Help needed before i go insane

In desperation I have been searching forums for some advise and help. I don't have any birds but the house across the road has 2 x pink and grey galahs in what I consider a small cage. They never play with them or interract or even talk to them from what I can see. I cant see any toys in their cage just a couple of perches for them. The cage is approx 2 metres high x 1.5 wide x about 1 metre deep.

A few weeks ago these birds started SCREAMING from 5:30am until I go to work at 8:30am and then they start when I get home at around 4-5pm until the sun goes down approx 6pm. They don't stop screaming the whole time.

The last week the screaming is getting louder and louder and invades every square inch of my house as the owners went away and just left the birds in the front yard.

I am going insane and have tried several options including moving to our spare bedroom and even now have prescription medication from the doctor to try and help me relax. All windows and internal doors are closed and we even tried running the noise air conditioner to try and drown out some of the noise. The only time I cant hear them is when the TV is turned up very loud or I am in the shower. Every time they screech I get heart palpitations, sweaty, cant concentrate and have dry reaching and sometimes even vomitting. I cant even use my back deck and my new outdoor setting because the screaminig washing over our whole house which is slightly lower than their McMansion property. I know its not the birds problem but the owner is a policeman and has managed in intimidate the rest of the neighbours to say that they dont have a problem with the birds.

I have put letters in his letterbox and made an official complaint to the Brisbane City Council but all they did was send a letter and when I complained again on Monday they said can take up to 28 days to send somebody out to investigate. I have been videoing every morning using our gopro which doesnt have great audio but gives the general idea of how long the birds scream for until the battery runs out or the card is full (usually an hour).

These poor birds are in a small cage in direct sunlight all day and only a few days ago a very small silver tarp was placed on the roof of their cage as a storm was predicted. I feel sorry for the birds but wish the owners would take responsibility for the birds and rehome them. The owners moved into Brisbane from out west earlier this year and I have heard rumours that the birds were not purchased from a proper breeder and they had just found them in the wild which is supposed to be illegal to keep birds in this way.

If there is anybody out there, especially in Brisbane that can help my sanity and give me my old life back where I dont feel sick and tense all the time it would be appreciated, especially as I am in danger of loosing my job due to lack of ability to concentrate. I used to be one of the top consultants in my field and this month my life is disintegrating.

Do You Have Animal control? They should be able to help especially if there is neglect in their care

Could you call the RSPCA, if those birds are left in the direct sunlight all day long, then i would be screaming too..

It has been incredible hot the past few days, i live just outside of brisbane, and we are getting 36 degree heat..

And my poor bird was panting and soooo upset with the heat, IN THE SHADE! So i put the air con on and he was incredibly happy!

So if the birds are left in sunlight in that horrible intense heat, then i would imagine they are very very hot :/

And if they have no foraging trees, or toys, just stuck in a tiny cage, then the poor things would be bored out of their mind, so screaming is the only thing to do!

Oh and i wouldnt even bother with the council, they do absolutely nothing about animals and complaints!

Maybe try going to the neighbors and come up with the money to buy them. Before you do, find a rescue who is willing to take them if you can get them. Offer the owners what the birds would be worth if they were nice, tame, healthy birds. Do it politely, take neighbors with you. If they say no, keep complaining. Get neighbors to help, surely they hate it too! And that kind of complaint is most likely confidential, but even if not, enough people doing it enough times would get so irritating to whoever is getting the complaints that they might eventually go do something about it just to make you go away. Do it even if you are the only one. Do you have any kind of animal cruelty laws or prevention? Contact them. Contact PETA, contact EVERYONE. Be polite, but be insistent. Channel that anxiety and stress into getting this taken care of - it is killing you! If things go too far, and we hope they don't, you might need to sue. I am so sorry you have to live with this, and sorry for the birds, too. How horrible of a life! Not that cockatoos have EVER been known for being quiet, but that sounds excessive and as a bird lover I believe that we have a responsibility not to make bird haters out of our poor neighbors.

