More Rio :)

Here's a picture of Rio I meant to post with the others and forgot. I'd ordered some toys from Sonoran Parrots for the birds and here he is browsing through the smaller ones. He finally chose the little green airplane and in a matter of minutes, reduced it to teensy bits of chewed-up plastic. Good times.

I don't know if the pose gives you any idea of his size, but he's perched on my arm. Of course, my arm isn't terribly big so I don't suppose that's a real good gauge of measurement. *grin* Think of it like this: his beak is almost the size of a budgie's (parakeet's) head. He looks quite huge beside Sun conures or cockatiels. But then I look at him next to Pancho and think how small he is! (Pancho's a big fella.)

And Rio insisted that I repost the computer picture - it seems I didn't make it clear who that was busily working his little talons off. That's Rio at the keyboard, not Pancho. Rio got his beak quite out of joint with me over that. Sheesh. Prima donna. At least I didn't mention that my biggest concern when he's working is poop between the keys, and not any typos he might make. Yeah, good thing I didn't mention that.



Oh, you people are gonna be so sorry you asked about the birds. Bwahahahah! There's more to come!

Meet the Parrots!

At long last, here are my guys. See, I really do have parrots!

Pancho is an Orange-winged Amazon who has been with me since 1991. He's a real love. Someday I'll tell you how we came to be a family. It's a great story.

Rio is a Blue-crowned conure and the ruler of the world. Just ask him. He's been with me for nearly 20 years and is as much a part of me as my right arm.

Pancho, as you see, is very photogenic. He often appears alongside my magazine articles. Rio isn't too shabby himself; he's been on the cover of a book! Enjoy.

This is one of Pancho's favorite toys, from Sonoran Parrots.



And here he is wearing a toy on his head. Hey, I never said he was serious all the time!




I may have mentioned that I wrote a book about conures. Well, here's who really wrote it:



Rio worked very hard on this project! Here's the finished product:



The Conure Handbook is available at Amazon.com (lots of other places, too).

I hope you've enjoyed meeting the parrots. There's more to come; just stay tuned! Until then, be well, be happy, and be healthy.

My First Camellia of 2006!

Isn't it beautiful? Fat buds cover that entire little tree and they will soon be exploding into lovely snow-white flowers just like this one. There are buds covering the other camellia, too, but it always blooms later. Those flowers will be a gorgeous deep scarlet, a color that always stuns me, even though I've seen it before.

I hope to catch up with everyone's blogs soon. I've been busily writing with the feathers, churning out work for several different publications and a book publisher. One new pub (new to me, anyway) is interested in the possibility of monthly pet articles from me! That will be fun.

I hope everyone is well, healthy, and as busy as you want to be! The parrots are impatiently waiting to make their entrance into the blogisphere and I've promised them it will happen…SOON! So stay tuned.