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about African greys are. I'm curious to read them. How did you not take it personally when she chose Dave as her person? I think because all of our
birds are great with us as individuals just
because she prefers Dave doesn't mean that I don't have
some awesome stuff with her. So I taught her how to say her name. I taught her all of like the
little tricks that she knows he taught her the larger routines and then we both taught her free flight. But I mean, she's great
to just hang out with me, if he's around of course,
she's gonna prefer him but I don't know, it
doesn't really bother me. I have my own birds
that prefer me as well. So I feel like it kind of evens itself out and she'll land on us equally. So if we're free-flying outside, she's just as likely to land on me as she is on Dave. So it never feels like a
crazy imbalance or anything, it's not like she's
avoiding me by any means. She knows that we're still cool I just know that she prefers
to get her love from Dave, and that's fine, I do too. I can relate to you. (bright upbeat music) "Can people other you and Dave hold her?" Yeah, so Cressi and Jinx and Bondi are our birds that we
really socialize with people and we have go on people for photos and things of that nature. Or even if we're free-flying,
those are kind of the birds that if somebody's like, "Hey,
can I come take a photo?" Yep, these are the birds
that we're most likely gonna put on you. So yeah, she's incredibly friendly. She understands that going
to somebody is a trick, so she willingly does that. And for photos, it actually super cute. If we put her on somebody's shoulder, she'll actually nestle her
beak either in your ear or against your cheek and
lean in for the photos. It's adorable, she's the only
one that does it, so cute. What are hormonal phases like for her? Oh man, guys. I am filming my series called "Oh Flock", that goes through the problems that I have with my own birds and I show how I'm working through them in each unedited training
session video for my patrons. And my biggest hurdle with
Cressi's episodes on this have been, she gets horny so easily, and it derails her training. So I kind of talk about and show what I do to get through a training session so I don't have to just
end every single one just because she's getting hormonal. So there's a few things things that I do. And I think the big key with
it is figuring out things that are untrigger. So things that can get her
out of feeling hormonal, and with Cressi it's gonna be as my patrons will see
it the struggle is real. But there are a few tricks that I have that get her out of feeling horny and one of the cool things
about the relationship between me and her and then her in Dave is that she's more likely
to get triggered from Dave. So a lot of the times when you
guys see us filming videos, she'll be with me or on me because she's less likely to
show that hormonal behavior with me then versus him. So that's kind of a cool thing. I can hang out with her longer
than he can for the most part without triggering any
sort of hormonal behavior. Yeah, Amy, so there's a little upside
to not being the favorite. What is her favourite thing to do when you and her are just hanging out? Um, Cressi loves being just pet and just literally just hanging out. She's one of our few birds
that is just content to just be Bandit my Rose Breasted Cockatoo
is literally the opposite. She is not content to just be, She's gonna be doing something. So that's kind of a nice
chill thing about Cressi is she just content to
hang out on the sand, she'll start chewing on a toy She's really this calm all the time, unless something freaks her out. Where are you going? Thinking about something? Nice routine. Do you wanna show them a trick real quick? We can change it up. Should I go upside down? Oh, we're getting horny. Go upside down. So let's show her a trick
to get her out of it goes you're gonna see how we do it. Oh, look at that. Give everybody a wave, yay. Oh yeah, you do know that
she was a head shake too. I forgot about that one. Okay, I'm gonna put you up here feely. These two questions
kind of go hand in hand. Who does she mimic the
most birds are humans which I talked about
it was actually Bandit that she mimics the most. And why was she mean
to I antagonise Bandit out of all your birds? And I think because of the age difference, Bandit is nuts. Those of you guys that know baby Glaus especially are just younger
glaus like they're so crazy and full of life and
they have so much to do and they just wanna play. Gregor (Birds screaming) (murmuring) You wanna go (mumbles) (Bird screaming) (laughing) And Cressi does not wanna
play cressi's pretty chill, she wants to hang out and be
mellow and have some quiet time and Bandit is not quiet time. (bird screaming) He was constantly bothering her and trying to get a reaction out of her and she was constantly
trying to tolerate him until she just couldn't anymore. And then it would end up in a kind of a little bit of a chase where she would finally turn
and be like, leave me alone. And he would kind of find that fun. He's like, hey, finally,
we got a reaction, like any attention is good attention. Caulk too, Cockatiel logic. So that's why (laughing) I always refer to him as
the annoying little brother because that's kind of
the dynamic that I saw between the two, but I'm
an only child so who knows? Do you African greys
make good free-flyers. I think all birds are amazing free-fliers their ability to fly is fantastic. It's what they're designed to do. As far as the safety of it
goes though she's not loud. So her contact call is very quiet. It's harder to hear. And she's just harder to see it's so weird because we can
be in these flat open places that are mostly white or brown
and you still can't see her. And it's really frustrating,
