Pascal, my sweet baby, has been saying Hello for a while now. Some mornings, he just repeats that over and over and over. He mainly will say it if you’re in another room and he knows that you’re there but you’re out of sight. Of course, when we hear him we usually come into his room and say it back to him, so it gets him our full attention. If you stand in front of him and say hello though, he rarely says it back to you.
Anyway, yesterday morning I was cleaning up in the kitchen and Pascal was in his room so he could hear me but not see me. He said hello a bunch of times. I always yelled hello back to encourage him. Then, I couldn’t believe it, he said “How are you?”. I went in and told him he was such a good boy. It really made me laugh. That’s quite a mouthful for a second word.
Peanut still has to be supervised around Pascal because he can be aggressive. Pascal just wants to play but Peanut doesn’t seem to know how to respond. Pascal was playing with Peanut’s toys on the stand while he looked on from the top of his cage. I was sitting on the couch next to them so I could interfere if needed. Pascal was making noises and I was talking to him and Peanut said hello. That was exciting.
Both birds have a lot of different whistles. It’s nice to hear them calling back and forth to each other. Although Peanut is kind of unsociable, he calls out to Pascal when I take him upstairs with me. Sometimes Pascal doesn’t care and doesn’t respond. Other times they chirp back and forth.
As to training, Pascal and I have been spending more of our time playing than in structured training. I had started so well with the trick training, but with work and family and everything, it just seems to work better to be a little less structured. Peanut still is working on trust with the stick training. He’s so smart…when you get him on the stick, he usually tries to keep a toe hooked on his cage like he’s tricking you! He’s pretty motivated to earn a peanut, but they don’t come easily for him even for these simple tasks. Trust is tough for him.