SQUIRT

A few weeks ago a young PNG native in need of a good home relocated from his village near Madang to live with us.  When he first arrived he had been neglected and was not super healthy.  In fact, he looked kind of sick.  We could not even get him to talk to us, all he would do is huddle in the corner of the cage we set up in the living room for him and make a growling-squawking noise.  He was also very dirty and he had some kind of lice that you could see crawling around on him.
 Squirt, as we named him shortly after his arrival is a Black-Capped Lori, which is a type of small parrot.  Squirt is a nectar drinker, which means he only drinks nectar, like a hummingbird only bigger, and able to speak.

  Due to his diet of only mashed up fruit, Squirt has a problem with diarrhea, or maybe we should say, Squirt has diarrhea, which is normal for a Black-Capped Lori, and WE have a problem with his diarrhea!  When he first arrived we set up a wire bird cage for him in the living room.  He would be standing on his perch in the cage and every so often he would back up take aim at the nice white wall behind the cage and let fly with a stream of blended fruit juice. 
After some carefully placed newspapers, Squirt’s cage has become more diarrhea friendly, and we are starting to enjoy having him around. 





He is a young bird, only a few months old, and has started to bond to us. 

 

When we come to the house after having been out and about he will see us walk up to the front door and let out a whistle.  He also comes out of his cage and sits on our hand while he eats his dinner.  We usually hold him over a garbage can just in case he lives up to his name. 

One of Squirts favorite things to do while sitting on our hand is to walk on our arm over to our elbow and then reach up and wipe the banana that is on his beak off on the sleeve of our shirts. 


        He is lucky he is so cute! 


Squirt also has other unusual habits that we are starting to learn, he loves to sing along to music, especially rock and roll, he loves to take baths in his water dish (he makes a big mess doing this and gets really wet). 

 
Squirt loves to eat mashed up bananas and papaya but his all time favorite treat is sugarcane.  When we can buy it at the market we put it in his cage and he spends all of his waking moments licking it until it is completely dried up and gone.