especially in Moab. She's really hard to see It's why we have the least
amount of photos of her in flight. She's incredibly hard
to capture in flight. So I would say as far as ability wise, yeah, they're fantastic
fliers as far as safety goes. Not so much, not favorite to
fly just because it scares me scares me more to fly
her than my son Conures Oh, I love this question. So does cressi have the
typical African grey traits? The only one that I would say she has 'cause Dave and I are
always like, do we look out? I mean, other than the fact that her talking ability
is pretty pathetic. Sorry, Cressi, but the only
typical African grey trait that she has is life will be dandy, and then one day you walk up to something that you've had for a while
and she'll be like, Whoa, whoa, when did that get here? And you're just kind of, this isn't new. And also with new
things, she can be phobic so African greys are pretty
known to be pretty phobic. And she does have that
trait now it's very minimal. I need to give her credit
where credit is due Dave literally put in this
three routine into a show. And it was literally three routines in one and Cressi had never done them before. She's been on stage before, she's performed with Dave before. So all that was done and Dave had performed those
tricks before with other birds, but never with Cressi. And he didn't even give her a rehearsal. He just put her in. And she did fantastic. And she's done fantastic ever since. So that kind of stuff She's amazing. But then every once in a while,
we did this part in our show where I would pick a random person from the audience to hold up a hula hoop and she would fly through it. And this one time, I picked
somebody who had dreadlocks, and that was not okay with Cressi. So and that was harder to work through because we just didn't have anybody else with dreadlocks around. So I don't think we
really got to work through that in the sort of depth that we normally would
work through something but yeah, the phobicness
she has some of it not to the extent of
most African greys I see but she's still presents
it every now and then. What other African grey traits are there that you might have? We often say that we lucked out with her, we would be terrified to
get another African Grey I don't think we would ever get another African grey after Cressi just because she's been so amazing. And we feel like we just lucked out. But she's not a real African grey. (laughing) She's, I don't know, she's so
awesome that we're just like, what happened? why she's so great. So yeah, and I know that
somebody else had asked me would I ever get another
African grey and I would not, I would not, Cressi my only one. Love your face. Okay, which leads me
to this next question. What's the hardest part of owning a grey and would you ever get another one? So no, I would never get another one. I think the hardest thing,
particularly with Cressi is that she can be so chill and calm and then certain things just tick her off. Bandit obviously ticked her off, but now it tends to be the sun Conures . So sometimes she's okay with them and other times she just doesn't
want them around and is so annoyed by them, so, and these feathers
like her FU feathers will definitely take up
and she will just get huge and puffed and real angry. And when she gets like that, you can't even have her step up without her taking it out
on you or the closest thing so she definitely can get
seriously moody about other birds and how much they annoy her. She's easily annoyed by
other birds, I'd say. She also tends to stand her ground. So if one of the birds
picks a fight with her or is like, Hey, get off that perch I don't want you here. She will stand up to that
bird and that makes me nervous just because she's smaller. She's just a smaller parrot. So it freaks me out when
it becomes her Macaw. And she had kind of a
standoff with Comet one day and didn't come out on top of that one. Would you say she's a quiet bird. So Cressi is incredibly quiet. Unless she's practising her talking, which she doesn't do in front of us. I just kind of can hear her practising. The other thing that she does that's incredibly obnoxious and annoying It's probably the worst
quality that she has, but a totally normal one is her alarm call her alarm call's incredibly
high pitched, it hurts our ears. We hate it. But at the same time, we're glad to know what
she's alarming about. she'll do this when we're
on a free flight trip, she'll do this If she's near a window and she sees something dangerous, she'll do this outside and the aviaries if they see something that she deems as threatening, she will do her alarm call, and it's just really not pleasant. But it's instinctive, it's normal. It's what you get when you get a bird so it's not like it was a
learned obnoxious screaming behaviour by any means it's legitimate. Our African grey is easier
to deal with than Macaws. Not to me, but I'm sure
some people will disagree. I've learned over the years of working with all the different project
birds and just clients birds that I'm really a Macow person, i just connect and get macaws. I also feel like they probably have the most obvious body language. Among all the species. I think they're the easiest to read. But it's not that African
greys are hard by any means. I think that they're fairly
easy to read as well. But I prefer macaws. Overall, when I think of
all the behavioural problems I've ever come across
or anything like that. I'm gonna go with macaws. Sorry Cressi love you. I love her eye though like her face. Your face is so pretty, super pretty. Who is Cressi's favourite
person right now? What's the percentage looking like? Um, I would say it always looks
like I'm doing really great when it's just me and Cressi, but if Dave walked in the door, I'd be chopped liver right now. (crowd murmurs) So whatever percentage that
