Female 8 month Eckie screaming

Hey Guys!!!
So I have a 8 month old female (got her at 3 months) . Just up until about a few weeks ago, she's been a quiet bird for the most part... she will squawk occasionally when she gets excited and talks to herself a lot during the day ( I work from home so half the time she is with me either in my studio or on top of her play stand/ cage in the living room.
Since we got her, her cage has been in the corner of the living room in between two huge floor to ceiling windows so she can see outside clearly into the backyard which she seems to like.
Here's the problem -
In the late afternoon/ evening when my boyfriend comes home from work we are all hanging out in the living room (which is also the kitchen area , all open space) watching TV, cooking, etc and I feed her and let her out on top of the cage. She has PLENTY of toys , good food, etc however she recently started this habit of screaming extremely high pitched , ear piercing screams out of nowhere. One minute she will be playing or eating, next she will scream and doesn't seem to be in any sort of distress. I recognize the type of scream as her alert call, because about a month ago there were workers in our backyard and they clearly upset her because she was making that same high pitched alert call over and over while watching them. I just spoke to her in a low voice saying, "it's ok, it's ok"
Now i've read that when they scream, you're supposed to just ignore them or leave the room. Sometimes I cannot leave the room when she does it because i'm cooking but i've tried just ignoring her and it doesn't seem to help. She seems to be doing it more frequently (now in the mornings as well) and I have been trying to just turn around and leave the room whenever she does it and only come back in the room when she stops.
Is there anything else I can do to correct this behavior? Is it an age thing? I've found that i'm super tense lately because the screams are so unpredictable and ear piercing that i'm like constantly holding my breath . Should I try moving her cage away from the windows? I find she does it most when she's on top of her cage , almost like a dominance call . She never does it when she's in the studio with me.
Please help, Thanks guys !

You mention that she will do it while you are cooking. Do you happen to be running water a lot while you cook? My female Ekkie is half duck, I swear, and she gets pretty worked up when I do dishes or run water to cook with. It's about the only time she ever gets loud. I don't know what you could do to stop it, I personally just accept that she is gonna get loud if I'm running water. I thought I'd bring it up because that could be the trigger.

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Calling at around sunrise and sunset is typical bird behavior. The wild ones do it, aparently it is a flock thing to do with feeding time, probably like guys calling their mates to go to the pub after work. Most parrots retain most of their natural tendencies, so the sunset screeching is pretty normal, especially if they hear other birds screeching while they fly past.

It also can be the bird wanting something, but personally I think that is less often the case at the "suicide hour". One of our eckies is also sensitive to noise, and screeches if the vacuum cleaner is on. Or the mower, or whipper snipper, or food mixer...

You can cover their cage which tends to settle them down, or reward the quiet behavior. Our eckies used to screech beyond belief 6 months ago, so loud and grating that you'd feel sensory overload. They are much better now, except when the wild lorikeets fly past calling.

I was also going to mention the wild birds. Pebbles (my female eclectus) is generally quiet, but Gizmo (our male) loves to tell the lorikeets who's house they are flying past. I actually didn't pick up on it initially, until one day I was playing back a video and the lorikeets were making a lot of noise (the lorikeets make noise every day and I had just stopped hearing it over time, like the occasional train noise).

Gizmo will also get noisy around boiling kettles, running water, vacuum cleaners, sizzling fry pans, etc, I think he associates all these with a shower, which he is obsessed with. For the most part I ignore it (as it's not often and mostly around that bird witching hour), but if he gets too carried away, I will cover the cage and give him a time out.

I have also found a good flying session before cooking dinner takes the excess energy out of him (that might help if she is getting confident in flying).

Other thoughts might be something happening like a reflection etc, as the sun sets, that she is seeing and getting startled over. If you have a video recorder, I would certainly recommend setting it up and recording her, you would be surprise what you miss that could be a cause.

Best of luck and please keep us updated, I do sympathise, Pebbles has a distress call that would wake the dead, so I could imagine knowing it is coming but not when would be very stressful.

Our female ecky sounds like a smoke alarm when any of the triggers that everyone has mentioned occur. Maybe it's an ecky thing & we should Just get used to it haha 😊

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With the mention of wild birds, it could even be a bird of prey she is seeing out the window. If a hawk or eagle has taken to hanging around your house, that may be causing her to call out to warn you that there is a predator nearby. That is what would happen in their native habitat, one flock member would warn the others of danger.

Quite frankly, if something she views as dangerous is the reason she is calling, you are not going to train her to stop. That would be like training her to accept being eaten.

Thanks guys!
She doesn't seem to mind when the vacuum is on... if anything she just chats to herself when there are noises in the house.
As far as the sunset/ sunrise thing... ya I understand it's that "parrot witching hour" for them haha . Someone mentioned covering the cage for a brief period when they get out of hand for a time out and to calm them down... I actually was doing this but stopped because I wasn't sure if it was a good idea.
It's funny... I think the wild bird thing could be a big part of it. There is a huge hawk that occasionally circles outside our house so maybe she is seeing that. Do you think moving her cage away from the large windows would make her feel safer?

Possibly. I have my Ekkie in the living room, but not next to the window. However, her playstand is in front if the windows, so she does get her window time, is just not all the time. You could try even moving hey away from the window when she starts screaming, just to see if it is something outside triggering her.

