4 Months Old and Rgurgitating? Huh?

[losninos]

I have tried to read the threads on regurgitating and believe I understand the very consistent information in them. I see reports of this behavior starting as young as 1 year although 1.5 yr and older more common. My sun conure, Sonrisa, is only 18 wk old and I've had her nearly 8 of those weeks. Gender is unknown but breeder believed her to be female.
Anyway, yesterday and today, she has been fairly consistent in the violent head bobbing and regurgitation when she can get up around my head and neck. Elsewhere she is fine. Heavy bobbing is not unusual for her but never with regurgitation. This coincided yesterday with my noticing of head pinfeathers and some assistance by me by rubbing them between my fingers. A connection?
Isn't she a bit young for this? She is very active, gets lots of attention, eats well and is much loved. But I don't like this at all. If she wasn't so young.... Will it pass?Might head bobbing resulting in her being tossed back in her cage get the point across? Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks!

 

[plumsmum2005]

Hey chill, you are loved and your birdy is telling you so. Over stimulation can also be a cause so look for this.

Look for the triggers and then you can do your best to avoid them. Be careful in how you manage this as you have a loving bird and you need to avoid this sensitively as if every time you told someone you loved them they threw a wet sponge at you, you'd be a bit upset wouldn't you?

 

[Notdumasilook]

Indeed its birdie "love"... and its gonna happen. I know folks say to discourage this behavior. Only problem I see that comes from it is when the females are sexually mature and get all worked up what usually comes next is egg laying.. which is hard on them wiith potential risk of egg binding etc. Myself.. I have 2 male birds so I don't worry about them getting horny. It doesn't seem to matter to my Amazon.... he will just as soon hump my knee as the arm of my couch or my wifes bedroom shoes... so I don't make a big deal of it one way or the other .. I let the bird be a bird. IF I had female I'd investigate the birdie birth control stuff I saw on a vet show that slows down those mating tendencies/egg laying. ..but I certainly would not "punish" a bird for getting horny... More than likely if they don't fixate their "affections" on you they will just find some other object to fulfill their instinctive need.

 

[Printer bird]

I've found that the best way to approach "love" behaviours is to either ignore or to distract. My conure had a feather chewing habit that we first thought was hormonally related. If he regurgitated for us, we would wave a toy at him so that his mind would go to playing with the toy and break the behaviour. Or sometimes he would be removed from our hand/knee etc, and placed on a couch or perch and we would turn our back so that he knew the behaviour wouldn't get our attention. We would sometimes clap if he did it in the cage so that he would look up, distracted. Toys that were regurgitated to were swapped out of the cage. We never pet him on his back and didn't let him find little holes for nests. My WCP does a little clucking dance and generally she just has to go through it - if we leave the room, she either continues or resumes when we come back. We might bring her out or get her to do a trick. If she's out we'll move her somewhere else. Different things work for different birds (she would be scared if we shook a large toy at her although she might go for a small piece of wood).

 

[snowflake311]

I have tried to read the threads on regurgitating and believe I understand the very consistent information in them. I see reports of this behavior starting as young as 1 year although 1.5 yr and older more common. My sun conure, Sonrisa, is only 18 wk old and I've had her nearly 8 of those weeks. Gender is unknown but breeder believed her to be female.
Anyway, yesterday and today, she has been fairly consistent in the violent head bobbing and regurgitation when she can get up around my head and neck. Elsewhere she is fine. Heavy bobbing is not unusual for her but never with regurgitation. This coincided yesterday with my noticing of head pinfeathers and some assistance by me by rubbing them between my fingers. A connection?
Isn't she a bit young for this? She is very active, gets lots of attention, eats well and is much loved. But I don't like this at all. If she wasn't so young.... Will it pass?Might head bobbing resulting in her being tossed back in her cage get the point across? Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks!

My guess is your female bird is a MALE!!!!

I thought the same thing when my black capped conure started being all crazy at 5 months old. One day I let him on my head and he did this.
[ame="https://youtu.be/JS5TVeR0eh0"]Hormonal Conure. - YouTube[/ame]

Female birds don't hump they put the tail up and rub on things. I have yet to DNA sex my bird but I think Humping is a male thing. I know female chickens can hump others as a display of Dominance. My female DNA sexed Senegal never humped me she did try to feed me a few times.

I read that the males conures are more often the ones to regurgitate for the mate.

 

[Anansi]

I definitely wouldn't punish the behavior. It's natural. Whenever Maya used to start regurgitating for me, I'd simply allow her to cool off for a bit by putting her on her tree stand. I didn't turn away from her or leave the room, because I didn't want her to feel as though she were being punished. But giving her the chance to cool off prevented the behavior from escalating into something less manageable.

Eventually she realized that particular show of affection didn't really yield any results with me, so the frequency dropped quite a bit.