Abused Corella

[Nan]

Hi everyone, I was recently given a rescue Corella about 2-3 years old. His name is Louie. Louie was traumatised by previous owners that cut his wings back to the bone. He will hiss and lunge and he will bite. He is so frightened that he becomes agitated when ever his cage is approached. He will pace on his perches and turn his back. But when I have to refill his food and water containers he goes into panic. He will climb the bars on his cage as soon as I start to open the door to the food container, but when I put my hand in he jumps down on to the floor of his cage and runs around in circles.
I don’t know where to begin with him. I would love him to be a happy boy again one day so I need advice where to begin with him to have him know that I will never hurt him and that he will be safe.
All help will be appreciated. Thanks

[Pajarita]

Hi, Nan and Louie, welcome to the forum and thank you, Nan, for taking him in. Now, although in my personal opinion, clipping a bird is a form of abuse, it does not cause the behavior you are describing. It does affect them psychologically but it does not produce the kind of fear and anxiety this bird has. Screaming at the bird, hitting the bars of his cage, hitting the bird, forcibly toweling the bird regularly, etc OR extreme neglect (like leaving the bird in a cage all by itself for years without even seeing a human nearby, for example). Now, you are not telling us anything about the conditions under which he is now living or even the diet and light schedule he is under - housing is also important when we talk about a bird that is terrified of people (that is what you describe).

I will tell you what I would do:
1) I would put him in a VERY large cage placed against a wall and with material draped on either side and half the top so the back is 'blind' as well as half the sides and top. This will provide him with a place where he can feel safe (because predators -or danger- do not come through 'walls'). Sometimes, putting a large toy right in front of the roosting perch helps, too because it makes them feel as if they were hiding behind it.
2) strict solar schedule with two hours of twilight for both dawn and dusk.
3) fresh food diet with emphasis on oat groats (they are high on tryptophan which converts into niacin and this, in turn, allows them a good production and storage of endorphins -the happy hormone). Pumpkin seeds also have a good level of tryptophan as well as peanuts.
4) Do NOT ever look at him directly (meaning, no staring). Look at him from the corner of your eye to observe him (only predators stare and we are predators because we have both eyes in front of our faces).
5) Do NOT go over the 'comfort line'. You will need to spend a lot of time in the same room as he is in order to get him used to your presence and teach him that you are no danger to him BUT you should never be over the 'line'. This line marks the distance at which he feels comfortable with your presence and you will need to experiment/observe to see where, exactly, this line is. The way you do this is leave the room and allow the bird to calm down. You can leave the door open a crack so you can see when this happens - when you see him fluffing his feathers, preening, eating, etc, he is calm. Walk into the room and looking at him from the corner of your eye (turn your head sideways), take a small step at a time (stopping for a second or so after each one) and see when his body tenses or he shows any signs of getting upset (feathers flat against the body, he will stare at you intently, he might go down to the bottom of the cage or climb using the bars of the cage, hanging upside down, etc). When you see this, stop immediately, take a small step back and turn your body sideways to see if he calms down after a minute or so. If he does, this is the line you cannot cross when you are in the room (unless you need to clean his cage, feed him, etc). Spend as much time as you can in the room doing your own stuff, watch TV, use your computer, read, play video games, sew, whatever and during all this time, talk to him, repeat his name and call him a good boy A LOT. Every now and then (no more than three times a day at the beginning and wait a couple of hours in between each one), offer him a treat of a high value item (determine what, exactly, is his high value item in advance by putting different nuts in a dish and watching which one he takes first every time). He won't take it from your fingers at the beginning so simply show it to him, use the word you want to use for it (I call all the nuts 'peanuts' and my birds know this word), put it at the bottom of his cage (you can throw it through the bars because you do not want to stress him out by opening his cage and putting your hand in it).

Now, I am warning you, this whole thing of inuring the bird to human presence will take a loooong time but it is perfectly doable because this is not an aggressive bird, it's just a super scared bird, the poor, poor thing! Let me know if there is anything else we can do for you or if you have any doubts or questions.

[Nan]

Thank you,so much for the help. I already know where his line is and am carefull not to press him on it I did not know about covering the top and sides of his cage. He is on our front porch in a large cage and is well protected from the weather under the roof and right outside our lounge room windows butslightly off to one side. He is covered at night we cover him about an hour or so after sunset and uncover just as it’s starting to lighten. He can hear us and does talk he has quite a good vocabulary. And some ringtones, whistles ect. He won’t even try any nuts, fruit or veggies I put in for him he has a good quality seed mix and he loves dry pasta, he tried some bottlebrush flowers and stems today so that was good he has chew toys and ropes (hemp). He loves his chew toys. We believe that the abuser was a man as he will try to bite my husband every time he goes near the cage, but gets upset when he comes back inside calling out “comeback,comeback” but with me he jumps to the bottom of his cage and tries to get away. He loves engaging with the kids but will still get scared if the go to close to the cage. Any more advice will be greatly appreciated and I’ll post on any developments as they happen. Thanks.

