What does this mean?

My boyfriend adopted a blue fronted amazon. I believe he is male preferential. He bit and drew blood from the caretaker at the bird sanctuary, and bit my mother-in-law in the face.
I feed and care for most of his needs, but have not tried to handle him. Sometimes he seems to call for me from the other room, and others,he is showing me his wing feathers and "huffing." What does this mean?

Amlamb said:

My boyfriend adopted a blue fronted amazon. I believe he is male preferential. He bit and drew blood from the caretaker at the bird sanctuary, and bit my mother-in-law in the face.
I feed and care for most of his needs, but have not tried to handle him. Sometimes he seems to call for me from the other room, and others,he is showing me his wing feathers and "huffing." What does this mean?

Click to expand...

He is displaying in your general direction. You'll have to use the rest of his body language to decipher whether he's displaying at you aggressively or because he's interested in interacting. Read the Amazon body lingo thread. If he's sitting nearly horizontal with a partially open beak, watch out!

He needs interaction, so it would be good if he thinks of you positively.

On edit: I just remembered my DYH used to make a huffing sound, like a whispered, "Hah!" when he felt particularly affectionate toward me. Be sure to take into account other signals he's sending you. I could be misreading him completely because I'm on the other side of a keyboard.

Here are some body language examples.

Happy, and he was purring.


Clearly not happy. Husband took this pic so here is body language showing "I don't like you."


Watch their eyes. Happy here but he will also pin his eyes making happy sounds. Good body language.


This one shocked me. That's my MIL, her first time to meet Buddy and he loved her. She his fluffed tail? Displaying and trying to give her kisses. Punk.


This is mega happy. He hears the exhaust fan and starts to do his shower moves.


Kiwibird has a great photo of Kiwi not happy. She may post it and you will see what I mean. He had fire in his eyes when she took it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Taw5106 said:

Here are some body language examples.

-snip-

Kiwibird has a great photo of Kiwi not happy. She may post it and you will see what I mean. He had fire in his eyes when she took it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Thank you for those photos. You have a lovely Amazon. I just want to remind the OP that tail flaring can either be a sign of affection or a sign of aggression. You have to take into consideration other body cues to know which it is. I loved it when Gabby would display for me, pin his eyes and make that loving sound, a whispered, "Hah!" Thanks for reminding me. I don't want to forget my wonderful Gabby bird. Oh geez, I'm crying again.

Here's a story about bird body language and how my mother missed out on holding Gabby one last time.

Until Gabby was five, he would let most people handle him, but there were a few people he absolutely detested for unknown reasons. At around age five, he became unpredictable toward strangers. One minute he'd be fine and the next he'd try for a hunk of flesh. I decided it was no longer wise to allow strangers to handle him or try to touch him. For several years after he hit puberty, he still let my father and mother handle him. When my father died, only my mother and I could handle him. Then Gabby's hormones kicked into high gear. He delivered a serious bite to my mom and she never had the confidence or courage necessary to work with a one-person double yellowhead. This is perfectly understandable. She still loved Gabby from afar and even laughed when he would try to "get" her. She said it was part of his charm and that they both knew that underneath it all, they still loved each other. I was a bit doubtful about that, but I was lucky to have someone who understood Gabby so well and loved him despite his aggression.

It turns out my mother was right about Gabby still having affection for her. He knew he was sick before we did and suddenly, his hormonal fire was dampened. The week before I figured out Gabby was ill, I drove him out to Mom's house for a visit. We had a really nice time interacting with Gabby. We played "Whee, bird! Woo!": a game we'd invented where I would bend over and Gabby would fall over and hang upside down from my finger. Then, still upside down, he would let go with one foot, wave and say, "Hello" because he knew it always got a laugh out of us.

I showed him my big framed graduation picture and asked him to "kiss Laura." He did and it seemed like he remembered when I was young and thin.

As I was leaving, he put his foot up and asked Mom to pick him up. Usually, this was a Machiavellian maneuver he used to get close enough to bite. This time, however, his body language was completely different. Instead of a lowered head, agape beak and flashing eyes, he stood up straight, eyes dilated and calmly asked to be held by my mother. My mother and I looked at one another in wonder.

"Do we dare?" she asked.

"I think he really means it," I said. "He wants you to hold him, but as soon as he's on you, he could change his mind and you would need stitches." Maybe I was right about this. We'll never know.

During his last week when I knew how sick he was, he was a fixture on my shoulder. He hadn't spent time on my shoulder for quite awhile because I worried about sudden hormonal urges. But now he was quite ill. He was completely safe under those circumstances and just wanted to sit on my shoulder and have his toenails rubbed. I probably should have let my mother hold him, too. It couldn't have been any more stressful than the antibiotics and antifungals we were force-feeding him. But we still held out hope he would recover.

Beneath all those hormones, Gabby was a loving bird. It makes me wonder if veterinary medicine could find a way to safely lower a bird's hormonal urges. I wouldn't want to do it unless it could be reversed and was proven to be safe. That's a pretty tall order. Still, it would probably keep a lot of birds in their original homes because it isn't always easy living with a one-person bird with strong hormonal mood swings.

I'm not sure why I told that story. I guess I'm missing Gabby and anything I can remember from our time together is a gift.