/2002 9:49:37 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:


> He's a hoot!! Made all sorts of wonderfful noises when we were there.
> So glad you have got him back. Has he mastered the British Bird calls
> from the clock yet?
>
> Nah, sorry Deri.  He loves to hear them though.  All my birds love it!
Everybody stops to listen, even me.  When the clock goes off, no matter what
we're doing, we all sort of stop and look at the air.

Having Bundy is hard on both sides, even though I love him so much.  He needs
more than I am sometimes able to give.  These birds, when they are higher
than you are they feel a psychological advantage.  His behavior would be
similar in the wild.  He's going to get as high as he needs to get in order
to have dominance of, and relative safety in his environment.  It's hard for
me to establish my own dominance in our relationship when he can always be
higher than I am by climbing on top of the cage.  I can't stand long, so I
never get a chance to work with him the way that is necessary.  I have to sit
down and then coax him to come down to me.  He's in charge that way and he's
intelligent enough to know it.

I suspect that he is aware that I am more vulnerable, and perhaps not
entirely confident in me because of it.  You can show a bird the ADA all day
long, and it's not going to make a bit of difference.  They just don't care.
The bottom line is that as long as he believes that participation in training
is a matter of choice, as long as he can call this shot, it's going to be a
lot more difficult to make headway.  We've been proving that.  I can't figure
out a way around this but I will.  He had no where else to go but here, and I
love him now, so we're going to make it work.

I still want to see a blue tit.  The kind that flies, I mean.