Start of the Angsty Bird

[chris-md]

Bullseye. Just a couple days, just buckle down. It’ll pass.

It could be the molting. Though I read one opinion years ago that always stuck with me: every bird on God’s green earth molts ever year. It’s not giving child birth, it doesn’t HURT. Maybe a little itchy, but it shouldn’t create significant changes in attitude.

Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. But it certainly resonated with me.

I think the not calling for formula may be a key point, like maybe this behavior is perfectly natural for a bird who just successfully weaned itself. but I’ve never Dealt with weaning ekkies so I have no idea.

But it does reinforce for me that this too shall pass. You also did just move so I’d be willing to bet this is is also tied to change in environment. Often birds in a new home will behave perfectly for a period of time before they test boundaries.

We could “it could also be...” until were blue in th e face but all roads are leading to this being temporary. If he’s reacting this way to items around the cage, rearrange the cage to shock him out of it some. That often helps.

 

[charmedbyekkie]

Ok, so new behaviour I'm completely unfamiliar with:

It looks likes he's attempting to regurgitate - he does the head bobbing and acts like some food did come back up to his beak. It's not his vomiting gesture and it looks like regurgitation according to the videos that I’ve seen. When he starts doing this, I just put him on his perch and let him be or I distract him with a toy.

Last night he started nonstop rubbing his beak, including the tip of his beak (almost biting but not quite), against my partner’s chair. He also started kissing it (we taught him to press his beak against something and make a kissing sound, and we ‘kiss’ him quite frequently since we don’t touch him as a sign of affection), which I understand is a human-taught thing so he’s likely not legitimately showing an affectionate gesture. And then he started also trying to regurgitate.

Considering that it’s my partner’s favourite fabric chair, I shifted him to another perch; as he stepped up, he was crazily pinning his eyes and standing tall, muttering at me. Which I gather means he’s excited/agitated.

How should I be handling this? Should I be finding him a toy instead as a safer/preemptive object of affection? Or should I leaving him as is?

 

[ChristaNL]

Your lilttle man is growing up fast!


I would just let him be hormonal with the chair- if he gets frustrated about it all (the chair wil not respond in any way) and bites it...no humans will be hurt in the process.
It is his first round with the hormones so he needs to figure out what is going on just as much as the humans.


(Sunny wil grab my hand with a foot, then clench down with the beak on one or more fingers and then tries to regurge on them... I would be delighted if she chose another object for her affections )