is not great at math guys. Has Cressi ever encountered
any major injury? If yes, what did you do? Yeah, I think the only major injury it wasn't totally major, but the only injury that I can think of that she has had was
when I had the entire... so I've converted my whole garage to just cold giant
aviaries for these guys. And I had it wide open and I
was doing some major cleaning when I heard her yell, and I came over and in a divided aviary where there's a wall in
between but it's graded. It's like a graded wall. She had gotten her toe
was being held by Comet on the other side, and so they had gotten into
some sort of predicament and he wasn't letting go to her toe. So once he did, she had a
pretty good gash on her toe and I immediately cleaned it,
stopped the bleeding on it and just kept a really close eye on it. And then I had to clean
it every single day, I think two or three
times a day and make sure that her aviary was really
clean, which is really hard, because she gets stuff just everywhere. So I had to try to really
control that so that she wasn't getting food and nastiness on her purchase and then walking on it with an open wound. And the wound was on the
top of her toe But still, so I just made sure to clean it and I used some nNosporin on it every day and we bathed you all the time. We just made sure that
you were nice and healthy and felt good. And then I think I had Patty
come over and check her out. And I gave her some pain
meds for the first two days just to make sure that she wasn't hurting 'cause she was holding it up for a while. What do you wanna do? You're the sweetest so that's a little thing that
you guys probably don't know is Cressi and I have
our own little language and I don't know when it started I think during show stuff it started but to calm her down, I would always go (clicking) and it worked and now
she does it back to me. (laughing) So that's a little insider
info that people don't know, that I didn't even think about
till you just did it to me. Going down. Does she ever get jealous
when you're spending time with your other birds? Not necessarily from
me, but from Dave moreso and only if it involves a Conures then she's not really
jealous, she's just annoyed. I mean, if you guys see
Cressi she just gets annoyed Really easy if anybody ruins
her chill, she's annoyed. Does she usually prefer being pet or not? Yeah, Cressi is one of
our more cuddly birds but she prefers it more
so from Dave than me so she'll last forever
with Dave petting her but when it's me it's kind of short lived. I just wait for her to ask
for it and then give it and then she's over it pretty quick. So this is interesting. I know a lot of Grey's are talkative. How come you didn't train
her to say more words or talk more? it's something that we've never
really focused on training talking to our birds real specifically, the only time I did it was with Bandit and that's because he showed a
real interest in mimicking me and he mimicked my voice
really, really easily. Some birds mimic tones
more easily than others. And Cressi is just funny, she just does not have that
high of an interest in talking. And she's still a closet talker which Jinx was originally as well and I had to be so sneaky to
capture his talking on cue and be able to get him to
talk in front of people. It took a really long time. So I think maybe that'll be
the same thing for Cressi is just kind of waiting for
her to get more comfortable doing it in front of us and making it so that we can capture it. So that's how I actually
got her to say Cressi was I had to be really sneaky. So even now we will hear
her say certain things and you're just not sure you're like oh, I think she did she just say that? And it's too late you
You missed capturing it 'cause you're never expecting it. So it can be one of those
things that's harder for us to capture. But she one day she was like Hi guys. And I was like, what? it sounded like my mother. So I'm pretty sure she has
caught on to some things that my mom says because
they stay in aviaries out of my parents house sometimes in a really nice weather in the summers. And So I think she's starting
to pick up some stuff. So the more we have the
opportunity to kind of capture it and put it on cue, the more we will but talking has never been something that's a huge priority to us. We don't care, we just
find it funny or cute and if the birds wanna do it
We try to capitalise on it. And if they don't want to, we're not concerned but
Cressi is more of a Whistler. Those of you that got our
stop screaming course. Got to hear the difference
between screaming and a contact call. And Cress's contact call
with Dave is adorable because I can't whistle so I don't have it and I'm not in the club. But her and Dave do a whistle where one of them does the first part and the other one completes
it and the second part and it's just super cute. So she's way more of a
Whistler than a talker. But hopefully someday she'll just surprise us all and whip
out an amazing vocabulary that we didn't know she had. Is Cressi a strong flyer. It seems that in free flight videos, she doesn't do as much long distance. This is a really hard thing to show in video with both
the sun Conures and Cressi we lose sight of them
real fast, real easy. There was a video I just
did when we were in Pahrump and I was trying to take video
of the Conures exploratory flight and you just couldn't
see them in the frame anymore. They were in it, but
you couldn't see them. And it's kind of the same with Cressi. She's so hard to videotape. And it's hard to capture that a lot of the time
because we are more on edge and trying to be more
present when she's flying. A lot of the times we
just put down the camera and focus on the fact that she's flying. our birds safety is paramount to us. So we wanna make sure that
we're really on top of it and paying attention and
doing all the things right and so a lot of the times
