Welcome Ajax!

The Flock has a new member!

Ajax is an African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus erithacus). His age is unknown, but he is probably about 3-4 years old. He came from a rather strange environment, where he received a very good diet, but he had to work for every bite. His previous owner didn't believe in freefeeding, so the birds (their were 7 Greys living in this house) had water in their cages, but they had to do tricks for all of their food. Although the birds were all very tame, none of them talk - which is very odd for Greys. Most of the tricks were cued by hand gestures, and so very little conversation was going on between the birds and the human. I think the constant working for food made them focus very hard on physical behaviors, and not much on mimicking sounds.

His previous owner also didn't offer the birds much in the way of toys, because they were out of their cages all the time. In his new cage, he has a lot of toys, and he is slowly learning how to play with them. He woke me up today by ringing a bell toy - which was very cute, except that it happened at about 6:15 this morning.

I'll post more about his progress along the way.