Sunday Bird Blogging

Here are the latest photos of Sunny, our new baby sun conure. About six months old now, Sunny has come a long way in trusting his (or her) new human friends. He's still awaiting his first molt at about nine months old, when he will gain a full set of adult feathers. In the meantime, he's having fun testing out all his toys and exploring his new world.

His favorite foods so far are unsalted peanuts in the shell, bits of pumpernickel bread, sunflower seeds and fresh celery. Believe it or not, he seems to prefer old rhythm and blues and soul music, and we got him to dance on his play gym the other day to Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. A sun conure dancing is a sight to behold.

One of his favorite toys is this red chain. Sunny likes it when Mary Ellen holds the chain so he can explore both the toy and her fingers. He's very skilled at fingernail cleaning and cuticle trimming. Nibble nibble. He's much less likely to bite hard these days, and likes to be carried around the house on your shoulder while he grooms your hair, tickles your ears and picks threads on your clothes.

Note the I See Dean People sign in the background above. Not surprisingly, Sunny is a big fan of Howard Dean, just like his humans. The other day he quietly squawked that his early pick for president is Senator Russ Feingold and that he wants to work hard to defeat that culture of corruption cohort, Heather Wilson. Now if we can only train him to phone bank and canvass...