KISMET
The Maroon-Bellied Conure

FINAL CHAPTER - Scroll to end of page

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Kismet came to me like the good fate his name means.  It took him three months to warm up to me, to even let me touch him.  But now, he can't get enough of me.  He loves to perch on my new yellow glasses especially, even more than he likes to perch on my head, which he also does love. 

Kizzy sitting on bedroom perch, hammock bed behind him

Kismet is a night bird.  He stays up until I go to bed, which most often is 3 AM.  He rises when I rise, which is between 10:30 and 11:30.  He is a night bird because I am.  Conures, I've learned, bond totally.

In the wild, Conures sleep in sandstone crevices or tree cavities.  Now that he's accepted me as his mate, he likes not only to stay up late with me, but to sleep in the bedroom with me.  I've made him a nice little hammock, made of velvet, up high in my bedroom, so that he can overlook my bed.  He likes to sleep with his head against the wall, though.  Actually, his beak against the wall -- reminiscent of the sandstone cave, perhaps.  What follows is the beginning months with Kizzy.  As of what you're reading right now, Kizzy and I are two birds in a nest, cuddling, kissing, sharing water.  He's a great companion for me, and I'm a great human for him, for I let him have full flight in the house.  He never goes inside a cage.  Instead, he eats on top of them, and bathes on top of them.  The only place he's not free to go is outside.      

I know from other birds I've lived with that they like to cuddle up in a snug corner when sleeping.  Kizzy loves to climb high.  I arranged my wicker bookshelf to be near his playroom, and created a washcloth tent that fits him perfectly, and stretches snugly  with him.  I 'tented' it by hanging it from an L thingy, which itself became a high perch Kismet likes to stand on and assert his power by flapping his wings.

Tonight he began to talk in his sleep, little bird gutturals.  He's dreaming.  I'm  glad he's getting enough adventure in his new life to dream about.

Kizzy is a wild bird, and needs adventure.  No toys for Kizzy.  Everything he wants to explore becomes a toy.  He doesn't like to eat out of a bowl.  He loves to eat his apple sitting on top of it.  That's what he did when we first met: straddled the slice of apple I'd stuck in between the bars on top of his house.  I still do that, and he doesn't straddle it anymore, but stands above it, munching.  A slice of orange slipped into the bars he eats, but not when it's on a plate.

I want him to be wild, tempered of course to inside living.  Everyone says clip them, but I want him to fly.  I'm monitoring his flying strength and ability as the wing-clipping grows out.  Pocket flew and because of the corners in a house, his velocity was tempered and he never smashed into a wall or window; and never even thought to fly out.  Kizzy is an inch and a half bigger than Pocket, and part of that is his long tale, so I imagine he will have a similar ability to maneuver around the house in flight.  As to flying out, however, Kizzy's love of exploration might lure him.  I'd still prefer he be all bird and able to use his Life-given talents.  I'll be vigilant, and I have dealt successfully with bird vigilance in the past.

Kismet has gotten into full swing training with me.  Of me.   He runs from me if he's on an outside perch and I'm approaching.  When he's on his home perch and I approach, he bows his head, allowing me to scratch it.  But when I give him my signal to come up onto my wrist,  if he's not in the mood he won't budge, and if he is in the mood, he hops up onto my wrist and likes to get immediately on my shoulder.  Once there, he snuggles under my hair for a few minutes, then starts scoping the distance from shoulder to home.  It's about 8 feet, and he's been flying it for two weeks.  It takes him a few minutes to set his sites, tho.  Yesterday I wanted to snuggle him a little too much for his taste, and for the first time he bit me.  Not hard; with enough force to be felt but not to cause blood.  It disturbed me, but I did think about why.  I deduce that he's not Mr. snuggles, he's Mr. adventure, for now at least.  And that's really fine with me.  When he flies better, he'll fly to me when he wants to merge.

Kizzy is a rope climber, and he slides down in a zip, with a glide that would make even a veteran fireperson envious.  

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Kizzy  loves his independence.  I think conures may be the terriers of the bird kingdom.   At the slightest opportunity he'd fly out the door and keep on heading south until he found a flock, or dropped.  I heard such tales of conures. 

6/30/03 -- Kismet has begun sleeping in his faux tree, rather than his washcloth cave.  Perhaps it's the summer heat, but I've got air conditioning that keeps the room at a comfortable 69-70.  Perhaps it's to be nearer to me.  The tree is closer to where I sit at night, and also close the door into kitchen and bathroom, which I pass thru frequently.

