René was out in a jungly part of the catio checking things out from his high perch.
Tag: Eclectus Parrot
A Kitty & A Bird
Rosencrantz and René were both wanting my attention, and neither one cared much for the critter competition they had going on.
Magic Bird
While photographing René on his perch with the sun behind him, he decided to try some magic tricks on me. He folded out his wing like a cape, and then made his head disappear when he pulled his wing back.
Breakfast with Beaker
Laurie has to share her cereal and coffee with Beaker most mornings. Guildenstern thinks we have things all wrong — “one should have birds for breakfast, not have breakfast with birds” he meows — but he knows Beaker and René are formidable adversaries and stays clear of both of them. René is slowly getting better at flying and I’m slowly getting better at sneaking in better lighting to catch him in flight.
All Your Chair Are Belong To Us
Every time Laurie gets up from of her chair at the end of the table, Guildenstern gets in it. Once she moves Guildenstern off her chair and sits back down, René bombs his way over to her, flying from chair to chair (three chairs in all) to get across the counter and finally onto the table and over to Laurie. I didn’t have the best lighting for capturing René in flight in these shots, so I set up a flash and tried to get him to do is chair to chair flight again, but he would have nothing to do with flying to the chair with that new fangled light source off to the side of it.
I adapted today’s title from the video “All Your Base Are Belong To Us”, a video that goes back to 2001. The title of the video was taken from a line in the 1991 introduction to an adaption of the arcade game “Zero Wing” that had really bad Japanese-to-English translation. Around our house, whenever you get up from a chair, a cat or a bird is likely to occupy it because to them “all your chair are belong to us!”
iPhone Animals
Often, when the kitties and birds are being cute, I pull out a camera and they cease being cute. But when I pulled out the iPhone (not the usual camera) Rosencrantz and René just stuck their faces in it.
Bird Help
René will unexpectedly get spooked by everyday things that I wouldn’t expect would freak him out, so when I started scanning sections of the Icelandic Sagas for the Old Norse class Laurie is taking, I expected René would freak out and fly over to the couch. To my surprise, he was fascinated by the scanner. He would look at me expectantly for my approval to check it out, then he looked to see where the noise was coming from, and finally he would stick his head under the lid while I was holding the page flat during the scans to get a closer look. He was very entertained by the whole process of scanning sections of Viking age sagas, and made a game out of it.
Family Breakfast on the Deck
With fall comes green chiles and there’s nothing like a leisurely breakfast with Guildenstern and René (Laurie doing the photo and the other cats on the table or chairs). We had huevos rancheros made with freshly peeled green chiles from Wagner’s Farm.
Japanese style
René was hanging out in a rose bush in front a a fan we use to filter the sun. The scene had a Japanese look to it.
Macro Morning
I got out my macro lens this morning and René and I started crawling around under squash leaves to get photos of a bee inside a squash blossom. The bee was pretty cute, but after several snaps it got tired of having a lens in its face and showed me a hefty pair of bee fangs. I can’t resist doing macro shots of damselflies and dragonflies. I sneak up on them until they fly, freeze in place and wait for them to come back (they often do), sneak up a little closer — they fly, I freeze, they come back — and the process continues until I either get the shots I want or they decide I’m too close and don’t come back.
Mama Manx has a cave in the cucumber patch where she lays on the cool mulch under the shade of the cucumber leaves. When one of us gets too close to the entrance of her cucumber cave, she darts out like a moray eel, chatters at us, then retreats back into her cave.
Puck is working on his memoirs, “Don’t Puck With Me”, and while he was taking a break he pestered Laurie for some attention while she was reading. Guildenstern was intently playing with clover under my chair while I sat on the deck enjoying the fine summer morning.
Off Center & Not Even 