Thanks for the support. I have made complaints to the Brisbane City Council in early September and it took 2 weeks to issue a letter to advise the owners there was a problem. I made the official complaint a few days after I put a letter in the owners letterbox explaining the problem but they ignored my request to cover the birds until a reasonable time of the morning. I have run the council again this week on Monday and they said they have escalated the concern and will send somebody out but can take up to 28 days as they have other cases to take care of. Have also alerted RSPCA and they send a normal return email to say that they will investigate but who knows how long that will take. According to the owners mother and brother who I have seen this week and asked nicely the owners are "going through bleak times" and the birds are not a priority at the moment. They did advise the owners will be back from holidays today but I have approached them twice about their barking dogs earlier in the year and offering training advice and help but once again they said that its just life that dogs bark. At least the barking stopped but these birds are 10 times worse than the dogs. I have also sent a letter to the Police Dept as the owner is a member of the police force and his idea of community relationships needs some work. I guess my next step would be one of the current affair type programs. According to the owners brother "they have approached all the other neighbours and nobody else has a problem and I am a nutcase that everybody hates". Pretty rich as I have lived there for 15 years and have had a great relationship with our past neighbours including next door and across the road until they moved out and these idiots moved in from out west.

I deleted my post because you answered all my questions in your last post above mine. Sorry

I have sent an email to the police since he is a member of the police force. I have spoken to him about his barking dogs early this year and he was quite abusive and dismissive and said the problems are "all about me". When he challenges the other neighbours they told him they dont have a problem as probably too scared to stand up to him. He is friends with my immediate next door neighbour who is in the army and equally as arrogant because he too has barking dogs and the other neighbours have said they are scared of both of them because the threat of them having guns in the house and the safety of their own pets and family.

This is a similar cage to the one that the two galahs are confined to for 24hrs a day outside with only a very small cover over the top added this week but the sun beats on their cage all day.

I'm very surprised the council hasn't done anything. If this were my council and you were complaining about my birds, I'd be out on my ear by now! We have *zero* noise tolerance and you'd better not be making any between 7pm and 7am or you'll be charged with public nuisance.

Things I can think of:
Go to your local ombudsman and find out what your options are.
Engage a solicitor to send a 'cease and desist' letter and sue if need be.
Enquire at your local uni to see if someone can come out and measure the sound level (physics department comes to mind).
Get the RSPCA on side. Diarise everything you see happening to the birds (eg. feeding/watering times, lack of safety, lack of stimulation, lack of protection against the elements. Note down daily temperatures and rainfall in your area so you can prove the birds are subjected to all this. Get the RSPCA to go to bat for you.
Ask at your local member of Parliament's office to see if there's anything they can do for you (regarding failure of council to act).

Come to think of it, do you have a copy of your council's by-laws regarding domestic noise? It could be there are no hard-and-fast regulations (I doubt it, but you never know). Whatever your local regulations are, you have a right to have them upheld. Current affairs shows (starting with your local one) might be the way to go?

Please let us know how you get on!

Going by your city counsel bylaws which you can view here ---> Animal noise - Brisbane City Council


Permitted animal noise levels.
Time Day Noise limit
7am to 10pm

Every day

No more than six minutes animal noise in any hour

10pm to 7am

Every day

No more than three minutes animal noise in any half-hour

Since you have already had a talk with your neighbors about the concern, now it is time to let your city council to do their job. Document everything!!!!! Take pictures, if both of you have cell phones, call the other cell phone from one and record in the voice mail in the other. They have a time stamp on them, from 10pm-7am it's no more then 3 minutes so from 5 am if you can record something that exceeds 10min period you've done your job. I'm not sure how long voice mail lets you record, even making it from your cell phone with recording, there's a time stamp when it is being made as well. Record daily and get the person your working with at the counsel their email address and flood their email with daily messages of their noise with attachment recording. Let them hear what you have to endure every single day.

Well the good news is that the neighbour came home on Saturday so they placed a larger tarp over the top of the cage and this morning we got to sleep in until the tarp was removed at 7am. The bad news is that the tarp was totally removed at 7am so the birds have been in the sun all day. They were a lot quieter this morning as probably happy to have their family home but we went out at 8:30am. This afternoon they have started screeching again at 4:30pm but luckily not quite as loud last week but still grating on my nerves.

The council have acknowledges my additional complaint but still said it can take up to 10 days to sent somebody out to have a talk to them and issue an infringement notice. I have been recording with my gopro every morning but the battery dies after about an hour but still should be sufficient evidence of more than 6 minutes noise during that hour. Knowing my luck the council inspector will come in the middle of the day when you dont hear anything from the birds.

The next concern will be to get help for the birds once the noise problem is solved as I feel sorry for them in such a small cage with no stimulation and sitting in the sun all day. Hopefully the RSPCA will talk to them and an ideal situation would be for them to give up the birds since they dont seem to have any interest in interacting with them or playing with them or taking them inside to enjoy family life. Will keep you updated.