He's keeping up what I think is mating behavior, and my Feathered Friends bird store confirms that the mating symptoms of birds is what I'm witnessing with Kismet: bobbing of the head in a drawn out dance.  When he bathes he whistles to me, demandingly, and when he gets my attention he proceeds to bathe and flap his wings in a great show of splashing regality.

7/25/03  -- This is the extended space/forest I made for Kizzy this month.  He sleeps in the tree on the left side of the screen picture, on the highest branch:

I tied a branch from each tree together to make a bridge Kizzy could walk over; and I nailed a dollhouse ladder, horizontally, above the door to create a more secure walkway.  That was so popular that I recently put up a makeshift perch --  made of an old towel rack, to which I tied a small bird ladder to extend it -- around the bend from the pictures, shadow box and clock.  In front of the shadow box etc. I put a plant hanging stand he enjoys climbing, and made rope bridges from it to the towel rack perch.  That is his new delight!  Up there, he's high up, looking down on everything: his favorite place to be.  I made him a macramé mini wall hanging for behind the perch,  and a rope to slide all the way down to the couch under the perch.

To the right of the picture is the washcloth tent I made on top of the bookcase.  It is sewn onto the bookcase and 'tented' from a bracket perch above.  further right and out of the picture is where Kizzy's 'home' cage is, with his food and bath, and it overlooks a window.

Kizzy has begun to interact with me, but only if I approach his home perch.  And then I cannot touch him with my hands, he just runs away.  I bend my head down, and let him play with my hair, in which I usually have feathers; then I look up and he playfully 'kisses' my nose.  Actually, he's exploring my nose with his tongue.  He then plays with my glasses, and he has been letting me lean in and nuzzle his feathered breast or neck.  This he's not sure of, but in the morning, when he wakes up, he's loving and doesn't bite.  I pushed it today and he was into independence not cuddles.  He bit my nose to show me.  Oh, I said no, made a mock crying oh you hurt me of it, but really I understand.  He wasn't in the mood, and I was.  I do love watching him come into his own and feel his freedom to live his life the way he wants.  I give him every freedom except sky, which is the one he really wants.  I see him sit by his window seat looking out at the sky and the waving trees and the flying birds, and I do detect a more than wistful recognition that that's where he should be.    I tell him, not in this life.  But he does have as much heaven as captivity can provide.

10/9/03 --  Kizzy flew onto my shoulder one morning a week ago, and he has spent every day getting closer.  He at long last accepts me as his mate.  He sits on my head, on my shoulder, on the back of my chair.  Tonight he stood on my chair, I put my head back, and he nuzzled close to my head and proceeded to preen himself there by me.  He has gotten his wings back and delights in flying from wall picture to wall picture, looking at his reflection in the glass with each one.  

The magical morning that closeness began, before he landed on my shoulder, he was standing on Pocket's picture, which I have, framed, in a kind of shrine.  He had been enjoying that picture for a few days, bending down to, seemingly, kiss Pocket's face.  It was while standing on that picture, kissing Pocket's beak, that Kizzy first allowed me to nuzzle my nose in his neck feathers.  

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7/23/06

In the three years since Kizzy and I have been together, we've gotten incredibly familiar with each other and cuddly.  Kizzy sleeps in the bedroom with me, in his own hammock.  He stays up til I retire at 4 AM, and rises when I do, at about 11 AM.  He's a veteran night bird now.  He's gained weight and height.  Now when he sits on my eyeglasses he's so heavy he weighs down the side he perches on and I have to use an eyeglass fastener cord to keep them straight.

I have taken him out on journeys in the car three times.  My bird advisor -- Darlene at Feathered Friends in Santa Fe -- told me she takes her eclectic parrot from house to car by holding him against her chest.  I did the same with Kizzy, no problem.  He loves to sit on the back of my seat, rather than on my shoulder when we drive.  Except at night.  When I drove back in the dark of night last journey from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, it was his first night drive and it brought out the guide in him -- he jumped right  up on the steering wheel and sat there the entire ride, piloting the way.

He's adores raspberries.  In fact, they have become a staple, replacing the grapes he favored when he was younger.  Do you know how expense, and fragile, raspberries are????  Very.  But of course he gets them all the time.  He likes to eat breakfast from my fork: omelet's, scrambled eggs, bagels and cream cheese; and he sips orange juice, grapefruit juice, and refrigerated water from my glass.

