Aren’t My Birdies Beautiful!

My two cockatiels, Jupiter and Chickie, were obviously getting desperate when they took it in turns to have a bath in their drinking water, which is contained in a tiny square plastic box.  Since I’d seen them do this a couple of times, I decided to give them some water they could bathe in more or less properly when ever they wanted to, and have converted one of my elegant dipping dishes for the purpose.

A bigger one would be better, but they seem perfectly happy with this one for the time being and since we are inside, and on a table-top, smaller is gooder for now.  The darker of the two birds is Jupiter, and the other is Chickie. It took a month for them to even beak the basin – they regard anything they haven’t seen before as inherently suspicious, but Chickie eventually got brave enough to investigate the thing.  She took to dropping her pet stone into the water, and eventually to occasionally having a drink out of it.

Then Jupiter got in on the act, but he went one better and got up on the edge of it.  Chickie wasn’t going to be topped by Jupiter, so she hopped up on the other side, and before I knew it they were happily flinging water about the place, and splashing around in it.  It amazes me that even though they have been thrashing around in the water, when they get out, they look perfectly dry.  The water always has things in it though – bits of twig, seed husks, a motionless ant, dander, the occasional fluffy feather, and very often Chickie’s pet rock which I picked up off the beach at Barrytown.