- Hey guys, Dave Womach here from Bird Tricks
answering some of your questions
about Tusa our Camelot Macaw.
(chill electronic music)
So the first question is,
is there a reason why Tusa is more mine?
Because I'm his favorite.
That's why.
You know, sometimes birds just pick their favorite person
and, naturally, I was his favorite person.
Jamie does try to steal him by doing lots and lots
of training and will win him over for a little while,
and then the moment she stops, he's all mine again.
So it goes the same way with the other birds too, you know,
but most of them prefer her.
- Tusa is primarily my husband's macaw, however,
we still have a good relationship,
(kisses) right? (Tusa squawks)
We still do stuff.
I just have to work a lot harder to be his BFF.
Takes a lot more effort on my part,
whereas Dave it takes very minimal effort if any at all
'cause Tusa naturally likes him.
And you may see, most of the time
when I'm showing stuff with Tusa,
I am specifically working with him,
so we are seeing a very good relationship of ours.
Today, you might see a little less tolerance
for me because he's back to liking Dave the most.
He's also a little bit not content right now.
He really wants to be outside with the other birds
because I just moved the aviaries outside.
So he'd rather be in the sunshine right now versus inside
with me filming a video.
You hopping in?
Do you wanna to come?
Nope. Okay.
So I'm gonna show you what it means to be, (chuckles)
aw thanks, the lesser person.
The other thing is he literally just had breakfast,
so instead of working before breakfast, like I should be,
I'm asking him to do something he doesn't necessarily want
to do after breakfast where there's little incentive.
(Tusa squawks)
Yeah, so that's his grumbly, "I don't want to come to you."
Will you wave?
Tus, will you wave?
Nope. Not even waving.
Okay. Will you come?
Thank you.
Whoa, we go upside down. Good boy.
So this is the latest thing that Tusa and I are working on.
He will do it for Dave.
I think Dave tried it the other day and had success.
- [Dave] He just hasn't really done it for me.
- [Jamie] Well now he has. Good.
Well would you look at that? It's trained.
- What kind of macaw is Tusa?
He is a Camelot Macaw which is a type of hybrid.
Is that correct?
From the front, he looks a lot like my other Camelot Macaw,
Comet, but Tusa is a blue, green dominant Camelot Macaw
which means he's mostly blue and green on the back,
whereas my yellow dominant Camelot Macaw, Comet,
is mostly yellow.
So from the back, it's way easier to tell them apart,
whereas from the front, they both have this bright,
bright orange chest so it can be a little bit harder.
But they're quite different in personality,
so it's fairly easy to tell them apart no matter what.
- When and where did we get 'em?
This was actually kinda cool because we got 'em from
a breeder out of Florida who lets all the birds free fly
and whoever they mate with they mate with.
And so we got to pick out, there was a clutch of three,
there's Tusa who looks more like a Catalina.
Then there was Comet with the gold,
and then there's a third one with red on his back,
and he was more of the Scarlet look.
And so we got to pick 'em out.
And I still member, we had this picture,
we were on a cruise ship, and we bought them.
We picked them out, and we have this picture printed out
on our wall forever until we got off the ship.
And then they were sent to us in Florida
where we raised 'em.
So the next question's, what can he say?
He only says one thing.
We'll see. Can we get you to do it?
Hello.
Course not. (laughs)
He usually does it when you first get him out
of the cage and he's super excited to see me,
and we can usually like re-stimulate him
just by like, doing what I did, but it didn't matter today.
He didn't care, but that's all he says, hello.
I'm sure everybody's seen how-
- Hello. Oh, hello.
(woman laughing)
Hello.
- Now you guys did ask what are some things
that are unique to Tusa?
One, is he's obsessed with shirts and textures,
and he will pull at your clothing
which I find it a little bit endearing.
Some people might find that super annoying.
Just kinda depends on what your preference is,
but he's the only one that does it out of my entire flock.
- He goes in this mode anytime if we have them loose
in the car with us, or I should say in the truck,
and he will just do that the whole time,
but he gets louder and louder and it's just like this,
I don't know, almost a self entertaining,
obnoxious squawk that (Tusa squawks)
is like this and louder for hours.
He's probably the most like baseline of all of our birds.
He doesn't really have these mood spikes or energy spikes.
He's pretty consistently awesome.
Does (mumbles) and I don't know how to answer that.
Does he have any bad habits?
Yes. He makes that really annoying noise on car rides.
(mimics bird)
- [Jamie] He also chews on his leg band.
- Oh yeah.
Sometimes if you're just sitting there,
he'll put his leg band in his mouth and just spin it
and it's just like grindy.
- What is Tusa's favorite activity with Comet?
That's probably when they're outside preening
or having a bath, although no, just preening
because they usually argue over who's getting
the most water for a bath.
- Yeah, who asks that?
How big are their poops, and how often do they poop?
What about you? (Jamie laughing)
(Dave laughing)
I would say...
Hey, can you hand me that lens cap?
- [Jamie] We'll show it next time.
Let's just show it next time.
- That's disgusting.
I would say that when it splats on the floor,
it makes a circumference about the size of this lens cap.
You gotta poop? He pooped.
If you wanna see what it looks like.
You're curious.
- [Jamie] Oh, that was a small one.
That was a small one. (laughing)
- [Dave] There you go.
- So this question is asking if Tusa screams
when I leave the room.
So if I leave the room, he will make a contact call.
So I'll see if I can actually get him to do that now
for you guys.
