Neighbours patience growing thin?

[Amazonbananaleaf]

Hi all, new member here. Unsure of where this goes, but I'm getting increasingly worried about my neighbours reactions to my bird.

I have an Orange Wing Amazon (named Bobby) and have had her since 2010. She lived with us for 7 years but has since lived with my dad for the past 3 years. My dad is renovating his place so we took Bobby back as of yesterday.

As Amazons go, Bobby is extremely loud and vocal as they get and always has been. She makes all sorts of vocalisations but her signature is a four-note vocalisation that is ear shattering, that and the party blower sound she makes. As long as we've had her it's still quite frustrating as always but we love her. She isn't particularly hand tamed, I know most Amazons don't like to be touched and the most we can get out of Bobby is a little high five and some hand feeding, but otherwise she likes not to be handled.

So we have neighbours who have always lived either side of us and were aware that we've had a parrot since 2010. Nobody has ever complained, if anything we've received compliments that some neighbours love to hear her noises when they're out in their gardens and some people can hear her a mile off. My college lecturer lives on my street and she's mentioned that a few times too! However prior to getting Bobby back home, mainly during the quarantine, our neighbours are increasingly bored and have been having fires many days a week. The one on our left does it for the fun of it and likes to burn wet leaves and wood because he's bored, and the one next to him is constantly hammering and drilling and having fires and he also has two young kids. Those guys don't like us so much because of an incident in which they blamed one of our cats for destroying their paddling pool.

Anyway, the neighbour on our left was super intrigued about the bird and was really enthusiastic and wanted to meet him. Since yesterday, Bobby has been outside for the first time in a long time after being stuck in my dad's apartment for 3 years. She was super excited and watching the birds, vocalising like crazy. Since she's been in the kitchen by the back door. I live with my mum and she's extremely enthusiastic about the parrot, she loves her and is blind to consideration and complaints sometimes. I'm an extremely non confrontational person and in just one day I've already overheard people complaining, but at the same time I don't want to stop my mum from keeping him by the open back door and outside all day because of the ambience and air and sounds benefit the bird in a positive way. It's starting to frustrate me a little because I know eventually the neighbours are going to make it aware that they're not fond of Bobby's noises any more, and it may lead to losing her and it's all getting to my head. Those neighbours are super petty, one of them lets us know when he's having a fire so we can get our clothes off the line but the one next to him with the children starts his fire whilst my mum is putting her clothes out. He starts drilling when we're in the garden and knows it frustrates us, so he'll probably take the bird noises as some kind of attack?

We've already spoke to our neighbours about this and the bird returning and they were all super cool with it and enthusiastic. I'm just getting worried about Bobby's loudness and my neighbours patience running out. Has anyone else ever dealt with this weird series of emotions or this situation? Apologies if this is a bit of a dumb question or if this is in the wrong place.

 

[wrench13]

So the question is.... is this in some kind of gated community? Is your moms house a separate house and she owns the property? I own my house, its on town street and is not a gated community, and my neighbors can pound sand if they dont like my parrot. I dont particularly like mariachi music every Saturday afternoon and evening, but besides asking nicely to turn the volume down, the cops have told me that they can only stop by and ask the same, if its after 10PM ! And they cant force anything! Of course they cant stop me from firing my collection of 1.3 scale black powder deck cannons either. SO we come to an agreement.

Gated community- much more delicate situation.

 

[Flboy]

Hey, you can only do what you can do!
My issue would be with the cat though! A loose cat coming into my yard will be trapped and turned in! Sorry! Really! But the destruction they do to the wildlife is horrible!

 

[1oldparroter]

Sounds like 1st you need to learn about local ordinances of the community; like noise, burning and such that is prosecutable. Then talk to your mom and decide if it's worth going to the neighbors. There was a guy in California that was always getting a court summons about bird noise and finally gave up the bird. Each summons cost him time and money, plus the different things he tried to prevent the problem. 1st see if the court might back a complaint. i live in an area that fires are not allowed before 4 PM, for instance. jh

 

[Jazzop]

I agree with the others who recommend that you determine more clearly what your legal/regulatory constraints are. But I want to add that you should analyze what is going on inside your house on a regular basis. Do you have children who run around and make loud noises? Is your household prone to playing music and/or TV at a high volume? Do you and other household members conduct a conversation by yelling at each other from different rooms? What are the acoustic characteristics of the room in which the bird is kept (open floor plan and tiled vs. smaller room and carpeted)?

My Amazon's loudness and shrillness is directly proportional to the environment in which he lives. He and I have moved many times over the past 20 years, sometimes living in households with roommates, and it seems to me that the key factor is that whatever baseline volume exists in the house, he needs to know that he can be heard over it. Ever since I bought a house and live alone, he only makes very loud calls at sunset, if I encourage him to, if he can see me gardening in the backyard, and/or if I play some music real loud. Otherwise, he is only 0.0001dB louder than the ambient sound of a quiet house.

 

[SailBoat]

As so well stated above. YOU are responsible to understand the laws of the community in which you live. Failure to do so opens you to the extent of the law and the willingness of the community to enforce them.

Allowing your cat to free roam off your property is rarely allowed unless you live in a rural area, but an every greater number of rural areas are setting such laws in place!!! Stop the free roaming of your cat past your property line.

Noise can easily become an issue especially once the 10 pm (22:00 hours dark for Scott) time period rolls around. The underlying rule is that once your activities pass beyond that vertical property line, you are commonly warned and depending on the community if they need to stop by again, (same evening) you can receive a summons (ticket).

Our DYH Amazon loves to communicate with the individuals that walk by our home, and he is stirred on by those individuals as they end up taking a break and having a conversation with him. IMHO, it is the responsibility of the Amazon owner to at least twice a year to go around and introduce one's Amazon to all our neighbors who are in hearing range. Good neighbors are best maintained with good communication.