Gotta love morning preening

[kendrafitz]

Once we get moving in the morning and Rosie eats her breakfast it's preening time. She likes me to preen her for an hour or two on her recliner. Sometimes she demands my full attention to detail, sometimes I can catch up on shows or read my kindle.

Today we preened for about an hour and I need to get ready to go out. As I do everyday, I collected her molted feathers while she supervised from the top of the recliner. She is not happy that we are going to shower and is now propped on my knee trying to convince me to stay and "snuggle".

These are the feathers she dropped in the last hour. This does not include down flooffies that flew away or the trillion single down feathers floating around that eluded my quick cleanup. Bt her feathers and dropped food I guess I know why my vacuum is on its last legs!! Kills me that I got non shedding dogs to avoid messes and Rosie more than makes up for it!! ;)

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Here is her royal highness preening as I type and dropping more feathers...
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[Zoo mom]

Rosie is beautiful.

[Mr Peepers]

I love her feathers, I would never be able to throw them away and would have to figure out some amazing way to put them into an art piece.

[kendrafitz]

Nick - every so often I send a box of her feathers to a Native American group. The lady that I am a companion to LOVES Rosie's feathers so I have given her quite a few. I do save a lot of the bigger ones. But I tend to get lazy with her small head and body feathers and just discard them. Don't forget, she molts ALL YEAR LONG, so I sometimes see them as more of a mess than a thing of beauty. Bad Mommy!

[spiritbird]

To me the feathers are large and beautiful. [Users must be registered and logged in to view attached photos or hyperlinks] aw%20Feathers.pdf

[kendrafitz]

I think that is where I sent her feathers last time Dianne. :) They sent me a lovely thank you and poster after.

[Casper's 2nd best friend]

I find it fascinating that her colours go through red to green to blue and do not follow the visual spectrum.
Casper's feathers look totally different when wet because the blue and green colours are not pigments and turn grey when they cannot reflect light. The yellow feathers stay yellow when wet because the yellow is a pigment (how many times can You get the word yellow in a short sentence?). How does water affect Rosie's plumage?

[kendrafitz]

Dianne - I think this proves everything is relative. What I consider small, you consider large.

Here are a couple of the feathers I consider large. I keep putting these aside to send in. :)

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[kendrafitz]

Jean-Pierre - she looks like a red wet rat. Her blues turn grey though. When I blow dry her in the winter I can tell we are done when the blue is blue. :)

The pictures I have seen of wet amazons are so often amazing. They look irredescent to me. ;)

[Mare]

Such pretty feathers make for a BEAUTIFUL bird! You say Rosie moults year round? Is that particular to macaws? My cockatoos always have dropping feathers, to me their moult is when they drop a lot during a rather short period of time and then they get mucho pinners popping in at once. Does Rosie have those kinds of moults, too?

[kendrafitz]

No, I think it is just a Rosie thing.

She drops a bunch, gets pin feathers, we preen them and then it starts all over again. Poor girl never gets relief. :(

[Lady]

She is very beautiful, and her feathers are too. I saw a beautiful wreath on Justin's FB rescue site that he had hung on the entrance door. It was made with feathers from different birds, but with Rosie's different colors I bet a wreath of feathers from her would be awesome as well.

[spiritbird]

I sent them budgie feathers and also received a beautiful thank you card. They love any moulted bird feathers. I still have a few Chipper feathers and treasure them.

[Casper's 2nd best friend]

Here's a piccy of Casper after a shower, the blue around his face has gone grey whilst the yellow is unchanged. I will have to check what difference the water makes to his red feathers - he hasn't got many.

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Very wet parrot ([Users must be registered and logged in to view attached photos or hyperlinks]) by Jean-Pierre Declemy ([Users must be registered and logged in to view attached photos or hyperlinks]), on Flickr

[plax]

Zaf's feathers turn greenish when soaked.

[kendrafitz]

Tony - if you have a photo I would love to see it!

Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk

[plax]

Tony - if you have a photo I would love to see it!I know I've snapped some before but I can't seem to find them. I'll have to remember to get a pic or two the next time he's thoroughly soaked. The greenish hue doesn't appear when he's just moderately soaked... he's got to be soaked to the bone!

[plax]

Here's a piccy of Casper after a shower, the blue around his face has gone grey whilst the yellow is unchanged. I will have to check what difference the water makes to his red feathers - he hasn't got many.

[Users must be registered and logged in to view attached photos or hyperlinks] ([Users must be registered and logged in to view attached photos or hyperlinks])Don't look now, but Casper is on FB again! :D

[Lady]

Well I found an interesting article from Cornell Univ. that might help explain the color variations....

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