Won Me

Most parrot people are aware of some of the basic body language out companions use to communicate with us. But it’s usually the more negative ones! However, our buddies use a multitude of moves to express lots of emotions, both positive and negative. So, let’s look at a few:

EXCITEMENT/AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIORS
Although most of these activities are associated with aggressive/defensive attitudes in our birds, they can also simply signify any excitement, good or bad - so you have to know your bird, and observe closely to differentiate between aggressive postures that mean “Stay away!” and those that simply mean “I’m over-excited!” even in a good way. (Of course, even with those you need to be careful, as an over-stimulated bird can still act out by biting.)

Eye pinning: The pupils dilate and constrict rapidly, back and forth, indicating excitement and interest. Definitely means you need to pay attention and look out.

Feather Puffing: The bird fluffs his feathers out all over, but especially the head and neck, and with Cockatoos, the crest is erect. In the wild, birds use this to appear larger, and thus be more intimidating to foes.

Tail Fanning: Especially in Amazons, the bird fans his whole tail out (like a mini-horizontal peacock), again, to appear large and “scary.”

Blushing: Bare-faced birds like Macaws, allow you to visually observe the facial redness that accompanies excitement. (Actually, ALL parrots so this - we just can’t see it through the feathers! Some birds blush a light pink, others (Like my Amber), go a deep red. I find babies blush more than adults, as they experience new things in the world.

Head Bowing: The bird, while puffed up, eye-pinning, tail fanning, and blushing, also lowers his head, stretching out his neck. Often accompanied by a “growling” sort of sound, or with African Greys and Cockatiels, it’s more of a “hissing” sound.

Stretching/Wing Spreading: The bird raises up on tip toes, feathers and crest erect, neck stretched, wings eagle - spread -again, he’s trying to look large and threatening. Often, a highly agitated bird will sway back and forth. “Flash” colors (Bright color accents under wings, crest or tail) are highly visible during this type of posturing - it’s hard to miss, as this type of display is QUITE obvious!

Although aggression behaviors and excitement behaviors are similar, the good observer with a trained eye can readily tell the difference. Work on developing your observation skills, so you’ll know how to best proceed. Of course, a bird coming at you, head-lowered, with an open beak, is hard for ANYONE to misinterpret!

SOLICITOUS BEHAVIORS
These include all the more passive ways a parrot asks for attention. If we ignore these, they can lead to more outright demands, such as screaming, or neurotic behaviors that become obsessive, almost ritualistic, habits such as constant flipping or circling in the cage, or toe-tapping, beak wiping, and odd looking head movements. The basic solicitous behaviors include the following:

Food Begging: Recently weaned babies often cry and “baby bob” repeatedly. They sit low on the perch, heads turned up, slightly quivering their wings, with heads bobbing rapidly. This needs to be addressed! Often, newly weaned babies revert after moving to their new home. It’s a good idea to continue regular body weight checks, as anything over a 10% loss is cause for concern. I don’t believe in time-table weaning, and do not feel it is inappropriate to continue, or re-start, hand feeding of young birds. Ask for guidance on how to best handle it.

Wing Quivering: The bird sits low with wings gently quivering, head out, and stretched and softly chirps to you. Some may “bob,” even as adults. This is more common in females. It simply means “Pick me up! Love me!” I find it quite endearing and nothing to be alarmed about.

Leaning Forward/Looking up at you with Big Eyes: This is also a very sweet way birdies ask for some loving. They simply lean toward you and give you big, soft, goo-goo eyes! Pretty fool-proof for most birds!

Feather Puffing: Nothing like the feather puffing of aggression/over-excitement, which is stiff and rigid, this is a “soft” raising of the feathers, again, especially on the head and neck and means “Please scratch me and preen my pin feathers!” They need out help to reach those difficult spots, and it’s a glorious way to strengthen your bond by preening his “pins” for him!

HAPPINESS BEHAVIORS
These are my favorites! They are also the most subtle and most often missed signals that our parrots give us. Learn to recognize them and you’ll enjoy a whole new level of richness in your communications.

Tail Wagging: Often in one on one interactions, you’ll see your bird give his tail a quick “fan” and a vigorous side-to-side shake. This means “I’m content, I’m enjoying myself and feeling quite relaxed!” It’s always a happy sight!

Happy-Wing Tai Chi: You walk in the room, or up to your parrot, he spreads out one wing, in a big stretch, often accompanied by a full extension to the back of the leg on the same side (very graceful, martial-arts-looking). I love this one! Often, they do it at the most inopportune time, like when you’re in a big hurry to put him up and get out for the day. But, this is the parrot equivalent of a big hug! It means “I’m so happy to see you! How ‘ya doing?!” Don’t ever rush him when he’s being sooo courteous and pleasant!

“Happy Beak”: It’s late, he’s eaten, he’s played, he’s cuddled, he’s almost ready for bed - and you hear a funny grinding rasping sound coming from your bird. This is a total contentment, relaxed, happy behavior. I actually met someone once who professed to “hate” that sound! To me, it’s music to my ears - it means my kids have had a great day and are ready to go night-night for sweet dreams!