we've been videotaping all day, or I'll just set a camera up and you guys just can't see her. It's just really
incredibly hard to capture so she is a strong fire She's really good. She takes a few days to get into shape. So she always starts off thinking that she's in better shape
than she is on day one and day two. But after that, she
usually does really well. And I would say, Yeah,
she's a strong flier, she just needs a chance to get into shape. Because based on where we live, we have all four seasons, we can't fly our bird safely, where we live all the time. And so that means that we really dedicate
our trips to flying them and making it for them. And that means that it's kind
of about getting them back into shape for the first half of the trip. So that can be hard and
painful and exhausting. And, they're basically working out so although they're playing, it's hard work too. So got to keep that in mind that they aren't going to be as crazy
good the first few days and it's way easier to film
in those first few days. What spoofs Cressi? Nope, nothing. She's not very easy to spook and I just lost my spot. She's like, whatever just just pet me. Just pet me for the whole video. People will watch 40
minutes of that right. Okay, so the last question
and probably the most common is whether or not I would
recommend African greys and just based on how
often they are surrendered to sanctuaries. I'm gonna say a big fat No! Cressi is amazing, I
completely adore this bird. But she also has, certain things that aren't perfect just like all of us all animals have pros and cons to them. But I do think that because African greys are naturally phobic and most people just don't implement training, not even accidentally, that if you don't properly
desensitise them and properly socialised them, that they will just grow
older having these phobias that become these major problems and lead to like the plucking behaviours that you see in a lot of sanctuaries and just all the behavioural problems that most people can't work through, it's when they really
escalate into these distinct and crazy phobias, that people are just kind
of lost on what to do with these birds. So getting a baby is one thing and baby animals are so cute and sweet, and they're
not trying to hurt you. And they're just all the good things. And they're easy. But once you have an adult animal that now has a problem
from a very young age, and you don't know how to reverse it, or fix it or conquer it. That's where people just
end up kind of giving up or feeling overwhelmed. And that's where it just kind
of all spirals out of control. So I just think that
most parrots in general, just most species are
just hard for most people. So I would recommend if
you're thinking about getting an African grey That you go and just be with some be
with some at sanctuaries or be with some at your friend's house, like get some experience with them and see if they're everything that you were thinking they were gonna be. Cressi is finding the remote. But that's what I would always recommend is just going and getting the
experience with them to see if it's really what you're
thinking it's going to be and ask about the
stories with sanctuaries. ask why was this bird given up? Why was that bird surrendered? Why is this bird here? How long has it been here and ask all the questions
to get the backgrounds and see does that relate to you? Is that something that
might happen to you? Is that something that you could foresee? I think that if you don't
play out these scenarios with these birds and say, could I handle an African
grey on its worst day, almost every single day. If you can't handle that and
you're not ready for that, then you don't deserve it on its best day because these animals are really hard and they can be really complicated, but they can also be awesome
and incredibly rewarding. But they're not designed
to live in captivity. So you're kind of working
against nature in that respect. And although I've seen some
really amazing thriving parrots in captivity with people,
I've also seen probably more so parrots not thriving. Are you coming up here? What are you doing? So I just feel like people
should do their utmost research and literally try to talk
themselves out of it. And, find all the
reasons why not to do it. fostering a bird is a really
amazing, great thing to do. So I highly recommend doing that. That's how you gain a lot
of experience with birds. And it tends to take a lot of
pressure off of the experience so that you can have an open mind and just be like, Hey, I got this amount of time to make this big of a difference
in this birds life,Let's go and it tends to be a different mindset and in something really awesome to do it's kind of the mindset that I have with Project birds I know that I only have an
allotted amount of time to make the most progress possible and make the biggest positive
difference in that birds life and so you really give it your all and you put everything in Oh, You pooped? You pooped, can move you out of there. so yeah, I don't recommend
African greys and that's just because of the failure rate with how often people end up
regretting their decision. So do all the research
you can to make sure that you're not gonna regret
your decision in getting one. Hey guys, I would love to find out what you were most surprised
to find out about Cressi let me know in the comments below. And if you wanna see
more Cressi in my videos, please let me know that too. I tend to match her mood level and be very mellow when
I film videos with Cressi But if you guys enjoy that tempo, I would love to give you more of it. So just let me know in the comments. You don't make a sound. I'm gonna show that how hyper you are. We'll show you guys how easily
she spooks and flies away. (clapping) And that's the scariest Cressi gets that's terrifying.
