chad246emr
New member
Hello all,
My name is Chad and this is my first post. I'll briefly introduce myself before asking my questions - I'm 24 years old and I live in South Florida. I've had birds my entire life and I'm no stranger to birds from less than ideal situations who've developed behavioral issues as a result of that. However, I recently adopted a quaker from a parrot rescue, who I've named Oscar, and I'm finding his behavior very challenging.
I can usually make sense of any bird's behavior. I can tell why they're acting out, biting, screaming, etc, and I can make necessary adjustments to correct the behavior, or redirect and replace with a positive one. However, this quaker has some odd habits and the longer I work with him, the more I both understand him and also lose direction on how I should address his behaviors.
When I adopted him, I was told that he was a 5 year old male quaker who was previously cage bound, but had a sweet personality. He is a plucker, though he only seems to pluck around his ankles, under his wings, the tippy tops of his "shoulders," and around the base of his tail/preening gland. Without close examination, even though he's removed quite a bit of feathers, you can't even tell he's a plucker. I was told he was cage aggressive which didn't shock me because quakers have a tendency to be such, plus he was cage bound. I was also told that he would step up, which is sort of true, but I'll touch on that in a bit.
Cage aggression: As the rescuer indicated, he is indeed cage aggressive. If I put my hand anywhere near his cage he will walk over to it and lunge and try to bite me. Since he is a smaller bird and his bites don't really concern me (even though when he's trying he can definitely leave a mark) I just stick my hand in the cage, tell him to step up, and after a nice bite he leaps right into my hand. But that leaping is what brings me to what I realized today, and what is confusing me...
His "stepping" up: I put stepping up in quotes because its more like a dramatic and rushed leap into your hand. He's definitely not eager to step up, and its almost as if he's doing it because he doesn't know what else to do, and he just doesn't want to be harmed. Whenever he is on my hand, his head is lowered and his tail is fanned out. I don't know too much about his care before he was rescued, but even though he knows what "step up" means, (he will literally turn around, walk six inches, and leap into my hand if I say the command) it seems like he absolutely abhors doing it and doesn't associate human hands with anything other than fear. It is this fear that leads me to believe he is not truly cage aggressive due to territoriality, but he just doesn't want to be handled or removed from his cage so he bites anything that comes near. Before I realized this, I had been doing some step up exercises with him in his cage to get him over his fear. He will not bite when he's on my hand. He just cowers and fans his tail, but as soon as he is off my hand, he bites. However, if I say "step up" he leaps right into my hand, and it repeats once he steps down again.
Basically, what I've concluded is that he is afraid of hands, afraid of people in general, and does not want to be taken out of his cage. He has at some point before coming into my care been abused by hands, and also forced against his will to step up so much so that he doesn't even understand that its actually a positive interaction. I talk sweetly to him and give him kisses, but he just acts miserable the entire time until I put him down. When he is out of his cage, he is happy on his play stand if I'm not around, but as soon as I come near him he freezes solid and runs back into his cage if he can.
I don't know how to address this. Typically, I would just work with a bird who didn't trust people, talk sweetly to them, and build their trust until they appreciated what human interaction was. However, because he is so purely terrified of people, hands, and being taken out of his cage, I don't know how to make this better. I feel like if I work with him, I'm stressing him out which will only make him trust people less and pluck more, but if I leave him alone I'm obviously not fixing anything and he will continue to pluck and remain cage-bound.
I'm fully aware that I've basically written a novel here, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible when describing this situation. As much as Oscar is a lot of work, I love the little guy. He get's excited when I come home and calls to me and if I catch him when he's in a decent mood I can tell he enjoys it when I talk to him through the cage, but for the most part he dreads my company. It makes me really upset to think that someone could have treated him so poorly that he is this distressed, and I want to make him happier.
Does anyone have any ideas or insight into how I can best help this guy?
My name is Chad and this is my first post. I'll briefly introduce myself before asking my questions - I'm 24 years old and I live in South Florida. I've had birds my entire life and I'm no stranger to birds from less than ideal situations who've developed behavioral issues as a result of that. However, I recently adopted a quaker from a parrot rescue, who I've named Oscar, and I'm finding his behavior very challenging.
I can usually make sense of any bird's behavior. I can tell why they're acting out, biting, screaming, etc, and I can make necessary adjustments to correct the behavior, or redirect and replace with a positive one. However, this quaker has some odd habits and the longer I work with him, the more I both understand him and also lose direction on how I should address his behaviors.
When I adopted him, I was told that he was a 5 year old male quaker who was previously cage bound, but had a sweet personality. He is a plucker, though he only seems to pluck around his ankles, under his wings, the tippy tops of his "shoulders," and around the base of his tail/preening gland. Without close examination, even though he's removed quite a bit of feathers, you can't even tell he's a plucker. I was told he was cage aggressive which didn't shock me because quakers have a tendency to be such, plus he was cage bound. I was also told that he would step up, which is sort of true, but I'll touch on that in a bit.
Cage aggression: As the rescuer indicated, he is indeed cage aggressive. If I put my hand anywhere near his cage he will walk over to it and lunge and try to bite me. Since he is a smaller bird and his bites don't really concern me (even though when he's trying he can definitely leave a mark) I just stick my hand in the cage, tell him to step up, and after a nice bite he leaps right into my hand. But that leaping is what brings me to what I realized today, and what is confusing me...
His "stepping" up: I put stepping up in quotes because its more like a dramatic and rushed leap into your hand. He's definitely not eager to step up, and its almost as if he's doing it because he doesn't know what else to do, and he just doesn't want to be harmed. Whenever he is on my hand, his head is lowered and his tail is fanned out. I don't know too much about his care before he was rescued, but even though he knows what "step up" means, (he will literally turn around, walk six inches, and leap into my hand if I say the command) it seems like he absolutely abhors doing it and doesn't associate human hands with anything other than fear. It is this fear that leads me to believe he is not truly cage aggressive due to territoriality, but he just doesn't want to be handled or removed from his cage so he bites anything that comes near. Before I realized this, I had been doing some step up exercises with him in his cage to get him over his fear. He will not bite when he's on my hand. He just cowers and fans his tail, but as soon as he is off my hand, he bites. However, if I say "step up" he leaps right into my hand, and it repeats once he steps down again.
Basically, what I've concluded is that he is afraid of hands, afraid of people in general, and does not want to be taken out of his cage. He has at some point before coming into my care been abused by hands, and also forced against his will to step up so much so that he doesn't even understand that its actually a positive interaction. I talk sweetly to him and give him kisses, but he just acts miserable the entire time until I put him down. When he is out of his cage, he is happy on his play stand if I'm not around, but as soon as I come near him he freezes solid and runs back into his cage if he can.
I don't know how to address this. Typically, I would just work with a bird who didn't trust people, talk sweetly to them, and build their trust until they appreciated what human interaction was. However, because he is so purely terrified of people, hands, and being taken out of his cage, I don't know how to make this better. I feel like if I work with him, I'm stressing him out which will only make him trust people less and pluck more, but if I leave him alone I'm obviously not fixing anything and he will continue to pluck and remain cage-bound.
I'm fully aware that I've basically written a novel here, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible when describing this situation. As much as Oscar is a lot of work, I love the little guy. He get's excited when I come home and calls to me and if I catch him when he's in a decent mood I can tell he enjoys it when I talk to him through the cage, but for the most part he dreads my company. It makes me really upset to think that someone could have treated him so poorly that he is this distressed, and I want to make him happier.
Does anyone have any ideas or insight into how I can best help this guy?