Regurgitation: You’re loving on your buddy when all of a sudden, he starts to bob, then deposits a warm gob of partially digested food onto you! Well, you’ve just been paid the highest compliment your parrot can pay you!! This is how parrots say “I love you madly, for ever and ever - you’re mine!!” Please, don’t act grossed out, or make faces, or laugh, or run away. Simply say “I love you, too!” and give him a rub!

There’s lots more behaviors an postures our companion birds use to express their moods, needs, and feelings to us. When you start to pay attention to your friend’s many ways in which he communicates with you, you’ll surely discover some special and unique ones that will go a log way in enabling the two of you to get along better, strengthen your bond, and provide insight into his own unique personality!

Your Parrot Place
Marilu Anderson, Bird Nutrition and Behavior Consultant, (503) 771-BIRD.
Marilu is a regular contributor to the Your Parrot Place Newsletter.
YourParrotPlace.com
- Only the Best for Your Parrot!

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Since the introduction of the Porsche 356® in 1948(1), Porsche
has enjoyed a proud tradition of quality production and a
reputation for high performance, as well as lasting reliability.
In addition to its continued financial success, Porsche plays a
leading role in the automotive industry by offering consulting
services to other auto manufacturers. Its amazing performance in
various races such as the Carrera Panamerica and Targa Florio,
has certainly helped create and maintain the reputation that
Porsche now enjoys.

Because of the continued popularity of the Porsche,
parts and accessories are made by a number of aftermarket
and OEM parts suppliers. What’s more is that these aftermarket
and OEM products tend to have a certain level of quality akin to
that of Porsche. Wheels, car covers, and floor mats
for Porsche come from a number of quality aftermarket part and
accessory manufacturers like Wheelskins, Coverking, and Lloyd.
Floor mats come in different shapes and sizes and can be custom
ordered to include the Porsche emblem. Coverking, known for its
fine crafted car covers, offers Porsche owners a variety of
customization options.

The broad range of aftermarket performance parts available to
Porsche owners is also rather impressive. Many suspension
options from racing standards such as Bilstein and H&R allow for
better handling, increased tire performance and longer intervals
between tire swap-outs. Technological advances in chip design
from Powerchip and Unichip provide increased horsepower range
with increased fuel economy. Freer exhaust flow from companies
such as Danske, Borla, and Billy Boat Exhaust supplements chip
design and increase the power range while maintaining legal
ranges of emitted exhaust.

What’s more, is that this line of quality parts and accessories
are available for your Porsche, whether you own a Porsche
911®, Boxster®, Cayenne®, and of course, the highly
anticipated Porsche Cayman®. In fact, parts and accessories are
already available for the newly introduced Cayman from companies
like Performance Products®.

(1) Some consider the first Porsche to be the Porsche 64®,
created in 1938, while others believe that the Porsche 64 was in
fact a VW, and that the 356 was the first true Porsche.

For over half a century, Porsche® has earned itself a brand name
that implies both impressive performance, and lasting
reliability. This also holds true in the aftermarket, as a
number of quality performance parts and accessories are
available for Porsche. Wheels, car covers, floor mats, and
exhaust accessories are examples of this.

You think spam is annoying ? Let me tell you a spam story that
is beyond annoying and well past anger - and it isn’t about
receiving a few annoying advertisements in your Inbox. It’s
about a particular internet species whom I shall call amateur
spam cops. Let me explain.

I am writing this article as a warning. From time to time I
write business articles for newsletters as a means of promoting
my web site. An article of mine was recently picked up from an
article-announcement list by a larger-than-usual number of
newsletters.

For a while, it was great ! My resource box (similar to the one
below), pointed to my web site and, during this one week in
particular, the hit counter was going crazy. I had ten times the
normal number of visitors.

And then disaster struck. The hit counter slammed to a halt.
Suddenly I was getting numerous emails from potential customers
telling me that my site was down. Now, I had been with Virtual
Avenue for about 3 years and never had a problem, so I thought
maybe it was just a temporary glitch and that the site would be
back up the next day or something. I visited their support page
& asked them politely to investigate.

After visiting the site, I began reading my emails again (I get
about 120 per day, and I download my email twice a day), and
came across a robot message from their abuse department. The
message told me that a spamming complaint had been received and
that they were shutting me down in 48 hours. Well that was
nonsense for a start - they had already shut down all my sites !

The message said that I had spammed someone by sending them a
newsletter. I quote -

***
We regret to inform you that your account dwr9760 will be
deleted from our servers within the next 48 hours because it
violates our Terms of Service, found at
http://www.virtualave.net /account/policies os

Reason: Spam complaints [1311819] Subject: whatUseek Weekly -
The Stealth Approach To Making Money On The Internet
***

For those of you not into the internet marketing scene, “WhatU
Seek Weekly” is a pretty useful newsletter for business ideas &
marketing tips. I have subscribed to it for about a year. They
recently ran an article of mine called “Any Fool Can Choose The
Wrong Career”.

