Marina’s Page
Marina is different from the other birds in our house. She came to us as an adult, second hand, and untamed.
I was on the waiting list for a baby blue head when Marina became available. She had originally been intended as a breeder, so she had never been handled, nor did she have a name. She had flunked out as a breeder – hadn’t gotten along well with her intended mate, and was not handle-able, and so her first owner decided to cull her from his flock. I had my reservations. Could an adult bird be tamed? I wasn’t so sure, and the first time I exchanged messages with her owner, I ended up declining. When she was offered to me a second time, I agreed to take her.
Transportation was a major obstacle. Her owner, on Long Island, didn’t drive and didn’t want to ship her. I dislike driving and didn’t want to drive all the way to Long Island. We ended up compromising. He took the bird on the train, then took the Port Jefferson Ferry across the Long Island sound where I met him. I handed over the money, he handed over the bird, and he caught the same ferry back for the return trip.
Our new addition was freaked out, to say the least. She wasn’t clipped, as I found out when I opened her travel crate. She was also a screamer, unlike my other pi’s. And she was willing to bite, and bite hard. I kept her in the kitchen, quarantined away from the resident birds. Every time we went into the kitchen, much hissing, screaming, and thrashing followed. It wasn’t pretty.
It took about a month to come up with a name for her – for a long time she was just "The Blue Head in the Kitchen" of "BHIK". I wanted to get a sense of her personality before naming her, but the only names that sprang to mind were things like "Hissy" "Chomper" and "Screech". I eventually went with "Marina" which was appropriate to her coloring and also to her arrival.
The way to Marina’s heart turned out to be through her stomach. After a few days, she would scream when I opened her door, take the food from my hand, eat it, then scream some more. Eventually I was able to lure her to the door with food in my hand, then got her to step onto one hand to reach the food in the other.
The more Marina ate, the calmer she grew. Finally, she would come rushing out of her cage to get to the food dish in my hand