Desperately need good advice...

[Morgiana]

I hope you all can bear with me, as I'm both new here and this will undoubtably get long, but I am in dire need of good advice...

Not sure where to start, I'll start at the beginning. Back in 1996, I bought a sun conure from a private breeder who had hand raised her and her sibling. Her breeder was wonderful, she came home to me without a hitch, and was absolutely the love of my life. We did everything together, including walking outside in the park (her wings had been always clipped and she knew nothing about flying), going on car rides, chores around the house, etc... I was a first time bird owner and had read up on birds. I wasn't SUPER educated, but whatever came up, she and I muddled through it together. We had a trust between us that needed only eye contact. She was confident, she was friendly, and she loved people. She only ever showed aggression to people when strangers came into the house and then it was still possible for me to calm her. (Easy call there: Territory.) I used to joke the only thing I would change about her would be her voice.

As of a month ago, I'll never hear her voice again. She fell ill and, despite immediate veterinary attention, she died within two weeks. Necropsy showed there was utterly nothing we could have done to have saved her. Cancer had silently taken over several of her body systems, only showing symptoms after things were far too late to do anything. I dearly missed her and missed the kind of relationship we had together. I knew I would have another bird, and about two weeks ago, after much time taken with several birds, I decided on a beautiful senegal.

My senegal, who I call Bijou, was born January 15th of this year and came from a pet shop, but one that has a good reputation. (No PetCo/Petsmart/etc.) This is a place I knew, where I had purchased many supplies for my sun conure. They encouraged me to come visit him in the store while they made sure he was fully weaned from formula. (They allow birds to wean themselves, with abundance.) He seemed a little jumpy in the store itself, but would sit with me when I went to a quiet bench with him. I admit it was his coloring, his voice (loud to some, but I'm used to the sun conure siren, so quiet to me), and the fact that he was already doing some "step up" in the store that made me decide on him.

Now I have my head in my hands and several times have been crying, wondering that I've made some horrible mistake.

The first day I had him home, he was glued to my neck, didn't want to leave my shoulder, wasn't eating. Concerned, I coaxed him to eat and made him spend some time in his cage, where the food bowls are located. On day two, he started to eat a bit more, which I liked, but still seemed nervous.

On day three, things changed. Now he doesn't want to leave his cage. If I go up to the front of the cage, he moves all the way to the back wall. If I put my hand in to have him "step up" he moves like he wants to bite me. (Sometimes he does bite.) I can offer him food from my hand and he'll take it, but always nervously. If I do take him from the cage, he will fling himself off my hand towards the cage. (Trying to fly. His wings were unclipped in the pet store and I had to clip them when I brought him home for safety. I had asked them to do it for me, but they didn't.) I've tried taking him out of the room with the cage to my kitchen, where there is a standing perch. Once on the perch, he again wants nothing to do with me. Moves away from me if I move towards him, makes biting-threat motions if he thinks I might pick him up. Additionally, once he learned the perch was there, now if I take him into the kitchen, he will fling himself away from me towards that perch.

I've tried practicing him stepping up onto my hand, then placing him back in the cage/on the perch with prasing, and he's sometimes fine for that -- as long as he knows he doesn't have to stay with me for any extended period of time. The only times he's been receptive to being held are in the mornings right when he wakes up. Then he will seem to want to be held, but it doesn't last long before he wants to go eat. I've taken him into the shower several times and after he figured out what the shower is, he wants to be picked up to go in there with me. He seems to enjoy the water, but doesn't actually do anything other than sit, be it either on me or on the shower perch. (At this time, he seems to prefer me, but I have to make him use the perch while I have shampoo in.)

The tune changes with my husband. He steps up to my husband, he plays with my husband's glasses. When he was on the perch in the kitchen and my husband came home from work, my husband went upstairs to change and Bijou walked to the part of the perch closest to the stairs, calling, and watching the stairs intently until my husband came back down. Just now, my husband had to leave for a late church meeting and Bijou was sitting on my hand when he walked out the door. Almost as soon as the door closed, he jumped off my hand and went across the room to the door, flapping like he was trying to get up and through the glass part of the door. When I went over to him to pick him up, he made "growling" type noises at me and hid behind the trash can beside the door.

