The old cockatoo's becoming more confident.
He's managed to teach me his expectant look - craning his neck... "Got any bread?", ha ha.
We've got the hang of one end of the pergola, but the other end is laid out differently - different perches and bushes and bits and pieces, so we've been working this afternoon on looking at a point on the ground - this is where I'm going to chuck the bread...
He's sitting up on the perch and both of us look at the open part on the path, then look up at each other... okay we both know what we're talking about... the bread goes there... ha ha.
It's a pretty good system and he's a lot clue-ier than the he looks, ha ha.
It makes a difference from spending the afternoon in an aged care facility (don't call it an old people's home because the administrator, and she's a lovely lady, don't get me wrong, but she will tell tell you off, ha ha).
A shared language, a shared understanding of basic distance, or 'something this size will fit there...', and it still takes hours to get the chair in the right place, ha ha.
Contrast that with the bird - no shared language, some common understanding of spatial physics - I'm putting the bread about there, okay?
Yeah, okay... ha ha.
He's a little less frustrating, though, the bread's out by a centimetre? No worries... but once the bread's there I have to back off, a bit - he still needs his space, ha ha.
My "old people", keeping me young... keeping me busy, certainly, ha ha.
I wouldn't trade either of them for the world.
🙂
