Santa and the dogs at the Christmas party

Christmas party to which I was not invited

Christmas update 2008

Hello Folks and I hope you all had a Happy Christmas.

There is much to tell you but in another way, life has been the same for me as ever. For Christmas I got a little bit of Christmas pudding in my seed dish. some celebration, hey? Mum has promised as soon as she sees some nice sweet corn on the cob she will buy me one - and two more for the new residents out the back. She would not buy corn BEFORE Christmas because she said it looked tired and she did not like it. I have been given the odd strawberry, too.

The residents out the back? They come out and walk aboiut and scratch and eat grass and peck at insects and things.. and they give Mum some white things which she is very pleased about. they make a sort of soft clucking noise, which shows their pleasure, and every so often, once a day or so, one of them makes a louder noise too though the neighbours have not herad them. Chooks Mum calls them but I think everywhere else but Australia they are called chickens. these are nice friendly chooks now they are used to Mum. She let Dog Angela out yesterday to meet them 0 the first meeting, soon after they came, did not go so well and one of those chooks became airborn and ended up with her head stuck inthe woodheap and a big fluffy bum sticking out! Mum rescued her but there were no eggs for a day or two. Yesterday though, Mum held Angela and one chook - Hannah, the quieter one, came up and snigffed Angela whilst Angela sniffed her. It looked like Hannah was going to walk through angela's front legs but in the end she veered sideways and went about her grazing business quite unconcerned. Henrietta who is a bit more flighty was unconcerned but did not go near her. Greedy - she just ate. Henrietta and Hannah Houdan-Hen, they are. Houdan hens have a big feathery topknot like a pompon on their heads, and are a reasonably small chook as chooks go, but certainly not a bantam. Not these ones anyway! Mum googled houdan and they apparently came from a village in France originally and almost died out.

Dog Angela and Mum went to a Christmas party - same as last year - at the vet. He only invited well behaved dogs on leads, can you imagine that? People got a sausage, and vet Peter went round and gave all the dogs a liver treat, and the doggie Mums and Dads of course shared their sausages in bread with their dogs. Then Santa came, and gave out a present to all - children AND dogs. Angela got a squeaky hamburger. There are two videos to go on here but SOS has to do it, Mum has never learned. Slow, isn't she? They are currently on my youtube site waiting to come over. You will see there are close to 30 dogs there and more people because they came in family groups sometimes, and the vet staff were there too.

I had a good but quiet Christmas.. I hope you did too! Happy and blessed and peaceful, plenty of food, and very nice. I am indeed fortunate. I wish everyone was as lucky as me.

Love, Bibbie

Time goes by

Hey I just realized it is a long time since I updated you all.

My life goes on – it has been very cold outside, and one day the rain was sort of slushy.  Mum didn’t think it was snow, rather sleet.  I was glad I was inside in my nice warm house.  It is always warm – must be to do with the fire that is kept going in the stove near me – it eats lots of wood.

The last two times I have had my beak trimmed Mum has put her hand in, grabbed my head, and shoved my beak out the wires of the cage.  The vet then just snips – and Mum lets me go.   I still don’t like it but at least there is no towel and I do not get a sore throat from screeching – this only requires perhaps a 10 seconds screech!  One breath – and a few flaps of my wings.

The Olympics are on TV and Mum leaves it on in front of me.  I thoroughly enjoy it.  I liked the diving best – Mum said she thinks I could do that, and perhaps some of the gymnastics.

I am still enjoying all the foods I have had before, and recently the neighbour brought in a piece of banana cake.  I thought it looked good, and it was.  I asked for some as soon as I saw Mum having a piece.  I had egg on toast again for breakfast – earlier in the week it was scrambled egg.  One thing I don’t think much of is porridge.  But I have had a piece of spaghetti and a tiny serve of lasagne.  Mum said I looked funny with bolognaise sauce on my beak!   It too was a tiny piece, and I had asked for it.  I figure if Mum enjoys it, it is worth considering, and then, I ask if I still think it looks good.  Amazing what Hello Cocky said in the right way does!  If that fails, I progress to a whistle, a little shriek or two – and lots of dancing.  I have never had to progress further than that.

Lucy kitten is almost Lucy cat now and has not been on my roof for some time.  She was soundly told off when she did get up there three or four times, and then again whenever she thought about it.  I am quite safe, my cage is homemade and the wire is very close together so she cannot get more than a single claw inside.  But yesterday, I watched with great interest as she came outside my window and sat on the air conditioner to watch me through the glass!  I watched her too.  In the end she gave up first and climbed the ladder to the top of the tank.  I don’t know where she went from there, but later she was back eating with Dog Angela.