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Regarding the moving away from the window idea, when I first got Pebbles, she was a very nervous girl and having all sides of the cage open (like being in the centre of the room) would make her very jumpy. She is much more settled and becoming very outgoing (not all for the best, as the other week I thought she had got out of the house, but she was just happily exploring the top of the bookcase, watching me run around in a panic looking for her ), but even now her cage is against the wall and one side against a cupboard. I think this makes her feel safer, as she knows behind her is secure.

It might not be the case here, but if something is startling her, I could imagine she might feel exposed when she is on the cage with the window behind her and the room in front as in this case being on top of the cage, she also won't feel the safety of being in the cage. This obviously could then heighten her senses and with dinner being cooked and activity around, the smallest thing, something outside, a moving shadow, etc. may be triggering her alarm call.

Do you have curtains/blinds that close? Perhaps closing them at these times might help diagnose the problem (assuming she is used to these being opened and closed).

In my early experience with Pebbles, I found that fear can escalate, I had many times where Pebbles had taken steps forward only to go backwards several steps over the smallest of things, I think they can develope a mindset of fear and start looking for fearful things (and I think Pebbles was the extreme example of this when I first got her).

Not to suggest that your girl is on that path, but if she is alarm calling, I think it's worth taking steps to find the cause or remove the cause (which of cause you are doing, and is the reason for your post). I do a lot of things around Pebbles these days that would have absolutely freaked her out early on, some of that was surely due to new environment, and training and building trust has surely helped remove fear, but I also believe that she has stopped looking for fearful things. Something new now might result in an initial flight response, but that soon changes to curiosity (can I eat it, or destroy it).

Sorry for the long winded reply, I just wanted to give some context to my thoughts.

Is she a confident flyer? I was also thinking (as has been suggested) perhaps instead of moving the cage, you could provide a stand nearby, that she can choose to move to, or perhaps when she alarms go over to her and move her to the perch?

Some excellent suggestions, above. Fact is, at this point you actually don't know if the sound she's making is an evening call, an alarm call, or a tantrum type scream. (I have found that some ekkie owners think they've heard their ekkie's alarm call... until they actually do! Rude awakening, that! Lol!)

If you are confident that this is the alarm call (you'll know by the paint peeling off your walls and the beginnings of tinnitus ringing merrily through your auditory canals... just beyond where your eardrums used to be), then chances are the window views by the cage are indeed the problem. Or she might be freaked out by your boyfriend for whatever reason.

The first priority is to figure out the cause. So, a few questions:
1) Does she do this call every evening? At the same ballpark time?
2) Does the screaming mostly coincide with your boyfriend's time in the house? And is she generally at ease around him?
2B) If the screaming does coincide with the presence of your BF, does it tend to be more of an issue when he's right next to you? Does it stop if he leaves the room? Does it stop if you leave the room? If any of the items in 2 or 2B happen to be the case, let me know in your response and we'll work on the issue from that perspective.
3)How long does the screaming last? Is it practically nonstop, or more of an intermittent thing?

And a few investigative suggestions. Try closing the blinds/curtains for a few days and see if that makes a difference. If it does, consistently over the course of a few days, then she's likely been catching sight of a bird of prey through the window. Might be time to move the cage. You can always keep a perch by the window, but her cage should allow her to feel secure and such.

If the results are less than conclusive, you might still want to try moving her cage. I say this because Cameron is quite right about some birds feeling a bit insecure when they feel like their cages are a bit too open and vulnerable.

Also, I wouldn't suggest moving her from the window right at the moment she begins screaming. You know, just in case it's a behavioral thing. Try to do it while she's being more or less quiet, and then observe.

And finally, if it turns out to be a simple evening call you likely won't be able to stop it. But you might be able to get her to bring her call down to more acceptable levels. Basically, you respond to her screams with a softer vocalization. Do this consistently, and reward her whenever she returns your call in a more acceptable tone. Might take a while, but once she makes the association between a softer flock call and a reward, she might adjust that behavior. One should never try to stop a natural behavior. It's hardwired. But gently influencing it is something else entirely.

Anyhow, hope this all helps. I'll keep an eye out for your responses and see if we can't iron something out.

laa06c, did you find a solution for the screeching ?

We just brought Bella home yesterday and she seems good with everything including the dogs. She is making a smoke alarm scream though, it seems to happen when we walk away from the cage after talking to her. She is by the window but there are no birds in sight to scare her. We are ignoring her when she does it but I may try covering the cage for a little bit when she does also. She is 2 to 3 years old.

She has seemed to stop screaming as much... it's hard to gauge though because I got a new job in the past 2 months so now my bf is home more than I am and says she tends to scream most between 4 and 7 pm even when she's fed. The smoke alarm scream seemed to stop however. I think it's more just her "excited " period when the sun is starting to set she get's a little crazy

Oliver used to scream his head off when he saw crows. Same for hawks, turkey vultures, and large bird - but he especially hated crows. Funny thing was, the crows found his screams interesting so they would come to investigate, which was not a good loop. Birds have excellent eyesight, and yours might be seeing something so high in the sky that you can't see it with your measly human eyeballs.