conure is too clingy and not playful

[Sen]

All birds are different of course. but my sun Conure is absurdly clingy! he starts doing the thing where they twitch their wings as I leave the door and screams for hours while I'm gone. it annoys the hell out of my family. I adopted him from a local parrot aviary. they breed parrots and are an amazing place. they train the parrots as they hand feed and raise them so he came home a behaved parrot. he is always on my shoulder whenever i leave the room unless I'm going out the house. and it is of course mostly my fault. for months I had no motivation to be playful with him and we mostly just cuddled. I had mild depression and couldn't push myself to do more then just cuddle with him. Getting straight to the point, i wanna help him do less cuddling and more playing and really enjoy himself and have fun. but all he wants to do is run to my shoulder and crawl into my hoodie! If I take him off he eventually just gets mad and confused.

 

[wrench13]

Welcome and be welcomed.

So, silly as it sounds, you need to teach him how to have fun away from you. Play and destroy wood toys, etc. Throw stuff around his cage, things like that. Start rewarding the good behavior and ignoring the undesirable behavior or at least don't reinforce it. And you need to be pretty strict about implementing it, so you don't confuse the poor thing, like letting get away with poor behavior sometimes and others being a hardass, which will confuse him. Che K out the subforums on here, on conures and behavior subforums for ideas. Slow incremental change is preferable to abrupt so be in it for the long haul.

 

[Scott]

Absolutely agree with wrench13 above! You and your conure are in similar situation (for different reasons) as many folks returning to work after long Covid hiatus. Teaching a bird independence challenging, a large cage filled with variety of toys helpful. Parrots extremely visual, a TV or computer monitor showing action may be positive distraction. A reasonably repeatable schedule with interaction and cuddling followed by cage time throughout the day brings structure and healthy anticipation.