So, like, Sir Birb is waking up in the middle of the night to eat angrily. I'm not sure what to do. I'm trying to set a routine where we start laying down at night around 9 when it's well-dark and the rest of the house isn't going to wake him up. I start pulling down his blankets in stages so he knows it's time to start getting restful--yellow "who cares if you destroy this", warming blanket, then blue to cut out the last of the light. At the first two stages, he grabs food and brings it to where I can see it and just crunches the h### out of it. He doesn't want me to give him more food or sit with him. He wants to know that I know that he's eating it watching me. If I don't look at him, he'll sit there and wait until I do. At the last stage, he'll attack his food and eat until he falls asleep. After which time he'll periodically wake up and eat but once he's up, he's up.
Now he's doing it with his millet because I've taken his seeds and pellet mix¹ away. I'm thinking I am going to let it empty and maybe he'll stop being territorial over the dispenser because no matter how much I add he bites the bejesus out of me when I put it back in. He's always been crazy protective of his millet dispenser but now he's basically not even letting me fill it. The only thing he is more protective of is his hanging fan/bell toy we bought for him from PetSmart which I am patently no longer allowed to touch even if it is to get fruit off of it. We bought him a perch with the bell at the bottom as a decoy so I could wipe off the original toy when it gets dirty but he knew--he knows.
Like, do I leave the food? I have fresh broccoli, beet greens, a rosemary branch, and marigolds in his cage keeping fresh.² He likes fluffing them up and he eats the beet greens (albeit, mostly to pick up to show me his big boi strength before it tears and he drops it). Only the marigold flowers are sticking out of his little tree around the broccoli so I'm confident he hasn't eaten any of those. I've seen him eat a couple of bites of that but I'm not sure if they were seeds or the petals. He loves a couple bites of his rosemary a few times a day, and he's a massive fan of the broccoli both as a food and as something to climb
¹ Of which he, of course, only eats the seeds. I'm waiting for PetCo to deliver the Zupreem pellets since neither the Harrison's nor the Zupreem ones came in his Chewy order. But in the mean time he has fresh veggies (which he will only bite when I'm giving them to him as a pre-emptive alternative for biting me) and a veggie/fruit puree I have made him (which he will only eat if I stand there and hold it for him). I am sprouting the seeds from his bellpeppers and Chile's, so I'm hoping that will help him, as well.
² Which I take out and rinse when I'm cleaning the cage--they're in a hydroponic PVC pipe "system" so they stay watered but he can't get to the water in the bottom. I change out the water every day after a water-vinegar-water rinse for any potential grossness and switch it for tap water so the plants have something to grow off of, so that's why I don't want him getting to the water. No glue involved, bottom screws off for easy cleaning. I am waiting on the unoiled hemp rope to make it in so I can cover it and make it look more like a tree.
Any advice welcome lol