When your parrots get bored.

The birds were bored and they showed it by fussing with each other. When parrots fuss they are very loud and this is something that disturbs old folks that are a captive audience. Mama found a parrot gym that she figured would take some of the noise out of our lives. Once again, I said I could make it a lot cheaper than that. 

Well the truth is that it has probably cost as much as ordering one would have but there are reasons I probably like this better. It is customized for their cage and I had a lot of quality time in close proximity to the babies.

A second crisis we had was that we found our cell phone cameras were virtually loaded. We had to download or trash most of the pictures. We decided to make a slide show of the extra pictures of the babies and we will put it at the end of this blog.

If you are going to stuff rope through a pvc pipe you need a hole that is bigger than the rope. Now I think the rope was 1/2 inch but I don’t remember for sure. I know it was not synthetic. I don’t know how big a hole this makes but it’s bigger than the rope and you can go completely through the pipe. The bit is available cheap from Harbor Freight Tools which is on line. For my part of the world there is a store now open in Humble.

If you do not care for squares a chop saw is your friend. I do a lot of stuff around the house and this is my favorite saw. Cutting most (non plywood) boards it takes the place of a square, a miter box, and who knows what else. A crooked cut can ruin your whole day when you are working with pvc.

The gym we saw on line was a square with another square set at ninety degrees inside it. The problem with that is the door at the top of their cage is what they normally use when they are allowed out. As you can see there are holes drilled in the frame, ready to lace with rope. We used 1 1/2 inch pvc because of the height of the gym. I recommend no longer than 1” if you are going to set it on something and don’t need the height. These pipes are too big for their feet but they make do.

Also, because of all the angles it wasn’t square at first. I shortened the right leg and it came out much better.

You can find rope like this at any building center. When I put it through the holes, I wrapped the end in scotch tape which acted much like the tip on a shoe string. Duct tape would probably have worked better.

These guys are very territorial and took a big interest in everything I did. 

Kiwi gave it his endorsement but he really isn’t in charge. We were stuck waiting for the building inspector.

She finally decided it was ok with her too, subject to certain changes. I didn’t tell her I already planned to install horizontal ropes. She doesn’t understand engineering very well and that’s why the holes were drilled. Anyway, both she and I were happy because we were getting what we wanted.

I really don't think they trusted me very much because they kept watching everything I did. When Mama would show up with the camera they would look away. They couldn't fool me.

Not much left for the first part except making knots where the ropes intersect. You can see the T fittings at the top and bottom pipe. That is where whatever I decide to install will fit. We will just build it inside this.

This has the knots installed and a temporary swing. It is temporary because these guys are going to demolish it. That a piece of the swing that kiwi is chewing on now.

I think it ended well. They use it a lot, things are much quieter, and it was sure cheaper than buying another large cage.

The slide show below consists of a batch of pictures that we didn't use elsewhere. Some of the time they looked like buzzards they were so young. Hope you enjoy.