My Senegal is afraid of bedtime.

[roygbiv]

I've just adopted an 8 year old Senegal (female I think, not dna tested). She was adopted out for 2 years to someone, but ended up back at the rescue. She was at the rescue for 8 months before I got her, apparently she hated and attacked everyone but she's decided I'm her best friend.

Anyway, she seems to be afraid of the dark. My place gets really dark at night, and I cover her cage with a dark grey sheet. She doesn't get all cozy and tuck her beak into her wing, no happy beak grinding, she just either stands on her food dish looking scared or hangs upside down for hours until I pry her down and put her on her perch, but she still just stands there looking afraid. I actually just put her to bed and covered her up and she fell off her perch and looked terrified. She's now happy and sleepy on my shoulder.

I check on her multiple times during the night and she hasn't moved and she's wide awake, she just looks tense and to be honest, paralyzed with fear. Could this just be due to her new home, and will it pass in time? Should I leave a light on for her for a couple weeks? I'm worried that she's not sleeping at night, she seems to nap a lot during the day but she's mostly in a silly, cuddly mood and she's interested in everything.

The other thing is that she'll grind her beak and fall asleep on the couch or on top of/in her cage before lights out, but as soon as it's officially bedtime she gets scared.

Any ideas?

[cml]

We have a night light:

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/00150985/

Works brilliantly!

[Michael]

You're probably way overthinking it. Every time you go to take a look, obviously the bird wakes up and appears awake. I've never seen my parrots sleeping at night. Why? Cause they'd be awake the moment I'd check. A plug-in dark sensing LED nightlight is a good idea regardless. It gives them just enough light to get around the cage at night if they really have to. She'll get used to it and figure it out so just leave her. I'm sure after a week she'll be sleeping just fine.

[Grey_Moon]

A cage cover isn't necessary--my timneh is a rescue and its taken me seven years to figure out a sleeping configuration where I don't wake up to down feathers covering the cage bottom.

Your sennie is still settling in but she could be nervous of the cage cover as well. Think about it this way---she knows there's stuff beyond the cage cover, but its way more scary to just be able to hear it and not see it. Plus, it is sort of like a giant predator looming over her and surrounding her. All birds I've had have a bad reaction to cage covers. If the house is quiet and dark at night you shouldn't need one.

Also consider that even if they're put in a dark, quiet room they're not stupid---they know the rest of the 'flock' is still awake. Plus, they also know that they're alone in the dark. Not a good thing for a bird.

My timneh sleeps in an open pak-o-bird at the head of my bed (which is sorta surrounded by housecoats etc). This creates a sort of closed in 'cavity in the tree' feel and her 'flock' is right there, but she can still see out the front of pak-o-bird to make sure nothing's coming. We leave the radio on softly on a classical music station (helps me too) all night so there's 'sound in the forest' which tells her no predators are there. If she wakes up in the night and begins fretting I'm usually right there and I mist her gently and she settles back down. So far, this is the sleeping arrangement that she likes best--although I do wake up to beak in my face

The other thing that we do, even though its counter to 'good parrot care' is we don't try and enforce a sleeping schedule. She will not and does not settle down untill she can feel that we're winding down too--somewhere between 10 and 12 am she'll start dozing off and will step up and run up the bed to crawl into her carrier, and then we all turn off the lights and go to bed. She'll have a bite to eat for a bit and then beak grinds untill she falls asleep. She's up by 5-6 AM regardless of when she went to bed and wants us to get going---or else she'll pluck if we sleep in and don't get her day cage ready, and of course she crawls onto my pillow each morning to wake me up for scritches and then crawls under the covers with my partner and i so me, her and daddy can get maybe another 15-30 minutes to nap.

If she had a late night she naps untill noon or so. I've tried 'doing the right thing' and putting her to bed so she gets 10-12 hours but she wants none of it.
She goes to bed when my partner and i do, or she'll doze off on top of her cage---but she will *NOT* sleep if we just put her to bed alone and the lights go off.

YMMV though, try and work out something that works best for your sennie and you. I've personally always found that working with natural instincts works better than 'conventional wisdom'.

[Naurthon]

Where in the house is your bird sleeping? My birds sleep together in a room of their own, but when Nikko was my only bird, I had a second "night cage" in my bedroom so he would not be alone during the night. I wouldn't mind still having the boys sleeping in the same room with me, but Dante's powder causes me to wheeze after breathing it all night, so that unfortunately is out.