I'm at an utter and complete loss here. He seems to ENTIRELY HATE me. I tried calling the store for advice and all I got was: "He needs more time." "He's not going to be like a conure." "Besides he's a boy too." I finally got a little fed up and asked exactly how they would tell me a senegal was different from a conure, and I admit I almost hung up on them when the response was: "Well, you seemed to know a lot so I figured you'd done your homework!" See, I had SPECIFICALLY asked how senegal's personalities were like and got nothing but vague responses from the people at the store.

The thing is, I DID do my homework. Rather, I thought I had. Both my husband and I read up on senegals (and red bellies, the other birds we were considering) on various websites. Everything we read sounded like it was what we were after. I read description after description of essentially: "playful and decently social if socialized while young". Senegals were the size we like. They were a vocalization level we like. It looked good.

The bottom line is I don't know how to bridge this barrier. Nothing I can do makes him WANT to be near me. The best I can get is him tolerating me moving him from place to place, and he often doesn't even want that level of interaction. More importantly, this is supposed to be MY bird. While I know you can't determine who will be a bird's favorite, my husband would not have a bird by his choice. I believe my husband was my sun conure's favorite person too, but she was very happy to be with me as well and so I never had a problem with that. I don't have to be the FAVORITE.... but I don't seem to even be making the list with my senegal. It seems flopping to the floor and walking off to the middle of the room to do nothing is perferable to sitting on me.

What do I do?? I need some advice because, as I said, I feel like I've made a horrible mistake and I'm increasingly feeling like I have to do SOMEthing to put it right before things continue too long like this. I just have no idea what to do. The thought of bringing him back to the store makes me sob and I would never forgive myself if I did -- even assuming they would accept him back. But my husband and only have room and finances for ONE bird. If this continues, all I will have for thirty years is a hole in my heart where I wanted a bird to be and the thought of that makes me miserable.

Please help. I'm lost. Any advice is welcome. I'm not getting any help from the store. I'm not getting a lot of help from my vet, who saw him glued to me while in the vet office and said, "look at how he stays with you, he just needs more time." I should mention too that I'm FINE with things taking more time, but more time to accomplish exactly WHAT? And how? The most I can do at this point is talk to him from across a room.... which he ignores. I don't know how to interact with him and have it end on a positive note. He won't allow it.

[patdbunny]

Hi Morgiana, and welcome.

Sorry to hear about your current experience. I'm sure it's very hard on you. I love the suns and jendays. Their personalities are a lot more outgoing and feisty than the senegals.

Hoping the many senegal owners here can help you.

[Kathleen]

The more you give this "time", like the store employees suggested, the worse this situation is probably going to become as the bird continues to associate you with being stressed. Clearly, it's trying to defend itself or get away from you as it must see you as a danger/intruder. This isn't going to just fix itself. Unless you change the circumstances and the environment with training, the bird will may become more "attached" to your husband, and will certainly become more afraid/aggressive toward you as you continue to force it to do something (in the birds mind), invade its "territory", or respond to its aggression and fear in a way in which it will start to learn that all it has to do to get rid of you/or for you to leave it alone is growl, bite, or run away (seems like it has already started to learn this).

To read a complete guide for basic taming, see this post on the Trained Parrot Blog:
http://TrainedParrot.com/Taming

I have experienced Senegal Parrot aggression first hand. It's going to require some form of food management, persistence, patience and cautiousness.

Good luck.

[patdbunny]

I thought I remembered something about phobic senegals when I was researching possibly breeding them years ago.

Here's some info:
http://proaviculture.com/poicephalus.htm

http://www.nipsparrot.org/Educational%2 ... Edited.htm

http://www.silvio-co.com/cps/articles/1 ... inson1.htm

[patdbunny]

P.S.
I completely understand if you don't want to live with this for the next 30 years.

Sometimes it's not a "fit"; and there's a "fit" out there for this bird that might be someone else. I'm not saying ditch the bird willy nilly (which I don't think you would considering your current agonizing!); but sometimes it's not meant to be. Sometimes a new "fit" is in the best interests of the bird, too. We had another thread on this "fit" thing with someone with a deposit on a baby CAG. I can't find that thread right now.

[captwest]

I'm not a senegal person , but on parrots in general, They're sort a lot like us, they only want what they can't have. You're there, always. Don't push yourself on them , let them be . When they decide that your fun and all that, you'll be golden.And of course, they all have their own personality , you can't exspect your new fid to fill the shoes of your old. Just my 2 cents worth, Richard. PS don't stress over writing a book, the more info the better advice we can offer,matter of fact, i'll offer this, always leave the bird wanting more of your attention, when he makes a move to you,cut it short and don't make him tell you that he's had enough of your attention.