There are some wild ones of me flying about and calling out, but – not for me.  Far too cold out there with them and anyway, I can’t fly.   I watch, but not with envy.  A bird never had it so good as right here!

I am going back to some more serious Olympic watching.  The rowing has been good and maybe there will be more things like that on.  Basketball and hockey and stuff, well they do not grab me.

Goodnight!

Bibs.

Hello Folk

I thought of starting with something like "Hello Fans" like Dame Edna Everage but decided against it. For those who have not have the pleasure, I am sure a google search for that person will bring up the details along with those of "her" alter ego Barry Humprhries.

Right now I am sitting in my cage in the kitchen dictating this to Mum using the computer. My house is quite nice clean neat and tidy as of last night, thanks Mum. I am doing my best to make it as bad as it was before you cleaned it - I just love throwing seed all over, ripping and shredding my newspaper carpet, throwing my other foods about - throwing down my water dish so it all gets wet, seed dish on floor too. I just wish I could find a way to get those dishes outside my house totally - I think it would make nice patterns of the floor of the kitchen - dark tiles, nice seed all over artistically then followed by a flood of water to make nice sort of drift lines in it - rahter like those magnetic fields you see if you use iron filings to show them up. Mum is horrified, I can feel her thinking it.

Stewie Sun Conure I hate to say it but my human Mum is pretty hopeless when it comes to blogs. She has sent your request off to my Sort of Sister who lives in London. SoS does all this technical stuff for me but she is very busy so it takes some time to happen.

The winter vegetable garden outside is starting to produce now. Mum has picked some winter greens to go in sandwiches and so on and I got a share! There is not enough to make a salad of them yet - the things are still quite small. Mum said we would eat them tiny like in gourmet restaurants. I enjoyed them. We even had some beetroot leaves along with the silverbeet leaves, assorted lettuce varieties and rocket. The beetroot themselves are nowhere near ready to pull - neither is anything else like turnips, swedes (rutabagas) carrots or parships. You people in snowy winter places - no snow here so things can grow year round if they are not things that like heat and lots of daylight - like tomatoes, green beans, zucchine etc. The broccoli is starting to make those nice little flower bits in the middle - if Mum keeps feeding them every ten days or so they will keep growing and be ready to eat soon!

Well time to get Mum to light my fire - it is quite cold in my kitchen. Which reminds me - I love my cuddles with Mum. I will not get on her shoulder but am thinking about it. I take a long time - might be a year yet before I take that tentative first step. But I just love grooming her - her feathers get SO untidy - and she has nice funny things on the side of her head that are good to nibble and coo into. Some of her other feathers she takes off and then after some time in a white box with bubbles and water (I look through the window in the door) they come out and she hangs them up - sometimes outside but in winter more usually inside on the rack near the firestove. Now isn't that strange? As for me, I have a piece of fluff on the back of my neck I can puff out, almost as if it is a crest! MOST impressive and I am very proud of it.

Bye for now

Bibbles

I forgot to tell you. There is a new four legged person in this house now - Sort of Brother brought it home. I have seen it when it is held up to meet me and am sure I could put it properly in it's place even if Dog Angela doesn't. It bounds everywhere like it is psycho. It is called Lucy - but as far as I know it could be Lucien. It is sleeping, sort of, here, but it chews and scratches Angela's tail and one day it grabbed onto her snout - Mum said she could just see these eyes imploring her to DO SOMETHING as well as showing puzzlement - Angela eyes, then a lump of white fur hanging on, scratching and biting with the white tummy regions in the vicinity of Angela's nose and mouth. Mum hastily removed the "growth"! Angela seems to treat it like a puppy.

Life is pretty boring most days now! I sit and look at TV, out the window, huddle up in my nice warm bedroom and scream for food when Mum is doing anything in the kitchen. BUT - there was great excitement the other day. I heard some strange calls outside - Mum rushed to get her camera - and got a photo of some visitors to trees at the back of the neighbour's land. It was about 50 yards from shere she stood so she used the tlelphoto lens and lost a lot of photos but a couple are good. then we stood and listened - and I could hear them cracking the seed pods ont he tree! Oh I was happy to see them!

In case you can't see them, there are two black cockatoos in this photo - they have yellow crests and yellow under their wings. They are probably bigger than me (even if I had my feathers) and make a harsh sort of call. They blend well into the trees, don't they? There was a flock of twenty or more - Mum had real problems seeing them though she could hear them and see the trees shaking.