It's not super loud, but it's just enough
that he's kinda wondering where I'm at.
So I'll put the camera on him, and I'll walk out
so you guys can hear.
And depending on what I do in return,
determines what he does
and how loud he gets. (Tusa squawks)
So that's the first one.
(Tusa squawks)
So that was just this basic little contact call
wondering where I'm at.
If I full on leave him and go somewhere
where he wants to go with me, he will yell,
and I'll show you what it sounds like. (laughs)
(Tusa squawks)
(Tusa loudly squawking)
So that's him thinking that I went out
to the aviaries without him.
(Jamie laughing)
So yeah, he can get loud.
You guys ever wondered? That's what happens.
So yeah, the first time that I left
and just got his basic contact call,
I just went into my room.
I didn't shut any doors. I didn't go very far.
He knows the layout of my house, so he knows where I was.
The second time that I knew it would really get him
to freak out was I acted like I went out
to the aviaries with all the other birds,
and he wants to go out there really bad right now.
So he was pissed. (laughs)
Yeah, so that's a little demo.
Hope you guys enjoyed that. (laughs)
- What are Tusa's hormonal triggers?
And that actually kinda got me for a second
because I've never seen him hormonal.
So clearly it's not me.
- So the other question is does Tusa preen Comet
in the areas that Comet can't reach?
Yes, they are best buddies.
That doesn't mean that they get along 100% of the time,
but for the most part, they're super, super good together.
So I do house them together so
that they can preen each other every once in a while
and just kinda hang out.
And then I do house them separately,
so they have their alone time as well.
And I try to do it before they give me any indication
that they are sick of each other or growing tiresome
of each other's company.
- Is Tusa a jealous bird? No.
He's super mellow.
And he's like this whether I've got 80 other birds
on me or no other birds.
- Is he beaky?
Does he bite more than your blue-throated macaw?
He's beaky in the sense that I don't normally wear
these types of shirts around him,
but I thought I would show you what it looks like.
He will grab onto little buttons.
He's just obsessed with clothing,
and he's doing it as a means to get my attention.
He is trying to communicate to me like,
"Hey, take me outside. I wanna go out.
"I wanna be outside in the aviary.
"I wanna be with everybody else.
"What do I have to do to get your attention human?"
So he is pulling on my shirt like a little kid would pull
on your sleeve or pull on you to get your attention.
He does do that.
- The next question is, does Tusa interact with Capri?
And there have been some interactions,
but I have to say that she's more intimidated by him than
she is the medium size and smaller.
So I would say give it another year or less,
and she's already been skydiving 'cause she's crazy,
but I don't know.
You don't really...
I don't think you're intimidating.
I think she'll be interacting with it this year.
That's gonna be my goal, actually.
- What trick do you find the cutest of all of his tricks?
I think it's going upside down currently
because it was a huge breakthrough for me,
and he looks so vulnerable like that
that I really like it.
So somebody asked if our 60/40 rule
is hard to maintain with Tusa.
And I would say it's hard for me to remember not
to overdo it.
There was one point in time
where I was working on Tusa going on his back
so much that in my mind it was hard for Tusa
because it's very emotional and it's very vulnerable
for him, and I'm not his favorite person.
So it probably would've happened more easily
if Dave would've trained it.
But I was working on it consistently,
and it was actually backstage,
when Dave went to get Tusa ready for a show,
and Tusa didn't wanna go to him that Dave's like,
"Are you takin' it a little far?" (chuckles)
So I hadn't realized how much it was making
the bond between me and Tusa really, really strong.
And on that same trip, we of course tied in
a free flight trip, and Tusa was only really wanting
to land on me.
So it had actually caused a little bit of a problem just
because I have all of our other birds who liked
to land on me as well, and it was just becoming really hard
to hold all of them at once.
And then Dave literally had nobody, and I was like,
"I'm so sorry."
So (laughs) it can be hard to maintain
just when you forget how the balance is changing.
But for the most part, if Dave just makes minimal effort,
it'll come back.
It just happened to be that I had a lot more downtime
with him backstage.
We were doing a lot of shows.
It was happening a little bit more consistently.
Where normally, my training sessions with him
are a tad bit more sporadic.
I will show you guys one more time his trick
of going upside down 'cause he's doing so good.
(kisses) Ah, so good.
He's not letting go to my hands yet, but we'll get there.
Huh, bud.
You're doing awesome.
So I'm gonna take him out to the aviary
where he's wanted to be this entire time, (laughs)
and I'll take you guys with us so you can watch.
All right, finally!
Finished the video. We're going outside!
Conure's are excited to see you.
(birds squawking)
Let's go.
Hey (indistinct).
(birds squawking)
Woo!
So happy. Is that better?
Is that better?
Gonna get some sun,
some fresh air, some water.
There's his brother watching what he's doing.
Where was he Comet?
Where'd he go for a while? (Comet squawking)
(Jamie laughs)
- All right, so the final question
was how did we choose his name?
And being entertainers that worked on ships,
we scuba dived a lot, a lot,
and Tusa is brand of scuba diving gear.
And so, for us, it's kind of important
that most of our birds have unique names.
Cressi is a scuba diving name.
It's an Italian brand that's really cool.
And yeah, so he's named after scuba diving gear
because we figured there's probably no other parrot out
there with that name
'cause it's kind of a unique name and yeah.
That's all I got for ya.
08, you're 12.
He's 12, not 10.
(kisses)