Making parrot toys out of cardboard, twine, and... mostly parts of old, dismantled parrot toys.
parrot (6 out of 6)
Day twenty two: Recovering (Sydney)
Slept chez Rosh.
To Stephen's. Food (breakfast). Slept. Wandered. Veggie restaurant.
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Tigo tablet cover (crochet)
Lovingly crocheted over a couple of days. No pattern, all approximated, with scraps of wool of the appropriate colours I just happened to have.
I started with a chain the length of the width (shortest side) of my Nexus 7, and single crocheted in each stitch down both sides, and carried on round; so I did the very bottom first and worked my way up in a flat rectangular spiral. I dunno if that makes sense, but it immediately begins to take shape.
When I got to the right height, I carried on across the back, then just chained across the front, and continued as before, to make the opening.
Though it may look deliberate that the 'tail' sticks out a bit at each side, I actually made it too wide. So I had to decide whether to carry on making it too big and pad it on the inside, or tuck the ends in and make it tighter with the green. I chose the latter and it worked far better than I anticipated.
Most of it is just double crochet for no particular reason, but his fuzzy lil' chest is a pattern of alternating front-post triple crochet and back-post triple crochet (triple to compensate so it stays level with the 'normal' double crochet around the triangle, as front- and back-post double crochet are slightly shorter than regular double crochet).
His feet and wings are just chains; his eyes made just the way you'd make small circles, but skewed a bit to be ovals (I can't remember, I probably chained three, then [sc, hdc, hdc, tc, hdc, hdc, sc]x2, then sc in each stich around. Don't hold me to that though). The black centres are literally just threaded through and through until they looked right, and the loose ends used to attach. I shaped the beak by periodically crocheting two together. I'm surprised it's as remotely symmetrical as it is, because I didn't count anything.
The resemblance is uncanny!
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I bought Tigo a new toy today.
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A moorhen died in my arms today.
It was sad indeed. Plus the hoard of ducklings is now down to seven. (There were nine, last time I was in, and they started at ten). Apparently they can die from being too wet. Who knew.
I also encountered this morning: a pigeon who held his head upside down and walked in circles. He had issues. And a flightless canary, who seems healthy in all other aspects. Maybe he’s just awkward. But because of this, it doesn’t look like he’s fit for the outside aviary. If I didn’t think Tigo would eat him, I’d adopt him in a second.
Speaking of Tigo, he seems to be exhibiting nesting behaviour:
[images]
I think he might be hormonal. It would certainly explain the sudden increase
in biting.
PS. Yesterday’s prophecy came true. Quelle surprise.
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Project ParrotDJ
Undergraduate Research Opportunities Scheme grant, University of Lincoln
Set up an RFID sensor on the outside of a parrot cage, and some patterned, disc-shaped RFID tags inside, and a small Java programme to play a different genre of music depending on the tag placed by the sensor. And tried to train a parrot to use it. The first part worked pretty well, the last part not so much.