It took me a few minutes of hard thinking to figure out the
connection, but once I worked it out, I was shocked at the power
these amateur spam cops now have. An accusation appears to be as
good as a conviction, at least in the eyes of Virtual Avenue.

It appears this is what happened: for whatever reason, a
disgruntled subscriber has been unable to unsubscribe from the
WhatUSeek newsletter. So instead of just complaining straight to
the publishers of this newsletter, or even to the Host of the
newsletter web page, they decided to get VERY nasty and file
spam reports against every link & email address that they can
find within that newsletter (and it is normally quite a big
newsletter !).

So this person sees my harmless article, checks out the resource
box and sends off a spam report to the Host of my advertised web
page. Even though I have never sent an email to this person in my life !
In response to a single unsubstantiated report, Virtual Avenue IMMEDIATELY
shuts down all my web sites without any warning.

Numerous further emails were exchanged over the next few days,
with the “support” people (now there’s an inappropriate title)
refusing to reinstate my web sites, even though they eventually
acknowledged I was not a publisher of the newsletter and had not
spammed anyone. They had received robot complaints from Spam Cop
and were determined that someone was going to suffer for it. I
was simply guilty by association.

Meanwhile, I have been spending at least 30 minutes daily responding to
all the emails complaining about the site being down, not to mention the
many hours involved with shifting the websites elsewhere. I have lost
bucket-loads of customers due to a false accusation and a trigger-happy Host
who seems anxious to shut-down its own members.

So next time you get annoyed by unsolicted commercial email in your Inbox,
just remember - it could be worse. At least these pests aren’t actively trying
to close down your business.

About the Author

Darren Robinson is the publisher of THE PANIC BULLETIN, a
free twice-weekly email newsletter.
If you suffer from anxiety attacks, depression, obsessive
compulsive disorder or other related conditions, keep up
with the latest news articles from around the world.
Just send a blank email to
panic_disorder-subscribe@listbot.com

Many people think of web business in a single dimension. They only see their business as selling an eBook. Or drop shipping. Or selling software.

The reality is there are many ways to make money from (monetize) a website. Here are my top 12:

1. You can create an eBook product.

This can be easily automated, meaning that once this site is up your daily routine would be marketing and answering minimal customer service emails. The entire order process can be completely automated.

2. You can create a digital tutorial product.

Again, this can be easily automated, meaning that once this site is up your daily routine would be marketing and answering minimal customer service emails. The entire order process can be completely automated.

3. You can create a software product.

Easily automated as well, meaning that once this site is up your daily routine would be marketing and answering minimal customer service emails. The entire order process can be completely automated.

4. You can sell a “hard good” you purchase wholesale (or manufacture) then sell at retail.

This requires you to purchase the product before-hand and fulfill orders yourself. You would spend days filling orders, managing shipping and returns, marketing.

5. You can sell a “hard good” as a drop-shipped product.

A “drop shipped” product is a hard good that a manufacturer ships directly for you to the customer. You collect the retail price on your website, forward the order to your manufacturer along with the shipping and wholesale price and keep the difference.

Similar to #4, you will have to spend some time fulfilling orders, but the time consuming task of shipping is done by your manufacturer.

6. You can sell advertising.

For a high demand market niche this can produce solid revenue. Ad sales can be done by an outside agency, you can sell them yourself and/or you can use services like Google Adsense or Traffic Showcase to provide ads for you.

Here you can generate a nice income with a “hands-off” site provided you can position yourself well in a market place. Solid demand coupled with good search engine position can give you a good deal of time freedom.

7. You can sell affiliate products.

If you have a solid search-engine position, this one can be run much like an advertising site. If you don’t have solid SE position, then you would spend your time creating and sending a newsletter, writing articles and generating traffic to your site.

8. You can promote an opportunity (like Multi-Level Marketing, etc.)

The key ingredient here is building a huge opportunity seeker list. Your best time is spent generating new leads and cultivating them into a paid down line. There are many online “training” programs that can automate training, but marketing to get the new leads is how your time would be used.

9. You can generate leads (to sell wholesale or to plug into an opportunity site)

If you are wanting to promote an opportunity site, then this goes hand-in-hand. The time here is spent getting people to the lead generation site and getting them into your “system.”

10. You can sell a service.

If the service you provide can be completely or almost completely automated, then you would spend your time marketing your site. Keep in mind, however, that if you are offering a “physical service”like proofreading or carpet cleaningyou will need to spend a significant amount of time actually providing the service.

11. You can run a subscription site.

Subscription sites are a great way to go for a solid, recurring income. Keep in mind you will have to be constantly updating the content in order to retain members. Your time beyond that will be spent marketing your site.

12. You can use a combination of the above.

Obviously there are many online businesses using a combination of two or more of the above.

The big question you need to answer when it comes to choosing a monetization model for your own business is lifestylehow much you want to work (if at all), how much money you want to make, what things you enjoy doing.

Choose the monetization model that best fits your end goal.

Kevin Bidwell owns http://www.All-In-One-Business.com and has helped 4,953 people start a business from home. Visit now to pick up your own free How to Start a Business from Home guide now.