Lone Amazon laying eggs. Advice please!?

Hi Everyone,

I posted this on the Questions and Answers page, but wanted to put it on here too. I hope that doesn't break any forum rules. Sorry it's so long, but it's 2 posts put together...

"Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for some advice. I have an Orange-winged Amazon, she's only been with us for about 2 months and we rescued her when her first owner died and the family didn't want her.

They could hardly give us any information about her, they weren't sure how old she was, but she had laid an egg in the past - this is how they knew she was a female - and her personality had changed from taking food from their hands and mouths to not wanting them anywhere near her. We guess then that she was between 3 and 6 and was going through parrot puberty. What do other people think?

My husband has had birds in the past, but this is our first parrot. She generally wants nothing to do with us, but she will take food from our fingers. Initially she would squawk if we got too close to her particularly if we put our hands too close. She will now tolerate me more than my husband and she will put her foot on my finger, I think this is her stopped me from getting any closer rather than a first step of "stepping up", but she will still shout at my husband.

Over the past few days she has become very very destructive, she stopped taking food from our hands and she started to spend time at the bottom of her cage ripping up the newspaper. Today we have found an egg in the cage! We read that it's bad to encourage a female parrot who is bonded to a human to consider the human as their mate as they may become stimulated to lay an egg (for their mate) so don't touch their backs or tails etc... we don't touch her at all and she still has! I've read that it's bad as it can lead to malnutrition as the egg takes up so much energy. I think she's fallen for one of her toys in her cage, should we take the toy out of the cage?

Any advice would be very helpful.

Thank you"

...About a week and a half later...

"Hi Everyone,

Since my first post Charlie laid another egg the day after the first. We put the first egg back in and she stayed around them both for about 2 days. Either accidentally or deliberately she broke one of them and ate it. By the end of the day she had done the same to the other one. She didn't pay either of them much attention even when they were whole and didn't spend much time with them. Since then she has laid another and seems to have been incubating this one for a couple of days. Today she has started to leave it a bit, but she is being very protective of it. It looks like she has another one ready to come out too!

Is there anything we should or shouldn't be doing? She actually laid the second egg in a cabinet next to the cage where she had ripped up paper. We've moved this now and we're keeping her in her cage, she has a nest in the corner at the bottom. We took out the newspaper from the bottom of the cage, as someone suggested, as she was ripping this up for nesting material.

We had been letting her rip up old books before she laid as she seemed to enjoy this. Could this have triggered a breeding instinct in her or do you think she was doing this because she already felt that she needed to make a nest?

I'm getting a bit worried now because I can't see it stopping even though we've left her to it and allowed her to go through the whole laying, incubating and now apparently getting bored process - we haven't taken the most recent egg away. I think she might just keep on laying!

Any advice much appreciated!

Thank you"

I think i responded to your post in the behavior section. Maybe a mod could delete this duplicate thread.

sorry "question and answer" section