Photography : Birds : An Artistically Preening Cockatiel
My pet bird, Lupin, sits on my shoulder and preens his feathers, which involves running all of them through his beak to align the tiny bards on the vanes of each feather. While I have an entire page devoted photos of Lupin, I will only share one picture here in the photography gallery because I like the way the light falls on his feathers and how his sly little eye peers over his back. Lupin is a cockatiel, a small parrot about 12 inches (30 cm) long with an amazingly expressive crest. Normal cockatiels are mostly gray with orange ear patches and yelllow crests, but Lupin is a lutino, a mutation that lacks the gray pigmentation. This means his eyes are hazel rather than black.
