by Pajarita » Sat Sep 22, 2018 10:44 am
Welcome to the forum! Yes, I can see why silence would bother you... it would bother me too and, as a matter of fact, it's one of those things that immediately raises a red flag with me because what your vet said is true: lack of vocalizations do usually mean a bird that has either a physical or an emotional problem.
Now, please do not take this the wrong way because I am not criticizing you. I am well aware that what you did was based on, most likely, the wrong advice somebody gave to you. But leaving a screaming parrot alone is exactly the opposite of what you should have done when she was screaming. Also, female ekkies are sexually mature by the time they are two and half or three so, if she stopped at five, it was not because she became sexually mature at that time.
First I would rule out any physical problem. Does she pluck, toe tap, wing flick or shake her head often? Has she had complete blood work [and that means a bile acid test, too] done and a full body XRay? Because, although avian medicine is, unfortunately for them and us, still at its infancy and, in truth, even when you do every single diagnostic tool in the arsenal on them, you might still not be able to figure out what is wrong, these tests are still the one thing we have to go on. Ekkies are VERY prone to liver issues from a very young age [I've known of ekkies with fatty liver by the time they were four years old!] and, at 9 years of age, she is actually pretty 'up there' for an ekkie because they simply do not last in captivity [the oldest ekkie in captivity only lived to be 30 and that was a wild caught -MUCH MUCH healthier than any captive-bred pet- kept in a zoo in Australia where they fed it the same thing that wild ekkies eat]. I don't take in ekkies precisely because of their dietary needs - and I don't even feed pellets [I am sure you know that pellets are an absolute no-no for ekkies] to my birds! So I would start with making sure there is nothing there that is making her uncomfortable including overgrown gonads - which brings me to another subject/possibility: that of her being over-hormonal and in pain [you mention 'nesty noises']. Ekkies having the longest breeding season of all parrots and being so difficult to feed right, are EXTREMELY difficult to keep from producing sexual hormones all the time so I would revise her light schedule, making sure she is exposed to twilight for a whole two solid hours and that no light whatsoever reaches her once night falls. Because chronic pain will make a bird shut up real quick.
As to her emotional state... well, going by what you write: her being playful and affectionate, lots of out-of cage time, etc. it looks as if she is OK. But, [and please, if you already know, disregard the following comment, it's that I don't know what you know and what you don't] I wonder if you are confusing her lack of response to a fear situation with their 'freeze' stance? You do know that ekkies are the only parrots that freeze when scared or upset, right?
As to how to correct this... well, I would start with re-evaluating her health, light schedule and diet [do some research on their intolerance of salycilate rich veggies - I would eliminate them without doing a whole lot of research, to tell you the truth because, what the heck! It's not as if there aren't plenty of choices when it comes to raw produce!] thoroughly to see if any improvement can be made to them because, 99.99% of the time, it's husbandry that creates the problems. And, if EVERYTHING is EXACTLY as it should be [the problem with ekkies is that you don't really have any wiggle room when it comes to husbandry]: perfect diet, perfect solar schedule, perfect environmental conditions [humidity, temperature, air purity], I would just let her be. She might have been traumatized by the lack of response to her requests for attention when hormonal in the past and decided that nobody was going to listen to her, anyway, so why bother... In which case, the only thing you can do is wait her out and continue to celebrate her vocalizations when she does them as you are doing now.