[Pajarita]

Well, for one thing, he cannot be out on the porch on its own so, unless you live in the porch, he needs to be brought inside where there is people. He'll never get over his fear of people if he is not inured to them and he can't get used to something he sees only sporadically. He needs lots of exposure - always keeping the 'safe' distance and not staring at him but he needs to see and hear people living with him. They are highly social birds and isolating him is only going to make things worse because being alone, to a parrot, means being vulnerable and unsafe which, in turn, causes anxiety and stress.

Now, you NEED to change his diet. I am sorry but there is no two ways about it. He can't be free-fed seeds - they will destroy his liver and kidneys, clog his arteries, create uric acid crystals in his kidneys and joints, make him hormonal, etc. Parrots are not seed eaters. They are eaters of fresh plant material and, although one could say that seeds are plant material, it's a fact that seeds are not found in nature all year round and that the ones that are found are not dry but what we call 'green' seeds (seeds inside the fruit). Plants bloom, fruit and seed only during the growing season, never during the resting season.

It's not hard at all to switch them as long as you prepare the right dish and time it correctly. Let me explain. Grains are not seeds (they are actually the fruit of the plant) but they do resemble seeds A LOT so we use their natural inclination to eat seeds (parrots love seeds and are hardwired to gorge on them precisely because they are only found during their breeding season and because they are high protein - without which they could not breed) to get them to eat a healthier fare. I've been using and recommending gloop for many years because, in my personal opinion, it's the healthiest food you can give them - and also the easiest to switch them to You can look at all the different recipes of gloop in the diet section but, basically, it's just whole grains cooked al dente, mixed with some pulses (like lentils) thoroughly cooked (you can't half-cook beans) and mixed with frozen veggies (frozen produce is the most nutritious, more than fresh or canned). You cook the grains, allow them to cool, mix them with the frozen veggies (without thawing them), split into daily portions (some people that have only one or two birds use ice cube trays) and frozen. Every night, you take out one portion and allow it to thaw overnight so it's ready to serve at dawn. Sometimes it works best when you put it on a white paper plate at the bottom of the cage, sometimes they like it in their food bowl - you will have to see which he likes best so try both and see what happens. Now comes the 'timing' part of it. Birds are their hungriest in the morning so what we do is take out the leftover dinner (which should be a portion just the tiniest bit bigger than what their crop would hold) once the bird is asleep at night and wait for one hour after the first light in the sky to serve them breakfast so he is good and hungry for it (as time goes by and he gets used to eating his gloop, you can serve it a bit sooner). Start by making an all grain gloop (with no veggies) and mix the tiniest sprinkle of a budgie seed mix into it. He might not eat it at all the first day but, on the second day, he will start to pick the seeds out and in a couple more days, he will start eating the grains (you will know when you see empty white 'skins' laying around or in his food bowl). Once he is eating the grains regularly, start adding veggies starting with corn (they all LOVE corn with a passion and it's always the very first thing they pick from the gloop), once he is eating the corn regularly, add peas, then diced carrots (I use the peas and carrots frozen bags and, if you do too, just add them both together), then chopped broccoli (make sure it's 'chopped' and not 'cuts' or 'florets' because they pick the bigger pieces and throw them out but they will eat the chopped).

Diet has a lot to do with mood and even more with health so it's imperative to feed them right.

[Himme1998]

It's wonderful that you've taken in Louie and are committed to helping him feel safe and secure in his new environment. Building trust with a traumatized bird takes time and patience.
basket random

[SteveEiland]

Wow, that is so nice of you.

[andulka]

It's wonderful that you've taken in Louie and are committed to helping him feel safe and secure in his new environment. Building trust with a traumatized bird takes time and patience.
Here's the bird flying into house spiritual meaning I found online.

I went through something similar. I also had an abused corella. It took almost a whole month for him to feel like himself again. He was really traumatized by whatever happened. But now he trusts me completely since when I first brought him home, I spent so much time with him in one room. It really helped him see that he was safe here and had nothing to be afraid of. My corella's name is Hasun (ha as happy and sun as sun.)

[Pajarita]

Wonderfully happy ending! And the name, Hasun, is great.