5 comments about Step by Step Book About Training Cockatiels (Step-By-Step Book About Series).

1. Received book and it helped with some of the basics...My Cockatiel is still in training.....



2. only a person who does not know a lot about their bird would need this



3. how can we view the bokwitout buying it ,,,write back



4. I was really hoping for a book that would provide me with insights into training cockatiels in particular. I was sorely disappointed. Though the book does provide a lot of good, solid, but very general information, a much better book on training parrots is "The New Parrot Training Handbook" by Jennifer Hubbard



5. If your a new bird owner this book is for you. It teaches you how and where to train your bird. It also gives you step by step instructions on how to train the bird and the length of time it would take to do it. I would recommend this book to anyone.

5 comments about My Fine Feathered Friend.

1. My Fine Feathered Friend
   By William Grimes
   North Point Press 2002
   $15 USA, $24.95 Canada
   85 pages, illustrations
   ISBN: 0-86547-632-2
   
   Reviewed by Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns
   
   "I looked at the Chicken endlessly, and I wondered. What lay behind the veil of animal secrecy?"
   
   My Fine Feathered Friend is a bittersweet tale that leaves you aching after you put the book away. In part this is because the main character, a large handsome black hen who appears mysteriously one winter day in the writer's yard in Queens, disappears as mysteriously as she arrived. This is a true story. The author, William Grimes, a restaurant critic for The New York Times, is intrigued, fascinated, and finally haunted, by this hen. He perceives her as a kind of Earth Goddess, as solid as a tree trunk, rugged, compact, able and enduring, yet elusive, vulnerable, and, ultimately, as ephemeral as a fairy princess. She vanishes when he comes to love her. He calls the hen, simply and archetypally, the Chicken.
   
   When I first started reading My Feathered Friend, I was put off by the tone. Grimes refers to the hen for a number of pages as "it," while referring to his and his wife's cats as "hes" and "shes." His style is pat with similes and cultivated assurance. I thought, okay, Grimes wants to make sure that no one, including himself, gets emotionally involved with this chicken. He's keeping the lines drawn. But I was wrong. The story reflects his growing tenderness for the Chicken, moving through levity and wonderment to love, sorrow and loss.
   
   The Chicken has an aura of the "familiar" in folklore, an enigmatic being regarded as both a homely acquaintance and a supernatural spirit embodied in an animal that links that animal to a particular person while retaining an inviolable otherness. Grimes's Chicken is like a visitor from another planet (exotic and ineffable) who probably escaped from the local poultry market in Queens (squalid and local). She is a hero and a survivor -- "a brave little refugee"-- who flouts false stereotypes about chickens. "I'd look out back and see a cat chasing the Chicken across the yard," Grimes writes. "Ten minutes later I'd see the Chicken chasing a cat." She is at once endearingly personal and profoundly impersonal. She has her own projects. She is self-possessed. She projects an arch authority, like the author himself. She dominates Grimes's yard, his cats, and his consciousness. She is, he confesses protectively, "a hard read."
   
   The Chicken tracks through the universe by way of a residential patch of earth -- a "pocket paradise" reclaimed from a "wasteland of weeds" in New York City. She captures the eye of a beholder who becomes a Witness driven to Inscribe Her Being. Grimes attempts to fit what he "knows" about chickens (he eats them and makes his living writing about them as food; otherwise he says "the humble chicken was foreign to me") with his deepening perception of, identification with, and ultimate yearning and mourning over this particular hen. She moves him. He is affected by her "air of mystery," her "appetite for play," her "brilliant evasive maneuvers," her "genuine courage," her "character," her "willful high-spirit," her evocation of what the poet William Wordsworth inestimably versed as "something ever more about to be."
   
   Grimes reads up on chickens, passing on to us pieces of information (some accurate, some not) about Gallus domesticus in folklore, history, and poultry manuals, as a backdrop to, an explanation of, the Chicken, a creature so definite, and infinite, so solid and numinous, she eludes classification. He muses:
   
   "Was it pure coincidence that she liked to sneak up on Yowzer, the cat most likely to develop a nervous twitch when caught unawares? Time after time I saw the Chicken trot up delicately when Yowzer had his back turned, squawk a couple of times, and then watch as the cat leaped a couple of vertical feet. The Chicken, after a successful ambush, would run off jauntily, with a cackle that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle."
   
   At other times, "I'd see Bruiser and Crusher snoozing in the basket, Yowzer draped along a nearby wooden bench, and the dark, shapeless form of Midnight filling out the sagging seat of an old sea grass chair we had bought for a couple of dollars at a yard sale. And in the midst of the group, perfectly content, sat the Chicken. It was a heartwarming sight."
   
   One night a police helicopter hovers over the yard, causing the pine tree in which the Chicken is roosting to sway violently under a wind of hurricane force. "Somewhere, deep in the branches," Grimes writes, "the Chicken was holding on for dear life. I couldn't begin to imagine what was going through her tiny mind. By now, I figured, she had either suffered a fatal heart attack or had been dashed to the ground. But no. The next morning, amid wreckage out of Apocalypse Now, the Chicken reappeared, brimful of vim and vigor."
   
   But one spring day, the Chicken is gone. She does not return. Grimes and his wife Nancy look everywhere. They wrack their brains trying to remember if there were any behavioral signs they failed to notice. "The previous afternoon I had watched her resting comfortably in her nest beneath the pine tree," Grimes writes. "I searched for signs of violence but did not find any. The only trace of the Chicken was a single black feather near the back door. The Chicken was definitely, profoundly missing."
   