[Vicki5280]

My first thought is that I completely agree with Kathleen. Don't mistake me for an experienced bird person by any means, but I've learned a lot during my brief history. What I've learned tells me that the best way to forge a bond with the bird is not to allow him time, but to move forward with training of some kind. The Trained Parrot Blog and attached YouTube videos have some wonderful training resources. Where you're lucky is that there seems to be a tremendous amount of Senegal experience on this forum and people are SO willing to share. It's far and away better than a pet store.

Many store owners love their birds more than they do themselves, but they get caught up in the day to day stress of running a business and don't stay current on many aspects of bird ownership, to the detriment of their clients. As a result, the clients don't receive objective information on which to base their purchase and/or care decisions, and when people don't take it upon themselves to learn what is necessary, it is the birds who suffer. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that's an all too common occurrence in today's "disposable" society.

On the other hand, PatDBunny makes an excellent point which I also agree with:

Sometimes it's not a "fit"; and there's a "fit" out there for this bird that might be someone else. I'm not saying ditch the bird willy nilly (which I don't think you would considering your current agonizing!); but sometimes it's not meant to be. Sometimes a new "fit" is in the best interests of the bird, too.

Sometimes, it just flat doesn't work out. When that's the case, there's not much you can do about it. There are times when you've given it all you've got and you still can't make it work, and if that happens, it's like you said - why subject all *three* parties to a possible 30 years of unhappiness? Especially when there probably is a someone out there for the bird? If you know you've tried, don't beat yourself up if it didn't work. Give everyone a chance at happiness and move on.

I'm absolutely certain that one way or another, this will all work out OK in the end. You seem to be the kind of person who will go all out to make sure that it will.

Please come back and let us know how this turns out for you. It's hard when people drop in during a crisis, then never tell anyone how things turned out. We'll be thinking about you, Good Luck.

[Morgiana]

Thank you all for the replies so far! I was literally up until about 2:30a reading/watching EVERYTHING that was linked. (My husband has been going through it all too.) I've immediately started with some of these training ideas and, after what felt like barely any effort, have had the FIRST really POSITIVE day with Bijou since he came home two weeks ago. There's still a long way to go, obviously, but I'm high as a kite that things seem to be headed in the right direction.

Especially useful to me was the link (embedded in one of the others): http://trainedparrot.com/index.php?bid=45 about touching parrots' beaks. Bijou has responded amazingly to this and, as soon as I read it, I realized this was something I had done with my sun conure when she was a chick, without realizing it was any kind of training. Interestingly, the thing that finally broke the ice of him standing at the back of his cage and me at the front, was me leaning down and rubbing my nose against his rope perch in a beak-cleaning-type motion, then against the side of the cage. He kind of gawked at me, then came immediately over, where we beak touched on and off (between watching the kids walking home from a local school through the window) for almost an hour. Several times, he willingly stepped on/off my hand and stayed on my hand for a bit. We even shared a grape and took a trip into the kitchen together. Even just this minimal interaction is unspeakably rewarding for ME. I only hope it is for him too.

I'm still going through the embedded links in the pages that were linked to me. On the one hand, it's amazing that I never knew any of this was out there after owning my sun conure for almost 15 years... but on the other hand I somehow had never needed it. I'm so grateful to have found it now and only wish I had learned about target training when my sun was alive. She and I would have had a ball with that. Once things progress to that stage, I'm looking forward to trying it with Bijou.

Obviously, I'm going to keep watching for any other ideas people can think of for me to try, but the ice has at least been broken and I finally feel like progress is possible! I can't thank you all enough!

I should add a picutre of the little fid your advice has already helped. (BTW, the person taking the picture is ME. See how close he is? I'm standing just past the end of his cage door. This wouldn't have been possible even yesterday!) Hopefully, the sky will be the limit and we'll be around here for a long time to come.

[kaylayuh]

I'm glad the forum was able to help you. It's sad that we sometimes only find the best resources in times of emergency!

He's a beautiful bird. Congratulations on the progress you've made!

[patdbunny]

So happy for you that it looks like it's going to work out!