Bibs

screams in the night

Sometimes I like to sit on my bedroom door.  It is narrow, and of course on hinges so it moves.  Mum wedges it open with the big cage door shut hard against it, but it still wobbles.  Last night I was sound asleep when – I fell off!  I screamed and screamed.  Mum and Sort of Brother arrived and lights went on – just in time to see me turn right way up and start climbing up from the floor of my big cage.  I was very frightened and very embarrassed.  Once they saw me inside my bedroom instead of on the door, they turned the lights off, said “Goodnight Bibbie” and went back to bed.   

I might give the door a miss for a while – it was almost time for me to choose a new resting place anyway – I tend to spend about a week in each of three or four places. 

Quite shook me up it did.  Mum and SofB (SoS is alright for sort of sister but Mum said I should not say SoB) seemed quite stirred up too as they had been asleep too they said. 

Bibs

I got egg and toast for breakfast today.. here's me eating the egg, yum!

In case you can't tell, that's the yellow stuff hanging from my beak - I got almost hard cooked yolk with a bit of white from a fried egg.











I try to eat the toast with the egg, some of it..

I really enjoy plain toast at the end, too!

Hello Everyone

Well Joonie it was good to hear from you.  You can keep the figs at your place.  If I get another I shall post it over to you!

Outside my window two days ago most of the day the trees bent over and things blew about – winds were the same strength as cyclones – not much rain though.  The electricity went out and as it got dark Mum lit the fire stove and cooked her dinner on it and also put little stick things about, which had a little flame on top.  /She said she was glad for the battery radio!  I missed my TV ..  it came on again after eight hours but by then I was asleep.  BUT I heard this morning, nearly 18 hours later, there are still over 20,000 homes without electricity.  Bet people take more notice when the weather bureau says there will be dangerous winds!

Mum has spread out the garlic that was coming up from where she could not pull it out when ready last season.  She will have lots of garlic in a few months.  No seeds up yet but Mum said it was a bit early for them anyway. 

I had more egg on toast yesterday for breakfast.  MMMM.. and my beak is getting long again so I suppose I will be carted off to the vet soon.

Bye for now

Bibbie.

 

 

Breakfast

The man came in to say hello yesterday and wondered what it was I was eating with gusto.  It was something I like and demand when Mum or Peter have it.  It is..  egg on toast!  YUM!!  Nice soft yolk, squishy toast, all together in my seed bowl.  I grab it with my foot and eat away.  About my favourite.  I got a dish (with about a teaspoon in it!) of porridge-like polenta today.  It had honey and soy milk on it,.  I did not fancy it at all. 

It is cold here now and the fire has been going to keep me warm for several days.  It would be cold outside for those birds I see in the newly planted vegetable garden, even with their clothes on..  I think they are after worms but then again they could be after the seed planted two days ago.  I guess we will all find out when things come up – or don’t as the case may be.

Bye for now

Bibs.

I talk

I was chatting away, opracticing my sounds, when Mum gott the camera out. now, that is enough to make me shut up like a clam! But eventually I forgot it a bit and said a few noises.

That's all for today folks.

Bibbie.

Kisses

I like to cuddle Mum and give her a kiss as she goes to bed at night. Yesterday she got this box thing out again - she made it click and flash whilst I was kissing her. She did get in a funny position for it though - she is not normally so upside down! She was muttering something about it being hard to kiss me and take a photo at the same time, and wished she had another pair of hands...

My friend

Whilst Angela had to have the back door open so she could come and go, I got a new little friend. he was very young! Mum said he was a blackbird. She never had her camera ready when he visited though. In the end he knew not to try to go through the glass in the windows but to hop towards Mum as she came down the passage, and out the back door. He sometimes sat on my cage roof but mostly he just snacked on Angela's dry dog food. whenhe came up to me we tried to talk but really we did not speak the same language. Seeing him fly about made me rather sad though.

And now, he flies about the back yard and does not come and visit me anymore. He knows how to get throught he open flap for Angela, ashe did it twice in the early stages pre bucket head!

Dog Angela

Dear Angela is very nice to me now, and I felt quite sorry for her when she had to go to the vet - same one who trims my beak - and have her leg fixed. It had a nasty thing growing on it. It is all better now, but she ws a naughty girl and tried to do some surgery on it herself after the vbet had done his stuff. So.. she had to wear a big thing round her neck that Mum called a bucket. That meant she could not get to her leg.. she was very sad.

open garden scheme 2.

