Absolem
I have a Pineapple and let me just say congrats on a free friend. Its going to take some work but I believe we can get this taken care of.
First: It needs at least two hours a day with you. This bird is a companion bird, not a throw it in a cage too look at bird. The Conure wants to be with you, be apart of your family. To him your its family, its flock. Put yourself in the birds shoes. His first family gave him to a new family (You), and now it wants to spend every minute with you. You don't need to spend every minute with it, but I suggest you give him more time than just an hour a day.
Second: Toys, and lots of them! Birds are not dumb animals, they are smart and they get board! So toys are a great way to release their energy. Its not as simple as it sounds! They need to be shown how to play with the toys! So take the bird out with a new toy and play with the bird and the toy. Show the bird how to play on it's own! Add new toys Weekly! Your going to want a lot of toys, so you can start to rotate the toys. That way he does not get board with them quickly. Remember to buy toys only suited to his size.
Third: Forging! Get some toys that allow for forging! Unfortunately I have not found any good forging toys at any retail stores, so online and amazon is your best bet. What they do is, you can hide the birds favorite food inside the toy, and the bird will have to figure out how to open it to get to the toy! Same as the toys, rotate them and do it every week with a different toy.
Fourth: Cage! Just like the toys, clean the cage weekly and rearrange the cage! Rope perches are great for this! They allow for quick changing of the layout of the cage. A bird will mostly only use the top layer of the cage, so remember that when rearranging the cage. It will give him something to explore every week, and he won't get use to the layout which will help with cage aggression.
Fifth: Cage Cover! This is important! Get a cage cover! When he is acting up and screaming cover the cage completely until he stops. This will help with the good behavior as he will not want the cage to be covered. So in a few weeks he should start to figure out that every time he screams the cage gets covered. Also like you have been doing, don't get him out until he stops screaming. No rewarding bad behavior.
Sixth: Location. I think you took care of that by putting him in the most used portion of the home. Like I said the conure wants to be apart of the family, you are his family.
Seventh: Your call! You want the bird to call to you in the way you want him too. So make up your call. Whistle or chirp too him at the volume you want him to respond to you. Do this every so often while your in the home to call to your pet. Let the conure know your there!
Lastly: Be patient! Sounds to me you got a sweet bird on your hands that loves to be with you. It sucks that your friend didn't take the time to learn how to handle the bird and dumping the bird off to you is not fair at all to you. You basically had to become a bird lover overnight and that is not cool. A pet bird is not for everyone as it requires more work than a dog or a cat, and sometimes even fish. I am glad you reached out for help! Take the advice given out freely by the members on this thread and use what works for you. If I were you, after all the work and money you put into this bird, I wouldn't let my friend have the bird back. Just tell your friend you want to keep the bird and you will adopt it from now on. I promise you that things can get better if you put the effort into it.
A bird will annoy you at times, it's not like any other pet. Unlike a Cat or Dog, a pet bird does not care how bad your day was at work, how how tired you are when you get home. It does not care if you want to sleep in, they only want to be with you as much as they can and that can get annoying fast. Take it with a grain of salt and welcome this wonderful mate you have going forward in life. I can't tell you how many times I have been woken up when I want to sleep by my bird tweeting it's head off. I am now so use to it, I get worried if I don't hear him trying to wake me up.
Good luck and I hope some of the things I said helps! OH, and if you don't have one already a good thing to have for your bird is a pet tent for when they sleep. Here is a good place to buy your tent from. This place is proven to be bird safe and friendly!
Just Bird Tents.com
One last thing! Take your bird out of the house sometimes! If you can get a bird harness do so. This is the best harness on the market!
The Aviator Bird Harness | The Parrot University, llc
A Pineapple is a petite size! Do what the DVD says, and within a few months you can take your bird outside and give it more activities to take it's mind off screaming!
The LAST thing, I PROMISE.
If you are brave you can always try to introducing a friend to your conure. This is tricky for a few reasons.
1. It might not like the friend conure (Which is rare in my experience)!
2. Your conure might teach the other conure it's bad habits and now your stuck with two screaming birds.
3. The birds might not want nothing to do with you know, and just want to be with one another. Which is fine if your willing for that to happen, but as long as you keep taking them out each a few hours a day, your relationship with your pet birds should be fine.
4. It's expensive! Your buying a new bird, which is expensive! Also your going to need another cage for the new bird in case they don't get along. Now your stuck with two birds that don't like one another. At least they will still keep one another company but you can't keep them ever in the same cage if they don't like one another.
Again, from my experience at seeing conures together it's rare that they don't get along. I want to get my guy a friend, but I just can't afford it anytime soon. So I know how that can go. If you want! You can buy a parakeet, BUT that will just be a bird mate and can never go in the same cage as the Conure, and that might not help at all. With the other Conure you can supervise play time for awhile until you think they love being with one another, than switch each into the others cage for about two weeks, than put them together in the same cage and see how they go. If they like one another Congrats!
The other downside with this is that they could be twice the noise! But it could cut down on the screaming and them wanting your attention so much! If you can handle twice the tweeting in the morning and evening.
Good luck and sorry for the LONG winded post.
