[PowerBBS]

Our birds have several foot toys and each a cage full of other toys. However, we find our birds play with us much like how you would a dog. Yep, that's right a dog! We can actively use our hands and wrestle with the birds. They both will playfully grab our finger and wiggle it, roll over on their backs and use their feet to push the hand away, while using their beaks to keep our hands in close proximaty. They will actually growl back at us while playing this way. We then jump our hand away, only for a seconds, as the bird stands up, and jumps back on top of our hand to begin wrestling again. Just like you would a dog!

Of course, we're very gentle with the two of them, but they love it. We have small stuffed animals (only three or four inches in size) that we can play tug of war with the birds with as well. This they love. We let them win all the time, they then toss and twist the stuffed animals around the couch beside us. Then carry it over to either one of us to have us start the tug of war all over again. Much like a tug of war you would with a dog!

We have a small play hut (I think it was intended as a house for ginnea pigs or similar size animal) they both love to run into to hide from each other, only to jump out the door to pounce on our hand. We can chase them around the hut, and when we stop, they turn and start chasing our hand, running with their beaks wide open. When they catch us, it's a small wrestle, then they start running away again. It's kinda like tag, with a little wrestling built in.

We also play bird beak games (dispite what bird magazine say is a bad thing to do, as they claim it encourages biting - so far for us, it's never incurred a bite in over two years). We can gently grab their beak and give it a slight jiggle, and say "rrrrrrugh", just like a dog. The bird loves it. They shake their head while in our beak to play. Both of them will even run over to our hands outside of play time, and try to shove a beak into the cracks between our fingers to start the play.

Sun Conure - "Autumn" - is my baby. She loves to give kisses. She will down right force you to kiss her. You can just be sitting there and she'll run down the back of the couch onto your shoulder and lean over and shove her beak into your mouth and start making kissing sounds. (Ya, I'm guilty of training this to her.) She will do this non stop! If you refuse to kiss back, she'll playfully grab your ear lobes and nibble gently, then run back to your mouth to kiss. Nibble your nose... and back to kissing. She loves it. I admit it, I love her too.

"Chucky" - the green cheek, he loves to take a bath. He'll take one a day or more if you let him. He likes to take it on a plate under trickling water in the sink. Splish splash, get you wet. He loves it.

Our African Grey - "Skoobie Doo" - loves the beak games, and kisses. He's only been with us about 4 months, so he's still getting used to us. We actually rescued him from a pawn shop! Yep, someone actually pawned him off! He lived in a tiny 20x20x28 cage! Way too small, we had to rescue him. He now lives in a 6ftx6ftx3ft cage! He's lived in the small cage so long, he's affraid to poop in his cage. He's slowly comming around tho. He's been in the large cage for months and still has yet to explore 1/2 of it. But we love him. My wife, she can pet him like a dog. He sits on her lap and she pets his back. If she stops, he gets up and does circles until she starts again. It's way cool. The bird however, is for some reason, afraid of me. But I will work on it with him.

All of our birds have full flight. They all will fly to our shoulder if we decide to get up and leave the room. That's the funnest thing for them we think. They love to just ride our shoulders and be with us.

I guess what I'm getting at is that not only toys can be the "play" things involved with your birds play time. You may be able to find ways to make playtime a bonding experience between yourself and your birds as we do. It takes time and trust (we've had our birds since only a few weeks old - so they've grown up with this playing) but you can develop your own play antics with your fine feathered friend.

Have some fun with your babies. Just remember to be careful not to play too rough!