Trust issue with our pink and grey galah

[Stuart73]

Hi there,
Not sure if this is the right forum however....

I'm worried about our 2 year old pink and grey. We got Cracka as a very young bird and had to hand feed him for the first month or so, he had bonded with my wife and he was very affectionate and happy. All was good with him, some biting issues with me, but nothing bad. I could handle him and play with him too. He was very talkative, cheeky, at times noisy. He was not afraid at all of us and he would come over to us or wait to be picked up. We have had his wings clipped so he could be outside with us while we worked in the garden. About a month ago he started to gain his flight again slowly over about a week. There we a couple of times he flew into a glass door and a wall. He didn't seem to hurt himself, and the vet said that he was fine.( we have since clipped his wings again). But it was around this time when he started to fly again that he started to go quiet and withdrawn, now he very rarely talks, he walk/runs away from us if we approach him. If I open his cage to let him out he just stays in there, where as before he would literally leap out in a flurry of excitement.
my fear is we have done something to him and he has turned off us for good. I'm looking for advice/help and any info to help with getting home back to how he was before. We are both first time bird owners and we do spend a lot of time with him when we get home from work.

Desperate for help

stuart

 

[Betrisher]

Galahs are acrobatic flyers and I wonder if this bird is suffering from some reaction to having his wings clipped so soon after learning to fly with them. That would have been an enormous shock to him and a great dint in his confidence. If that's the case, then all you can do is repeat the steps you took in gaining his confidence in the first place and hope he comes round. I've seen it said again and again that it's best not to clip a bird until after it has learned to fly effectively. This is in order to enable it to develop the confidence that most birds have in their own ability to fly from danger. Clipping is an extremely personal thing and only you can decide what's best for your bird. In the interest of honesty, though, I have to tell you I'm not in favour of clipping so that will taint whatever I might suggest to you.

You don't say where you live, but with a name like 'Cracka', I'm thinking you might be in Australia? If that's the case, then please, please be careful taking your bird outside! He has no wings and therefore no defence against a cat or other animal that might get into your yard unexpectedly. This would include any of the native hawks and falcons that populate cities. Peregrine falcons, for example, are everywhere and I've seen one take a pigeon off the top of my very own clothesline in Mayfield, NSW, (not a hundred yards from the BHP coal stockpiles and conveyor belts).

Galahs, being cockatoos, are extremely intelligent and therefore sensitive to their environments. Mine is the poster-child for holding a grudge and he takes a long time to get over it when things go awry. Recently, we had to change the arrangment of his playgym and he fluffed himself up, marched to the farthest corner and just sat there for the whole day, sulking. When I went to pick him up, he bit me 'just because'. Patience is the key - just persist and eventually he'll come round again, I'm sure.

 

[Stuart73]

Thanks for the reply betrisher, I know that clipping the wings is a controversial thing. The reason it was done was because when he first learnt to fly of the first time last year he was flying flat out around the house at high speed. I allowed this to happen for a period of time, however There were a few collisions and that was the reason we got it done.
We do live in Australia, Perth and he is never left alone outside, we are always with him and he never really strays far from our side.
This is the first time he has reacted this way and it's been about 2-3 weeks and up until now he has been what I would assume a normal Galah.
He seems to shy away from our hands if we try to pick him up.
Do you know of any info I can read/watch that might help us out

Thanks
Stuart

 

[Betrisher]

Do a search on YouTube - try 'hand taming parrot' and see what crops up. Barbara Heidenreich has an interesting way of teaching stepping up - she holds the end of the perch and then lures the bird with a food treat to walk off the end of the perch and onto her hand. It seems a really good, calm way to do that.

I'm also a shameless believer in bribery. Both my Beaks and my Galah are dreadfully greedy and will do just about anything for food (except poop in the Designated Spot). Once you get him hand-tamed, spend long periods with him just feeding him treats and whispering sweet nothings at him. It's a great way to bond and promotes calm and confidence in the bird.

 

[Mike17]

The "pink and grey" was a dead giveaway that Stuart is a Sandgroper lol.

I'm also not fond of clipping and only do it for good reasons (like a bird that insists on trying to kill another- we have a mixed flock) and then only a light clip (5 flight feathers). While birds will fly quickly for the sheer joy of it, eventually they learn the terrain and don't crash. Our birds can do a circle around a central wall part of lounge/dining area and do so often. Only out two lutinos crash occasionally, I suspect because they have poor eyesight plus they've taken longer to learn to fly after their "baby trim" (i.e. babies trimmed to prevent having 6 babies going in 6 directions, all crashing ).

 

[aether-drifter]

Was Cracka allowed to fledge and properly develop flight skills before he was clipped? It sounds like maybe he wasn't, if he was crashing into walls. Everything I have read says two important things about galahs:

- They should not be clipped, for health reasons; they are prone to putting on excess weight, and to lipomas (fatty tumors). The exercise they get from flight is vital to keeping them fit.

- They are sensitive, and prone to phobic behaviors. I've read about a galah being "fine" for a couple of years, and then suddenly, something triggers the behavior (much like what you are seeing with Cracka). Keeping a galah fully flighted is good not only for their physical health, but for their mental/emotional health as well. If you observe a flock of wild galahs, and see for yourself how important a role flight plays in their lives...how much they revel in it...in my opinion, taking away such a huge part of who they are is bound to have some negative consequences.

Anyway, we can sit here and speculate all day on what has caused the change in your baby, but the truth is we may never be able to pinpoint it. I would start over from square one, and pretend this is a new, untame bird that you just got. Positive reinforcement and patience should bring him around again, though it may be slow. Look into clicker training and target training. I agree with Betrisher too -- food bribery can work wonders.

And if he were my bird, I would allow him to grow his wings back and try to teach him to fly. He may never be as agile as a bird who has always flown, but he can still learn to control his flight.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyDLpU5eZv0]How to Teach Your Parrot to Fly | Parrot Training - YouTube[/ame]

Not trying to have a go at you for clipping, just trying to say what I think may help your bird. If you want to bring him outside with you, once you regain his trust, you could always harness train him and then work on flight recall training.