Jasmine And Her Tousle With Poor Air Quality

Jasmine loves to take showers these days. She goes into the bathroom and takes a proper shower, and if she doesn't get a chance to do that, she splashes in her water bowl. Here she is with her tummy still wet from having taken a shower earlier in the morning.



She likes to hang out on her play station and play with her toys.







Well, she does for a short while and then she starts flying...



























...from chair to chair (and even to lamps, even though lamps aren't 'allowed').




But she never stays in one place for long...













Back to the play station...













On to the top of the air filter (this too is forbidden territory because she could reach the electrical cable and chomp on it - not a good idea!)

The air filter has always been placed three or four feet from Jazzy's cage and we thought this should work for the entire room.

But we live in an apartment block near a major road and the air quality is often poor. Neighbors use strong cleaning agents, laundry detergents and fabric softeners so that regularly throughout the day some chemical agent enters the apartment. Pesticides are used on the nearby fields to safeguard the crops. There are also at least three building sites for new apartment building complexes within one to two blocks of our place. Several times a day there is a constant stream of cars and buses going to and from the school at the end of our road. To sum it all up: that's a fair amount of pollution.

African Greys are known to have allergies and be sensitive to air quality. Jazzy already had allergies before she came to live with us. She scratches at the back of her neck, and I've noticed that this regularly coincides with when I'm experiencing difficulties with the air myself.

Recently Jazzy had become constantly very very loud and even aggressive. She has also been scratching tonnes more and, as a result, has lost even more of the little feathers on her neck, leaving soft down exposed. No matter how many toys I gave her or how much I tried to entertain her it didn't solve her dissatisfaction.

The air quality around here has become noticeably worse in the last month or so and in desperation, after weeks of enduring Jazzy's very loud and poor behavior, I put the air filter a foot away from her cage and pointed the vents under it. It's absolutely incredible how changed she is since then: she's extremely gentle, she chats but doesn't heckle, she's playing with her toys like never before. Her aggression is totally gone. She's bright and sparky again - a happy bird!

With such a dramatic change in her behavior from being so consistently difficult to transforming into just about angelic with the filter close to her, I wonder how many other pet birds there are who are having difficulties with the air quality around them? For more information about the air filter see previous post: "Air Filters For Asthma, Allergies and Chemical Sensitivity". I'm so pleased to see her happy again. She plays with her beads...




...chomps on her straw toys...










...stops to take a breather...















...and of course, does silly things for fun and to make us all laugh.