Birds are odd creatures

It's been a long time since I shared any pictures of our parakeet named MJ. She was looking pretty ragged a couple weeks ago, but she has been doing a lot better.

First off, I don't really know much about caring for a bird and when our daughter moved out, she was not able to bring MJ with her, so I have been trying to take care of her the best I can, but with 4 cats and 2 large dogs, this little bird doesn't get as much time as I would hope.

I thought that since she wasn't getting a lot of attention, that she needed some new toys in her cage to play with. One of the toys that I had put in there was a mirror with some bells on it.

I would hear the bells ringing throughout the day and thought she was in there playing and having a good time. I would see her pulling the bells that were attached to the bottom of the mirror and then let them go, allowing the mirror to swing around and sometimes it would turn around and not show her any reflection.

When her reflection wasn't showing, she would stop pulling on the bells and leave the mirror alone, so what do I do? I think that she isn't interested in the new toy and wants me to flip the mirror back around. So I flip it and then an hour or so later, I hear her in there pulling the mirror and the bells are ringing until she flips it back around.

After a few days, her feathers were starting to get ragged and she didn't seem happy. I told my daughter about this and she told me that she doesn't like mirrors and that her seeing her reflection is stressing her out. Well that explains why she started to look so bad, lol.

So, I guess I learned that not all birds like to see themselves and they don't get as lonely as other animals do. We did have another parakeet in the cage with her for a couple days when we first got her, but we learned that she isn't social and prefers to be alone. A few days after that, we also learned that we should have been keeping a close eye on our husky because he had snuck into our daughters room and knocked over one of the bird cages and ate the other parakeet, so it seems that MJ is destined to be the only bird in the house.

We have her in a room that is a lot closer to everything that goes on in the house and she is doing a lot better. She loves to listen to music and even makes her own sometimes. She loves to be taken out of her cage a few times a day and get some exercise flying circles around the room.

At first, she was not a fan of the flash on the camera and flew too many laps around the room and got pretty tired, but once she realized that it wasn't going to hurt her, she calmed down and started modeling. I tried to get some action shots of her flying around, but trying to get focused shots of her flying with my macro lens was pretty much impossible.

I hope that you enjoyed the photos. Birds are really interesting animals and it has been fun caring for one.