Newton's screaming problems

[Wolf]

Pajarita, I also recommended that he use bribery to get the bird to spend more time on him as he said that was the only time the bird wanted to be on him.

[Spyke]

That's right Wolf. I would absolutely love to spend more time actually interacting with Newton. Play with him, snuggle with him or just have him sit on me while talking with him. But as previously mentioned, he does not seem very interested yet. That was my actual reason for starting this thread. I wanted to hear some tips on how to get a young bird like Newton to be more interested in me as a individual. Not a sun flower seed dispenser. I can get him on my shoulder, but as soon as the sun flower seeds stops coming, he flies back to his cage.

[Wolf]

Just keep on coaxing him to come to you and extending the time between the treats, perhaps beak rubs or head scratches can be worked in along with the treats. I think that this is really just a matter of time. Let him go back to the cage if he wants to but go and ask him to step up after a few minutes. You may have one that is a bit more independent and while you don't want to eliminate that you do want to reaffirm to him that you want him to be with you.

[Pajarita]

Yes, Wolf is right, beak rubs work wonders because it reminds them of what the parents do to get the 'feeding response' from them - same as warm or soft food (try a piece of soft, warm good quality whole grain barely toasted bread instead of a sunflower). It also has to do with timing, parrots in the wild usually interact or just make each other company after breakfast and before dinner, have you tried to do it at these times? A quiet environment (where there aren't any other people or animals walking about, making noise, etc) also helps...

[Spyke]

It's now been a couple of months. I am sorry (and frustrated) to say that the problem is not solved. Actually, it's gotten worse.

I've kept feeding him the gloop. I have him out of the cage as long as i am home, which i mostly am. He is just a joy and a very adorable little parrot, and i enjoy his company. As far as i can see, he seems to be in perfect health. He eats, his poop is solid and consistent. He is open to new people. And he has started repeating my whistles and sounds.

But the screaming...
I remove the blanket from his cage as soon as i get up in the morning. A couple of minutes passes, and he starts. It is not some kind of talking or "chatting", it's a spine-chillingly loud scream. And he does not stop until i either take him out, or completely leave the apartment.

After being out of the cage an hour or so. Either hanging out on my belly, playing on the coffee table, or flying a few laps in the living room, he starts screaming. I am sure you know how it's like having a parrot on your shoulder screaming as loud as he can STRAIGHT into your ear.

The most frustrating thing here is not the sound itself, it is the fact that he is screaming SO much. I buy new toys for him every other week. Re-decorate his cage every weekend. And he is always out of the cage as long as i home. It is extremely sad to think that he has a reason for screaming this much when i go out of my way trying to provide the best possible home for a parrot that i can.

This really isn't fun. My head is starting hurting when i am at home with him, and i am just feeling exhausted and irritated all the time....

[Wolf]

Like you, I am at a loss as to why he is still screaming this much. This makes it painfully obvious that some how we are missing something. Have you made an appointment with an avian vat yet to rule out any medical reason for his screaming? Do you answer him when he screams for you? does he take baths in a dish of some sort or do you mist him for bathing? Do you use any incense, scented candles or other air fresheners that could be irritating his airways? What is the level of humidity in your home? What about colors in your home, parrots see colors differently than we do and in fact we are nearly color blind in comparison to them?
Yes, I know that I am grasping at straws, so to speak, and looking at things that don't usually cause a lot of screaming. But there is a reason for his screaming as for a bird to scream this way in the wild is a death sentence for them, so he would not do it without some reason. All I know to do at this time is to go over everything again and see if we have missed some thing. What is his current schedule, lighting, diet.
The only other things that I can think of is to have him checked out medically or that this could be the result of his having been parent raised without properly imprinting on humans and if this is the cause then he needs to have a mate that was hand raised and of the same age as he is.

[Pajarita]

Well, parrots are highly social animals and physically NEED to have company all day long. It's not a luxury to them, it's a physiological need. Some parrots resign themselves to been alone and although they don't really 'adjust' as people say, they simply give up on their requests for company. But some of them don't and those are the 'screamers', birds that do not accept the very unnatural life they have in captivity. The problem with these birds is that they get into the habit of screaming and do it even when there is people around. This can be corrected but it implies him been in a household where there is people available to keep him company all day long. Companion parrots don't make good pets for people with normal lifestyles - and anybody who says they do doesn't know enough about them or is lying through their teeth. Have you considered getting somebody to come over to keep the bird company during the day when you are not there?

[Spyke]

Thanks for the answers again Wolf and Pajarita, i appreciate your guys interest in Newton's well being.
Alright, i'll walk you through my current daily routine with newton.

I get up around 7am. Newton's cage is in the living room. I put a blanket over his cage at night. I walk out of my bedrom, through the living room and into the bathroom to shower and such. I then walk over to his cage and remove the blanket. I greet him, usually get two huge black eyes staring back at me, and a yawn. I let him wake up properly before taking out his water bowl to refill it. When i walk into the kitchen, and dump the water in the sink, the first screams starts. (He always screams from the sound of water, for some reason.) I check his food bowl, and talk with him a little more.

I then sit down in the couch, a few meters form the cage, and log onto the PC connected to my tv. I set up a livestream on a webcamera, facing his cage, and then leave for work. I'm always watching, and listening to him from work.

Here is when it get's interesting (for me at least).
After i leave the apartemnt, i will open the stream on my phone and watch him from the buss. He is dead quiet. He just sit on his perch in the cage, quiet, motionless. And he does this throughout the day. For 8 hours, while i am at work, he talks for maybe 10-15 minutes, eats a little, but then just sits there. He never plays with his toys, or climb around the cage, if i am not there.

When i come home, the screaming usually starts instantly. I've read several articles about "ignoring the parrot while it screams". So i usually wait until he calms down before i take him out of the cage. This, however, does not work. I end up having to put the blanket over his cage, wait for him to stop, then go over and let him out. I am now in for an hour of so of pure parrot joy. As i mentioned earlier, we hang out on the coffee table mostly. I put down a newspaper, serve him his gloop and apples, get some toys, and we hang out. I've started trying to train him in whistling on que. I pick him up, and brings him to the kitchen to see if he's up for taking a bath, which he usually is. He often flies to the top of his cage, and gets these "hissie fits", where he jumps around the top of the cage, then takes flight at an incredible speed.

This lasts for maybe an hour or two, but then, out of nowhere, he starts screaming. The same, spine chillingly loud scream. We can be playing on the coffee table, or hang out by my PC. He flies back to his cage, sits on the cage door and just screams and screams. I'm usually tired from work, so i cave from a headache pretty fast. I walk over, put him back in his cage, and closes it. He will then start climbing. I can see that he wants back out, but i am waiting for him to stop screaming. Which he doesn't. I will have to put the blanket back over his cage, wait for him to quiet down, then let him back out again. This will go on for the rest of the evening. I will turn off his light around 8:30pm, and put the blanket over him when he sits down on his sleeping perch and starts clicking his beak.

The weekends are the same, only i have him out most of the day. He starts screaming as soon as i get up, and he does not stop. The bird basically never stops screaming as long as i am home, and he is not out of the cage. He has very little interest in his toys. Whenever he is out, i put one of his toys on the coffee table, and try playing with him, but his interest is usually somewhere else.

I have no air fresheners/candles. I am not sure what the humidity is. I have no strong colors either. White walls, wooden floor. I have a UV light on his cage.

I am taking him to an avian vet tomorrow or later this weekend.

If you want, i can provide a link to the livestream i put up for when i am at work, so you can see his behavior when he is alone.

[Wolf]

