Random update on my alexandrine

[Khaiqha]

So my alex and I have been doing pretty well. I wanted to share a few things that's been going on with my bird, Bro. It's a long read btw.



--- The other day I was just having a lot of things go wrong, and Bro was the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't even remember what it was he did, but I went on a yelling fit which freaked him out. I immediately regretted it and tried to calm him down, but for the rest of the day he was frightened of me and flew away whenever I approached. Bro always steps up, even when he is terrified of something (like the vacuum) so I was pretty nervous that I had caused a serious break in our relationship. Because I was feeling guilty, I let him stay up an extra two hours and fed him a spoonful of mixed seeds (usually only given during training, and never that much). The next morning he was apprehensive, but by midday he was back to normal.


--- Bro has developed a disturbing habit. Since I mostly work from home, I have to be on the computer a lot. If I stay on it for too long (an hour plus), Bro barbers his tail. He splits the feathers along the shaft, and he bends his tail feathers in different directions. I can't tell if he's doing this to get my attention or if it's fun for him. I don't pay it any detail (even though it kills me inside) because I'm afraid I would reinforce it. A bath fixes the tail feathers easily enough, but he use to do this once a blue moon. Now he's done it three days in a row.

What's interesting is that he only does it when I'm on the computer. I've had to leave him alone for as much as 12 hours at a time, and he doesn't do anything to his feathers. Crazily enough, yesterday he messed up his tail and wing feathers, I went out to work for a few hours, came home and he had fixed them while I was away.

There's a possibility that it could be stress based. My roommate just adopted a dog, and his gf moved in with her own dog. Bro and the dogs have seen each other, but I always take Bro back to my room if the dogs are out, or my roommates put the dogs up if Bro is out (I told them how expensive Bro is to replace, they decided to keep their dogs away from Bro, heh). I don't think that's the issue though, as Bro only barbers his tail if I'm on the computer.

My short term solution is to cage him while I'm on the computer. In his cage he's surrounded by toys and has plenty of things to occupy him. So far that's worked, but sometimes I forget and then next thing I know his tail looks like an antenna. He'll do it even when he's on my shoulder.


--- My old roommate has a cockatiel and I bring Bro over to his place often. I can't tell if the cockatiel wants to play or is being threatening, but it always flew at Bro, which terrified him and sent him flying, which then caused a lot of flying until the birds tired out. To socialize him more, I kept Bro in his travel cage while the cockatiel was out and playing with me. I don't know if that was a good idea. Now instead of flying away, Bro fluffs up, makes his angry noises, and once even hit the cockatiel with his beak (closed, not a bite) to get him to back off. I don't know if this is better, but overall Bro is a lot more calm when the cockatiel is around now, and the cockatiel for his part has learned not to go near Bro. Bro once even preened the cockatiel's tail, which I immediately discouraged because I didn't know if he was going to barber it.


--- Bro still hates/loves my cellphone. I can't figure out which it is. If the phone is out, he wants to chew on it, then gets angry when I don't let him. If it's in my pocket, he'll chew a hole through my jeans to get at it. If he sees me put it under the pillow, he pulls the pillow out to get at it.


--- Last but not least, it has been 17 days since Bro has pooped anywhere but his cage/stand. Even though Bro struggles with trick training (he just doesn't seem interested) he immediately picked up house training, which I love.

[spiral71]

its interesting that your bird has sort of house trained himself my bird chooses to sit on top of her cage to poop often but she is not trained to do this now and again she will poop on my wheelchairs headrest but not that often, its alitle embarssing but at least i can clean it off.