The idea of Rickie & the birdbrains started out , because the smart bird Lulu Goffini was bored with life as a wild bird, born in captivity.
He developed very neurotic behaviour, and i was desperate to find a cure for that; a neurotic cockatoo is hard to live with; ecessive srceaming and biting are the reasons why people get rid of them...i didn't want to.
I talked to a lot of "specialists" , who couldn't answer my questions; but always told me in the end , when they got bored by my prodding, that there was this very arrogant and mean guy , that i shouldn't see, and so in the end i went to him, because THEY didn't have any answers, and they were talking mean about him, so i figured he might have something to tell me that i didn't know...
The best avian veterinarian in Holland AND Berlin to my personal experience, he turned out to be, drs. Jan Hooimeyer, and on his advice, we started to play the craziest games together, and perform for the neighbourhood children.
We also started to go for long bycicle rides together; to the woods, and the market, and this totally changed this bird from a neurotic, agressive, screaming biting white whirlwind, into a very sweet and intelligent creature, who loves to give money whenever we buy someting at the market, say hello to people and little children instead of biting them and screaming at them, and who can actually read; he recognises EVERY letter of the alphabet...although when performing, he'd rather focus on escaping into the audience, and finding a nice person on whom's lap to perch and maybe get some nice petting done....and of course APPLAUSE!!!
My mistake during this particular performance was, not to ask for applause for EVERY single letter he pointed out; you can see him looking at the audience, waiting for it, and i was too pushy, and the audience was unsure to do it on their own initiative; they didn't want to disturb too ( they were a very very sweet audience), so he didn't want to finish the job...but hey; it goes the way it goes,
and performing should be fun, so we're not going to take things too seriously; let's CLOWN!!!!!
Rickie & the Birdbrains; a proper philosophy towards pets
On You Tube there is an artist called Loetje, aka Rickie, who performs theatrical improvisations with birds. The following is a wonderful explanation of how the birds came to be included in shows: