WILD IRN HAS BECOME A MAMA'S BOY

[Wolf]

Sounds great!

[liz]

Since the new one needs to be quarantined for a month you will have one to one time with hopes of bonding. That does mean that you have to double your time calming them.
With your fingers crossed, in the month of quarantine one or both will calm and claim you.
Keep in mind that these birds are like children. When you got them you changed everything they knew. Their world is completely different from what they have ever known.

With the cockatiels, at least one of each pair have claimed me. They will eventually bring their mate around. The ones that come in as singles have a harder time adjusting because they don't have a mate to watch their backs.

In the singles only a few are trying to bond to me. Flutter was coming around when I moved. Now he only wants to be a cockatiel in the flock. Phoenix is the mutilated baby. I have no idea how old he is or what horrors he has gone through. Because of his handicap I would scoop him and put him near the fresh food supplies I was putting down. He still does not want touched but has learned that I want him at the food first. Since these guys know time, when I go in with fresh food he is already on the floor near the feeding station and will step on the tray while I am still at it. Lola was a loved pet. She was never handled and was on the wrong diet as well a not on a solar schedule. The only baggage she came with was lack of out time. She lands on me while I am fixing their tray. When she is at face level she tweeters to me and does not back off from fear.

These little ones have all different personalities. Each one is an individual. You will have a month of quarantine to teach the birds that you are a good human and okay to be with.
They may not tightly bond to you but once put together they will be calmer and easier and will accept you as their human.

Sorry for the long post but with 15 and all rescues at the time I got them I think I am in the lead on understanding flock birds.

[Pajarita]

Great news! The hand-fed one will not need taming because it's already imprinted to humans and, once the quarantine is over and you can start putting them in the same room, the fact that the hen will not be afraid of you will be of HUGE help in taming the male.

I think you are going to be an AWESOME bird keeper and that your birds will be very happy with you!

[Viatrixa]

Oh of course we're ready to do the quarantine! We do have two cages after all - the handfed one will get the slightly smaller one (it's still very ringneck sized, no worries) but we intend to let her come out a little more than Simo who we also let out, but in a more controlled manner.

He's learned to come out of his cage now, and seems to practice his flying very well. He's actually been a very good boy about it too; he explored around a bit but as is usual for birds he settled up on our curtain rods which is the highest place in our house. There were no problems with it (he even kept pooping in one certain place; we have not taught him this so this was likely just a coincidence) the only bad thing associated with this is that he wouldn't come down to eat at all until the very evening and then he was downright starving poor baby (there was food in his cage all day though).

This may sound odd to you all but I have some mental issues (such as PTSD and severe depression) and I find little Simo's presence quite therapeutic. It doesn't matter to me even if he will never be a pirate shoulder bird or talk (these were never our aims anyway); just taking care of him, making sure he's happy and healthy and has a good life is so incredibly therapeutic and healing for me somehow. He's such a green, adorable little pea. <3 Mind you about the talking bit, I'm not certain but in the mornings he's started to make odd little babbling sounds that almost vaguely sounds like he's practicing speech o____O time will tell!

As usual, I thank you all for your expertise and advise ^^

[Wolf]

No, there is nothing strange or odd about your issues, they are actually much more common than you may know. We understand and will try to help as best that we can. It is possible that he is practicing his speech, most bird do and they often choose times when they think that no one is paying attention to them to do this.

[liz]

They do practice their words and usually when they are alone. I heard Rambo talking and snuck up to see who he was talking to. I found him alone in the sunroom facing a window and talking softly. I startled him when I laughed. He then turned on me and said "DON'T YOU EVER EVER EVER ...".

[Pajarita]

Yes, they do practice. And, sometimes, they never go beyond the babbling stage and, like Mami, make noises that sound exactly as if a person was speaking in human language (Spanish in her case) but there are no real words to speak of, only something that sounds like words But she does say a few words and is actually learning English now. And she sings all the time, again, no words, just Tra la la, etc - loud

[Viatrixa]

Figured I'd update this thread a little with news

Everything is going absolutely peachy. Already in this single month Simo has improved and grown miles and leaps - where he used to flap about and do "parkour spaz" routines in his cage before (him wanting to escape essentially) he has calmed down and now hardly does it all! Once in a blue moon he will still hop about a bit in the morning. Other than that he's doing just awesome. He's started to play with his toys a lot; not just one of them but he seems to experiment with all of his toys. His particular favorite seems to be the giant swing (it's actually meant for bigger birds but I accidentally ordered it) he'll sit on it and push against a cage's bar with his beak to make it swing and move. Very fun to watch He's also partial to his spiral rope perch that has a bell at the end; he really likes to make it jingle.

He will also calm down in a matter of heartbeats when me or the husband now approach his cage. Not only does he calm down though, but he will also actually hop onto a perch that's lower than our eye level and shift closer and crane his head / observe us. If I then whistle at him he will whistle back (actually even as I type this he's swinging on his swing and keeps ogling at me ^^)

We're slowly moving to the stage where we're offering him some millet through the cage's rungs. He still seems somewhat shy about this but that's perfectly okay - we're doing things on his terms of course. One funny thing that makes him curious are "shooting noises" in video games. He will hop to the cage's side that's closest to us and the source of the sound and sit there and eye the monitor. Sometimes he'll also make a tiny peep right after a "shooting". I guess we're ultra lucky that he doesn't mind loud noises at all (there's noisy construction going on closeby too and he doesn't seem to care or react at all) nor to loud game / tv sounds, or even the phone ringing. In fact I think he even likes some of them. I had the impression that loud sounds frighten birds; but on the other hand I don't see why the opposite wouldn't happen either.

Food wise we've been experimenting with salads and veggies - he seems to really like just about anything save for sour apples (but to be fair, I don't enjoy those myself either). We give him way more veggies than fruit of course - too much sweets can't be good even if it's just fruit; or so I heard. He seems to favor larger chunks to small bite sizes so he enjoys nibbling.

Bath times also seem to be a hit with him: he seems to love love love it when I gently spray / mist him with a spritzer (pure clean, skin warm water, no soap of course). What I don't know is if it's okay or not to give him short burst from the hair dryer on a gentle setting if it happens to be a cold day. This would be good to know because winters can get very chilly around here and I understand birds can get cold easy if they're wet. Then again hopefully this won't happen because it's warm inside our house, but, this would be good info to learn anyway.

Finding out what treats he likes has been a bit of a confusing experience. He doesn't so far at least, appear to care for nuts. We've yet to try pistachios, macadamias and hazelnuts. So far the other more "common" nuts don't seem to be a hit with him save for peanuts. And we're not too fond of giving those to him :/ His only true favorite treats seem to be millet, dry corn on the cob and organic oatmeal cookies (sugar free fat free etc.). This doesn't thankfully extend to his normal food (he seems to love every veggie & fruit we give him as well as his seeds which we give him twice a week) Strangely enough he loves the dry corn on the cob (especially when we put a piece into his foraging toy) but loose kernels he doesn't like.

Now, despite how everything is going wonderfully we never of course, take anything for granted but at least so far he's been awesome and has certainly become quite a bit more social, especially considering how he's a "wild" bird. The plans are still on to get him a buddy but this is turning out to be surprisingly difficult because hand fed parrots are not really very popular among pet bird enthusiasts at least in scandinavia. But yeah! So far, so good. It's probably a very very good thing he has constant eye contact with us and can observe our life and activities.

We're currently taking care of my sister's dog too. He's shown a lot of curiosity about him too, though he will flap and squawk if he gets too close to his cage.

[Wolf]

Thanks for the update, it sounds to me like overall you are doing very well with your bird. I probably missed it even just now as I skimmed over the entire topic, but what is his name? without his name it makes feel like I am talking about him behind his back. Funny, huh? Oh well that's just me.
I do feel concerned a little about his diet when it comes to the seeds, I suppose that it is because I don't know how much of the pellets you are giving to him and so I am concerned that he isn't getting quite enough protein. Even though we recommend a low protein diet he still needs a certain amount to maintain a healthy body. You might try slivered almonds or even whole ones, my birds like almonds better than most of the other nuts and it helps them with calcium too. I would really love to see some pictures of your boy, we love pictures here, it just ain't the same without pictures.

[Pajarita]

Wonderful news and thank you so much for remembering us and giving us this update! But I also have a couple of concerns and one is about his diet. I worry about the amount of protein you are feeding because I am not sure if you are feeding it every day - you can't feed protein food just twice a week. It would not be enough for him. I also don't like dry corn AT ALL. Although aspergillus is ubiquitous in nature, dry corn usually has unhealthy levels of aflatoxin (a fatal toxin produced by aspergillus). I was a manager in a grain company and we had to constantly (and I do mean night and day 365 days a year) move, mix and test the corn in the silos or we would end up with too high aflatoxin in it. Please use fresh corn, instead, it's much, much safer. Aside from that, the sugar in fruit is not bad for birds (or anybody, actually). This is a rumor often repeated in birdsites but which has no real scientific basis for it (not a big surprise when it comes to information often found in birdsites) - besides, these birds are mostly fruit eaters in the wild so don't worry too much about giving it more veggies than fruits. It's not necessary.

One final question: you are letting him out of his cage for, at least, two to three hours a day for flying, right? Birds needs to fly.