First a link to the live stream would be great, thanks for offering it.
You said that you check his food bowl in the morning, what is in it?
Can you get some ear plugs to cut the noise from his screams, maybe the king that shooters use? I would try them and not the head phone type as it could scare him. Just trying to take the edge off of his screaming.
I never ever ignore my birds when they call me, I always answer them and it is quite common for the birds and me to get involved in a scream fest and sing along type thing, nearly every day. They really enjoy doing this, so I expect that it fills some need that they have, although I am not sure what it is. Mimi, is my most prolific and loudest screamer and she all by herself can wake the dead and scare them back to death at the same time. When she first came here that is what she did, it was all she did, from the time she woke up until she went to sleep at night. I lived with this for three months before it began to gradually subside. For the longest time I thought that this was a release from all of the stress as well as her being afraid from all of the abuse that she endured for 15 years and therefore a part of the healing process. I still think that it was part of the healing process. After a year of watching her when she interacts with us, I am beginning to develop a somewhat different point of view concerning her screaming. Some of it, I am still thinking is a release due to the abuse that she endured and I think this because I can hear the panic and fear in the tone of it, but she also screams out of pure joy. She gets happy and excited when she is allowed to touch us, as in her earlier life she was not allowed to touch a human for any reason. Now she is not only allowed to touch but is encouraged to do so, even though she gets excited and bites a little too hard part of the time and as she gets more into these touch sessions and her level of excitement increases she screams.
This was an interesting insight into Mimi's screaming and I don't know if you can get any benefit from it with yours but you might. I would love to be able to watch the two of you while you are there trying to interact together.
Unless he flies away while you are playing with his toy, I would not be concerned if it appears that his attention is elsewhere, keep fiddling with the toy as they have the tendency to get more interested if you keep on playing with it and then over a period of time will start to try to take over your toy since you think it is fun.
Anyway, I am still mulling this over in my mind trying to gain hints of your bird perspective, but it could be that some of this screaming is neither flock calls or him calling to you but is simply him expressing his excitement at you being there with him as well as his being happy. I know that it may sound strange but I see this happening every day with Mimi.
I would also suggest that you give your bird his gloop in the morning and give enough of it to last until you return home along with a few pieces of fresh fruit, veggies and a leafy green and if the food you are checking on in the mornings is pellets or a seed mix to feed that at night for dinner and take it out when he goes to sleep.

[Pajarita]

Well, for one thing, you need to interact with him in the morning AFTER he gets his fresh breakfast (which should not be whatever it is you are free-feeding him -you say you 'check his bowl' which implies seeds or pellets) so you will need to get up a bit earlier in the morning. You need to expose him to dawn and dusk and, if you cannot do this naturally because of the geographical location of where you live, you need to create a system that reproduces it (uncover cage, turn on weak red light placed on the floor -maybe a lamp under a table?, add a full spectrum light to the red one and gradually decrease red and increase full spectrum while you 'raise' it -as the sun would be rising in the sky- until it's completely bright -and, by then, it should be overhead. Do the same thing but opposite at night. Make sure you make different 'day lengths' through the year so the bird has 'seasons' or you will screw up his endocrine system and always use a good quality full spectrum (CRI 94+ and 5000-5500 Ktemp). When you are still doing the 'fake dawn', give him his fresh food (could be gloop, could be chop, could be mash or whatever but NOT a dry, high protein source and always accompanied by fresh produce, one fruit, one veggie, one leafy green which you will have to eat with him -this is not only to teach him to eat them but also to establish a relationship with him -flocks eat together, it's a social occasion for them). When the light is almost at the 'day level' and he has eaten his part of his breakfast allow him out of his cage for an hour or so and interact with him (you can shower with him perching on the towel rod or on the back of a chair while you dress, etc). When it's time for you to go to work, put half a tree nut in each of two foraging toys (you might need to teach him to 'open' them up), put him in his cage, praise, praise, praise, scratch head, say Bye Bye and leave. When you get home, first thing you need to do is open his cage -and I do mean FIRST thing, don't even stop to take your coat off, just open his cage as you walk in. Ignoring them when they scream for company, regardless of what many people might say out there on other birdsites, doesn't do anything but create insecurity and stress because you are not responding to their asking for help. And, as you can see, it usually backfires because it doesn't really teach them to stop screaming. Keep him outside his cage all the time you are home, he needs it right now. You might be able to scale it down as he gets older and more secure in your love and will have to in order to 'make' shorter days but, for now, you have a little bird who is terribly unhappy, insecure and stressed out because he is alone all day long (it would break my heart to see a bird perching all day long doing nothing for hours and hours) and he doesn't feel you are really there for him (ignoring his cries did it) so you need to reassure him of this BIG TIME or he will become a screamer for life.

Parrots are not dogs or cats, they can't adjust to us or 'learn' not to need the life or diet that nature evolved them to have so keeping one implies us adjusting to them and, sometimes, this means huge sacrifices on our part but there are many recompenses to it...