I took a sneaky photo over the fence with our new super duper camera and when I downloaded the photos and zoomed in I can see that there are actually THREE birds in the cage. I have only seen the two x pink and gray galahs because they seem to stay towards the top of the cage but down lower in the photo is a grey bird with a coloured ring around its neck and smaller than the galahs. Reading up on the forums there are lots of discussion that smaller birds shouldn't be in the same cage as galahs so feel sorry for this little guy as he looks very cute. I hope the galahs don't hurt this other bird in boredom or something.

Daisygirl, it might be a Ringnecked Dove in the cage (does it look dovely/pigeonly?) That would be *highly* inappropriate and stressful to the bird!

The third bird in the cage looks like this. Hubby rang today and said RSPCA have been out but he didnt see them take any photos or many notes (he is painting the front of the house on a scaffold so can see the whole neighbourhood). I also had a lady visit my office today who helps RSPCA with wildlife and said I would send some photos to see what she can do as she said it doesnt sound like the birds are in a good position and may develop more problems such as feather plucking if they are not being mentally stimulated

If they are in the front yard I would be tempted to cut some bird safe branches with leaves and place them over the cage. One to provide shade. Two to give them something to do and may be some where to hide a little.

It's a lovely Indian Ringneck! They really need to be able to fly, even more so than Galahs. What a shame about the tiny cage.

ShellyBorg said:

If they are in the front yard I would be tempted to cut some bird safe branches with leaves and place them over the cage. One to provide shade. Two to give them something to do and may be some where to hide a little.

Click to expand...

The owner is a police officer and I am scared to enter his property. I have knocked on his door twice in April regarding his barking dogs (once at 7:30am and 2 days later at 2:30am in the morning). The next door neighbour is in the army and good friends with this bird neighbour across the road. They both yell at me for "annoying them at inappropriate times" and even his brother-in-law last week mentioned this fact when I asked him to place a tarp over the cage. I only knocked at 2:30am in the morning in desperation because I hadnt had a wink of sleep that night and the dog had barked every night for a week.

Therefore the only way I can help the birds is to get the authorities involved and do it all "by the book".

How stressful for you and for the birds. And its very horrible that those three poor babies are squished into that small cage. I really really hope something is done about this ASAP so that you can have your rest and the birds can have a better home.

daisygirl said:

ShellyBorg said:

If they are in the front yard I would be tempted to cut some bird safe branches with leaves and place them over the cage. One to provide shade. Two to give them something to do and may be some where to hide a little.

Click to expand...

The owner is a police officer and I am scared to enter his property. I have knocked on his door twice in April regarding his barking dogs (once at 7:30am and 2 days later at 2:30am in the morning). The next door neighbour is in the army and good friends with this bird neighbour across the road. They both yell at me for "annoying them at inappropriate times" and even his brother-in-law last week mentioned this fact when I asked him to place a tarp over the cage. I only knocked at 2:30am in the morning in desperation because I hadnt had a wink of sleep that night and the dog had barked every night for a week.

Therefore the only way I can help the birds is to get the authorities involved and do it all "by the book".

Click to expand...

Some people just like drama and live to stir the pot. I would use his own words against him, his animals are "annoying you at inappropriate times" I can't stand people like this who think that the laws only apply to others. And he is police officer. He's setting a really bad example for law enforcement. Same goes for his military "friend."

We had squatters living next door to us for over a year. They had two very protective pits. I couldn't even walk down my driveway without these dogs wanting to shred us to pieces. Finally, I just decided to make nice with the dogs. Offering them "cookies" at every opportunity. It didn't matter what it was, everything was a "cookie" One would even sit for me, of I told him to sit. It took about a month to win these dogs over but we did it and they stopped wanting to shred us and would welcome me home by sitting at the fence. Of course I would praise them and give them a cookie for being so good. I know this isn't your situation, but just thought I'd share it anyway.

LOL! Wendy, did it occur to you the owners might not have *wanted* you to tame their ferocious pitbulls? LOLOLOL! Well done you! Dogs don't deserve to be made perpetually angry/anxious all the time.

I have a similar story, although it didn't end quite so well. When I was at Uni, I spent one vacation at my boyfriend's sheep farm. The first morning, I got up early and went out to have a look around. I found all the farm dogs tethered by chains to hollow logs, where they obviously slept. Thinking the whole setup was a bit sorrowful, I shared my breakfast toast with the dogs (six of them) and spent a good while petting them and making much of them.

Later that day, a ram lamb was found in the ewe's paddock. He had to be removed! Guess what? Not *one* of the dogs would work for my boyfriend's father: all they wanted to do was dance around me in the hope of more toast and affection. I nearly died of embarrassment. After the tongue-lashing I got from the farmer, I nearly died of vocabulary!