Pajarita wrote:Oh, geez, poor thing! Hearing that would have broken my heart... Abnormal vocalizations are something that people usually doesn't give enough credit to as a symptom of something going on. Normally, if somebody has a chatty bird and, all of a sudden, he stops talking, people notice - they might not realize it's a symptom of the bird not feeling well but, at least, they do notice. Of course, making the wrong assumption as to the cause can be as bad as not noticing and that's why I asked the questions of the OP.
My second daughter's mother in law recently lost two canaries in two days. She had noticed that they had stopped singing but attributed it to molt which could not have been the cause of it because the days are neither long enough nor hot enough for it (and, if she had asked me as I always tell her to do, I would have told her it wasn't that -I am very upset over this!). They were dead a week later and, most likely, from a simple respiratory infection that could have been easily taken care of with some antibiotics in their water (which I would have given her). But, when we talk about parrots, we not only need to be alert when they stop vocalizing but also when vocalizations are too frequent, too loud or that have a 'bad' tone to them (and I am sure you will all agree that anybody who has had a bird for a while can tell when the 'tone' is different). Parrots learn to speak in a human language because they want to communicate with us. It's as simple as that. There are species of parrots that have been found to make 500 different sounds and combinations of them so we know they actually communicate (talk?) among themselves. So, when we bring a handfed bird into our homes, they know that human language is the way to communicate with us -some are more adept at it than others but even the ones that don't talk understand us when we do. But, when a parrot repeats the same word over and over and over for a long period of time (and 10 minutes is a hugely inordinate long time for a parrot to repeat the same word) without any discernible purpose to his talking, it becomes a stereotypy. For the people that are not 'up' on what this word means, a stereotypy is a repetitive, useless behavior that animals in captivity do when they have been under anxiety for so long that their minds are beginning to 'go'. Elephants moving from one foot to another and rocking their bodies with the movement, tigers pacing from one end to the other of their cage, dolphins swimming in circles, pigs rubbing their heads against the bars of their enclosure, cats that lick themselves bald are all examples of animals that are presenting stereotypy behavior.
Now, parrots can repeat something until they drive us crazy but they usually do it because they are either not getting the response they want or, sometimes, because they just like the sound of it (like a car alarm) or our reaction to it but it's never just one single word over and over, machine gun style and for 10 minutes at a time. Sweetpea will drive me bats with his "Whachu doing?" But he doesn't only expect an answer, he also expects the right answer so, if I am cleaning the canary cages, he doesn't accept any other answer but "I'm cleaning the beebee birds" and, if I answer differently (usually a "Oh, geez, don't start, Sweetpea!"
The OP has a gray and they need A LOT of stimulation and time. They are not cuddly birds, very destructive or prone to screaming cockatoo-style so, because they are not Velcro or big complainers people would sometimes kind of take them for granted and not pay enough attention to them not realizing they need hours and hours of their own kind of one-on-one as well as out-of-cage time. That's why whenever I hear of a gray doing something like the OP mentioned, I always want to find out details because this behavior could very well be the precursor to plucking and even self-mutilating in them.
Sorry to hear about the canaries, birds dont show symptoms until something is really wrong so i am always a little on the worried side when i see a change in any behviour. The sounds Gaugan liked to make a lot was the smoke detector because we would run around fanning it, I am sure we were very entertaining, and the phone ringing, she liked us to run into the room and pick up the phone. Pois are less prone to plucking although at the rescue here they have two Senegals that have been plucking.