A couple of weeks after the first garden Mum went over the other side of the city to near the airport. There was a farm almost on five acres in suburbia. Vineyard, olive grove, lots and lots of vegetables, beehives, chooks - OK, I will translate for those not in my country - chickens and peacocks and outside domed pizza ovens and home made wine and home pressed olive oil and.. even some special seed for me! I could live there very happily and never go hungry. People could, too, I think.

Open garden scheme 1.

Here where I live people open their gardens and people can go through them and have a look. It is a special scheme and I am sure not just anyone can join. But, Mum likes seeing what others ahave done and was especially interested in some vegetable gardens. the first was a normal average sized house block in suburban Melbourne... mmm some good things there!

Talking of figs - Mum bought some, and later was given some, and she shared with me saying "Here Bibs, have some fig - your kind is supposed to like them a LOT". Well, maybe my kind is, but this particular one of my kind does NOT. I threw it on to the floor. I noted I was not given any more! Mum ate them all!

My world February

February was rather boring for me though it was nice to see the garden outside and the lovely crepe myrtle outside my window.

The vegetable garden was going well too - and there will be plenty of pumpkins Mum says. I got my share of tomatoes and zucchinis and beans.

This butternut pumpkin is now big, almost ready to come off the vine,a nd weighs about 3kg! But the leaves of the vine are rather dry and dead looking.

I will post more things, that Mum did and told me about, in a few minutes.

Bibs.

Friend

Hello Folks

 

I have not written for a while – life has been pretty boring apart from another beak trim – but now I will update you with some exciting news.

I have a friend!  Twice now A little bird has come in to see me.  Mum said he was a baby blackbird.  He came once when the back door was left open – Mum came to investigate noises she thought were me moving about the floor, but found the cage door shut tight and me inside, so..  she saw the bird poop on the floor which she thought was not me either – and then she saw the bird!  She shut the passage door, opened the back door wide, made sure the curtains were pulled over the windows and went round to come in through the lounge room thus behind my friend, so he would move towards the open back door,  and, after he perched on my cage for a bit on the way, he did go out,  /Whilst he perched on my cage, Mum got the vegetables ready for dinner, so he decided she was not going to hurt him and chattered to me too.

Then yesterday, he came in through the cat flap!  But it is a dog flap and does not have a flap – just a glass panel missing in the door for dog Angela to walk in and out.  This time he got scared and tried to go out the window behind my cage.  He got so scared he even lobbed on Mm’s hand for an instant and the fell down behind the freezer.  Mum opened the window with difficulty, and pulled the freezer out, and he went.  She said she knew he was here again as there was “not Bibbie poop” on the floor.

This morning, early, Mum came through and saw a baby blackbird on the back veranda eyeing off the cat flap hole.  She hastily pulled the curtains across so he could not come in again.  I am sad!  He was a nice little bird, chattered and chirped to me in quite a foreign language though still recognisably bird of some sort.  He didn’t much like my food either.

As to food, I have tried and enjoyed, and had plenty of, mango, nectarine, peach, apricot and plum along with the more normal things and fresh apple from the trees in the back yard.  How’s that!  And toast, and egg, and pizza crust, and anything else I ask for almost.  As well as the usual vegetables and thistles and lettuce and silverbeet and…   sometimes I go outside to my big cage too.  Mostly I just sit and look at the big wide world out there to be honest.

Dog Angela has been to the vet last week and this coming Thursday has to have a growth of some sort take off her back leg on the hock part,  *It is growing fast, only been there a week now.  The vet wants to wait for results of what kind of cells are there before touching it and that will not be known till Wednesday when the microscope is fixed – Angela’s tissue sample went on and up the microscope light globe blew!  I hope she is going to be alright – it is in a nasty place the vet said – even I can see there is not much skin that will have to stretch a long way.  Dog Angela is allergic to sticking plaster of all kinds too..  and she will lick and chew at it..   Oh dear!

 

Love to all

 

Bibby

I save the sausage!

Clever me!  Life saver me!  Smoke alarm me!

Mum put some sausages on to cook for Sort of Brother’s dinner as he did not like what she had cooked already.  She told him to watch them and went outside.  She talked to the neighbour.  He did not watch the sausages.  I did.  The room got a sort of smoky smell in it.  It got worse.

I yelled and screamed, screeched and squawked.  Sort of Brother came running to see what was the matter – and worked out what was wrong.  He saved the sausages and was still able to eat them!

Mum came back in as he rescued them.

He should have done as he was told, shouldn’t he?  And maybe Mum should not have gone outside either.  Lucky I was there!

Hero me!

Bibbie