I grew up with very many birds, but don't have any photos from back then. So here I am starting in the "parrot New Age" which began after I finished Univ. and a few years of work. My company had moved me to NYC and I - a village girl - got heartily sick of all the concrete. I needed some Nature! Enter Hector (the one in the front. In the back is Lily, his first wife)
Hector was marketed as a supertame, handraised bird. I visited him daily for two weeks, before he was weaned and I could take him home with me. In spite of all the advertising he did not like to be held. I thought I was doing something wrong. Until two days before I picked him up - I saw them feed him.  The grabbed my poor little baby, shoved a plastic tube down his throat and with a big syringe pushed a measured amount of formula into his crop. How horrible!!! No wonder he was so afraid of hands. I had to take him out of there and it took quite a while before with much patience and clicker training I managed to overcome his fear and he would trust me, as is shown in the photos above and below. Oh yes - did I mention it? They also clipped his wings and he had some terrible accidents, because of that: Concussion, broken off beak and a split chest. See the photo on the right. It was awful. He kept reinjuring himself - almost as if he wanted to kill himself. I would put blankets into the cage to buffer his falls and he would sneak out, find places to climb up on and jump. Poor little fellow. Below shows him climbing into my bathrobe pocket for treats. And him and Lily plundering the vegetation. To this day, he is still a very serious fellow who rarely goofs of.

Pretty soon, I decided Hector needed a wife, so he would not be alone while I worked. So I got Lily. Also handraised - Also afraid of hands - also clipped. You can see her in the photos above. When Lily entered puberty she also started to pluck herself very badly. We checked her several times from A to Z and realized that there was absolutely no medical reason for this. Since then I have learned that handraised birds, esp. females often pluck. In my flock of eight African greys, there are five females (am still looking for two more males) three are handraised, one is a parents raised and one is an old wild caught one. Guess what - all three handraised ones pluck. More about them later. Then, one Saturday, I saw a dismal looking lovebird in a zoostore.Her head was plucked and bloody. She tried to climb up the wire to get to the feed bowl, but when she got there, the others attacked her and she fell back down. How awful. One feedbowl for near twenty birds. Of course, I complained. As a result the zoostore just gave her to me. She was in such poor shape, that the vet told me she would not have outlived the next day. I gave her huge amounts fo food and she ate what seemed non-stop for hours. And - lo and behold - within 24 hours, she was able to fly again, escaped from the cage (the grid for greys was easy enough for her to squeeze through) and discovered her new world with her mate, making friends with Lily, killing some plants (Geraniums, yum, yum) and finding new toys...LOL While at the store I noticed that there was one other bird always sticking with her so I bought him as company for her (they actually did later on turn out to be boy and girl) and they were very close friends.
Both brids were flighted and not at all tame. But I grabbed my clicker and pretty soon, they learned to trust me. Tiny photos (sorry) of Aladdine clicker training - tweaking the target stick and receiving her reward

Next came Nikita, my blue and gold princess. He woner had met me on one of the bird mailing lists and asked me, if Iwould adopt her. So I flew to Phoenix to get her. Nikita was plucked (this photo shows her much later when some of her feathers had tried to grow in), clipped and lived in a tiny cage. She had a bad scissor beak from poor handfeeding and she was difficult. In the first week I almost lost an eye to her due to my own stupidity. I bend to pick something up from the floor and came up to close to her, she hacked and her beak actually touched my open eye right on the cornea - that was really scary and I was sooo lucky. Other than biting when anyone came too close she did not do much. A behavioural vet that I consulted at the time actually proclaimed Nikita to be the worst case of learned helplessness he had ever seen and proceeded to write a case sutdy about her :(. Nikitas cage ahd been tiny (2ft * 3ft), but that was what she was used to. Her owner actually maintains to this day that Nikita was happy and she was terribly hurt when I tried to tell her that I though NIkita was not well kept - so I dropped the matter - what is the point after all and I did not want to hurt the ladies feelings.  The previous hme that she had adopted Nikita from ahd beenmuch worse after all - over there Nikita was put on a stand in the front yard with no shelter from the glazing sun, so drivers by could admire her. It makes my heart bleed to even think of it, no wonder she was so disturbed and trusted no one Once back home, I got a cage just like she had been used to before, for security, but I removed the entire front panel and put that into my new bird room (ah - who needs a dining room anyways). And then Nikita and Istarted on the long way of learning. She had to learn to walk along a perch, a rope to climb, to destry things other than herself.
	And then came Jack, love of both our lives. I had been looking for a mate for Nikia, but instead of finding a blue and gold boy of her age - I found Jack. Hi sparents had bitten off his beak and nobody wanted him, because he was not perfect. I think he is. His cut-off beak looks as if he is perpetually smiling and up to some mischief (which he usually is). I drove for more than four hours to the Czech border to get him. Apparetnly the breeder had seen that the egg had a hole and opened it. inside was little Jack sans beak and a toe. He put the tiny tike back with his parents who accepted and fed him. For some reason though, the breeder took him away from the parents at the age of four weeks and isolatedly hand raised him. Then he put him in a small flight with a B&G. The flight was barren. There was just one perch along its lenght. It was also constructed of brick, so the brids had no posiblilies of climbing or gettign out of each others way. Needless to say Jack without a beak was always the loser. I immediately felt horribly sorry for him and took him out of there. Insted of being terribly grateful - he bit. Hard. Stinker! He and Nikita however got of to a really good start. They spent already the first night sitting side by side. and were good friends. Jacks adventureness did wonders for Nikita. Slowly she started to gain confidence and started to explore her surroundings ... to the detriment of my enterior design :)

 It was a magic time. On weekends I slept in and when the birds awakened one by one they joined me in bed for a cuddle. Jack learned to behave and Nikita made big strides in her behaviour.

She was sooo proud when she learned to go into the transport box all by herself (with big praise and treats)  and even allowed the door to close!

This was a very usefull skill, as we were frequent visitors to the avian vet. I continued runnig tests on her to find out a possible physical source for her plucking, as psychologically she came along so nicely.

Then around mid-2003 Nikita started to decline. She would not eat properly anymore and we could not find a reason. The long battle for her life began. I handfed her twice a day to make sure she kept her weight. Nikity died very suddenly on November 22, 2003. I miss her so. I am still crying when I am writing this more than two years later. Below is the last photo I took of her. For some reason, she liked sitting on the open refrigerator door when I was handfeeding her.

The auotpsy revealed that Nikitas lungs simply dissolved. This is extremely rare diseasein parrots. It is impossible to diagnose on a living bird and there is no treatment. In the end, because of this she had multiple organ failure. May she fly happy and in peace in the land behind the rainbow.