   It is hard reading the final pages of this book. The depression Grimes describes is not roguish but real, though he tries to make light. "We had grown to love the Chicken," he says. We believe him: so had we. "She really was a big presence in the backyard," Nancy sighs. You go back to the book cover and study the jet black sweet bird face with its rosy comb and pert expression, framed in an oval mirror. If you know chickens, you know the look of that bright round eye, so attentive yet pensive.
   
   My Feathered Friend is like an exquisite blade sliced across your bowels in the midst of a light-hearted romp that won't heal. The book ends with unappeased longing and unsettled questions (unhappy questions on many levels), not "closure," nor should it. Though Grimes says the story is "at an end, at least for us," still, he wonders and hopes, maybe the Chicken will come back. Maybe she's on a journey. He bought things for her. He and Nancy wait for her. They keep a light in the window. Maybe he'll wake up one morning, look out the window, and see "a large feathered form bustling around the patio, scattering cat food and clucking."
   
   But for now, as Alice Walker said about a horse named Blue, in her excruciating essay, "Am I Blue,"* let us not let the animals whom we piercingly perceive become for us merely "images" of what they once so beautifully expressed and are. The Chicken is every chicken. One like no other. Take the next step.
   
   
   *In Living By the Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987. This book of Walker's essays also includes "Why Did the Balinese Chicken Cross the Road?" ("[T]o try to get both of us to the other side.")
   _________________________________________________________________
   Karen Davis, PhD, is the founder and President of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl (www.upc-online.org). She is the author of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry; A Home for Henny; Instead of Chicken, Instead of Turkey: A Poultryless "Poultry" Potpourri"; More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality (Lantern Books, 2001); and The Holocaust and the Henmaid's Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities (Lantern Books, 2005).
   
   
   



2. A poignantly told memoir of a season spent in the company of a somewhat bohemian chicken. I gave a copy of this book to my vet after we tried for several months to save the life of one of my pet chickens. She hadn't much experience with chickens, more so with the fanicier hookbills often found in one's the parlor, so I wanted her to know what it was like to know a chicken on a more personal level. The author accomplishes this very well, sharing valuable chicken lore with his affectionate and often respectful look at the life of a chicken and life from The Chicken's point of view.



3. I ran across this book at the library looking for substantive books on chickens--the cute cover caught my eye. This is a very entertaining and enjoyable read!

   I'd recommend this book as one you'll finish quickly, share with a friend or two, and want to read again yourself one day.




4. This extremely short book really qualifies as more essay than "book," and as much as I enjoyed it, I wondered who would shell out hard-earned cash for its slim contents.

   Then I found myself handing it around to people as I would share a cartoon or funny email. "Zip through it over lunch," I said, "Take it instead of a magazine while you're waiting for your oil change or dentist appointment."

   And so I learned what this book is best for: for a few bucks, you can pass a smile around to your friends. The eye-catching cover is hard for anyone to resist, and the illustrations are great. If you know someone who's been adopted by a stray animal, this is perfect for them. But if not, pass it on anyway. It's a light, funny read that will make anyone smile.

   In Grime's hands this unusual bird manages a truly universal appeal. I loved the pleasure it seemed to take in sneaking up behind a skittish cat and sending the cat vertically airborne with a sudden cackle. Then there's the pet store employee who tries to explain that they don't carry chicken feed, because a chicken is not a "particular animal." Grimes has an eye and ear for gem moments like these.




5. This is an absolutely adorable story about a man who comes to know and love a chicken who suddenly appeared in his backyard. I first read the authors article about the enigmatic and willful chicken in the New York Times and I actually saved that article because I enjoyed it so thoroughly. My Fine Feathered Friend is just as charming as that article was and better since the author is able to elaborate more on the chicken's fantastic personality and the personalities of the numerous cats that interact with the tenacious bird. The author really knows how to describe animals and the cats encounters with the chicken are truly vivid and terribly amusing. You will not forget this chicken. Its personality lingers long after the final page. The book is a joy and I highly recommend it. Thank you, Mr. Grimes, for sharing such a delightful story!

1 comments about Zebra Finches.

1. This was one of the first books on zebra finches I checked out from the library, when I first started getting interested in the birds, and it helped me immensely. It explained why certain foods were necessary, and what vitamins can be found in what, it gave me the information I needed to know what size to make my cage. It's been a great help to me, and now I've had my birds for over a week and they're wonderful and happy.

No comments about Golden Tips for Keeping Your First Budgie (Gold Medal Guide).

1 comments about My Name is Pipsqueak! What's Your Name?.

1. This is a unique, intriguing narrative about an amazing Budgie and an astute caregiver, enhanced by clever, humorous dialogue of pertinent insight into their fascinating, relevant experiences. I was mesmerized by the content and data of this significant volume of Fun 'N Facts! An excellent addition to any personal collection of important as well as entertaining books!

No comments about Breeding Lovebirds.

2 comments about Avian Medicine and Surgery.

1. This is a very thorough book, although Rupley's manual of avian practice is a more practical and up to date reference for the clinician. Altman's book is a little vague in the pathology and sometimes too general for a book that should be an all-encompassing reference.



2. This book is outstanding for bird owners who desire to know more about their pets. This book is quite technical in nature, and needs a person who knows a little about anatomy and physiology in order to get the most out of this book. For me, the investment of the high price was worth it.

No comments about Owl Came to Stay.

No comments about Long-Distance Pigeon Racing.

No comments about The Widowhood Book - A Complete Guide to the Best Methods of Racing Pigeons on the Widowhood System as Described by the Foremost Experts in Britain, Belgium and U.S.A.