He's very full of himself, and has an independent, explorative personality.  He's free in the house, never goes inside a cage, but uses the top of two of them to dine, and sits on the wooden mirror perches I have placed all around the outside.  

He loves perching on top of picture and mirror frames, and when we go to a bird-safe house, he makes a bee-line for the biggest picture frame.  

FINAL CHAPTER - March 2008:

Kizzy began to get aggressive at the end of last summer, when I became sick with something that took a good month and a half to totally recover from.  He'd lunge at my head whenever I tried to go out, he'd stand in front of me staring, as if to say, hey pay attention to me, when I couldn't give him all the oohs and ahhs I usually did.  But he recovered somewhat as I recovered.  He still was highly possessive, and made greater strides in not letting me out of his site.  I had to devise a way to 'lock' the curtain dividing the living space from the front door.  It wasn't pleasant devising ways that I could slip out without his sitting on my head, but I did it.

At the beginning of February 2008 I got the flu that was epidemic in the US and in New Mexico.  Again I didn't have the energy or will to coddle Kizzy while I was in the throes of coughing and sniffling throughout day and night.  I'm old, and the flu lasted three weeks rather than three days.  In this time, Kizzy got truly aggressive.

He'd lunge at everything I touched.  And he'd bite after he lunged.  I'd lift my water glass, he'd dive for my hand and if I wasn't swift, he'd bite.  Really bite.  He drew blood.  I'd go for my vitamins, he'd lunge for the bottle, and then go for my hand.

One morning we were in the kitchen, and as usual I was pealing his apple while he sat on the edge of a cabinet door.  Suddenly he flew down and bit my hand as it held the apple.  Hard.  It was on my thumb, and the thumb swelled, bled, turned black and blue.  I put him in a cage -- he was always a free bird in my house, never in a cage -- for 24 hours, and when he came out he was calm, not biting -- for 24 hours.  Then it started again.  By the end of the first week of March I'd garnered six bites on left hand, bad ones.  Nothing I did stopped him, not cajoling, punishing, loving.

Part of this lunging on his part is that he was horny.  Sometimes I would let him rub off on me, but during my illness I just couldn't.  Maybe this refusal of satisfaction added to Kizzy's anger with me.  I researched conures in heat online, and found that they are known to lunge and be highly aggressive when in heat.  Who knew.  I'd never heard about conures being aggressive nor had I ever been with such an aggressive feathered friend.

On the sixth, bad, bite, I had enough.  I called the bird store in Santa Fe where I'd gotten him five years ago, Feathered Friends.  The owner said she'd take him back and find him a mate.  As luck would have it, her partner was in Albuquerque that day and would come and pick Kizzy up and take him to the store.  I gathered his things, put him in his cage and waited.  Sobbing.  When Feathered Friends came, I sobbed uncontrollably.  But as he was carried downstairs, I had the sense he was happy to go, that he was definitely needing to be somewhere other than with me.

From the moment he got back to Feathered Friends, he was happy.  Or so the store owner told me the several times I called in the next days.  The store has an aviary, a whole room, where all the birds get to fly free.  They told me that they were surprised but it seemed like Kizzy liked it there.  The first day I called, I was told Kizzy was having breakfast with another conure!

 I silently say 'I love you' to Kizzy every day, and thank him for releasing us both from an untenable situation.  I realized how under siege I'd been feeling since last summer.  I could not look back at Kizzy and remember the love, because my bitten hand and memories were top of the memories.  Oh, I can look back and touch the love I still hold for him, but I don't regret letting him go.  He's happy, I'm happy.

I'm at peace.  At 72, I don't need to give nurture to another being.  I won't get younger or healthier, and my ability to dote on a companion is diminishing.  I've spent the last 22 years surrounded by bird or birds.  Now, my space is mine.  One good thing:  I can have cleanliness again!  No more poop and seed shells all over the place, which cuts my housekeeping chores by more than half.  At this writing, I've reclaimed my space, made Kizzy's corner into a library, vacuumed all the seeds, and now feel and relish what being alone is.  I deeply grieve the loss, but not with regret; with the bittersweetness of acceptance.

Before you get a conure, be aware that they are possessive and aggressive when not able to utterly possess you.  They need a young human companion who can keep up with their energy.

If you have a conure and want to share stories and information, please do write me.

[all photos by Larry Austin]