Into and suggestion appreciated

[andrea2180]

Hello, my name is Andrea and I just got my first parrot (Sunny). He is a Lesser Sulpher Cockatoo three year old male. We live in NC. I believe he may be suffering from some sort of anxiety, he screams every time I leave the room. I could understand if he was not getting enough time with me but, I am home all day. I believe he didn't come from the best of conditions and I don't think he had much attention. I don't even think he had ever played with toys before I got him. Could it be that now he is finally getting attention and is screaming because fear of being alone again? I have to mention when i got him he was in a extremely small cage, no toys and shut off in a room away from everyone else. I have taken him to the Vet and physically is okay other than very long nails.

[liz]

Myrtle came from a bad place. She was confined to a small cage for her first year. She has a real phobia for cages and will not go in one for any reason if the door is still attached.

[Pajarita]

Well, when a very needy bird (cockatoos been number one in neediness) is not given enough attention, one of the behaviors they adopt is screaming (they also pluck and self-mutilate). My Freddy (also a LSC) was a big time screamer when he first came to me. His previous owners (who had had him for 21 years and loved him very much) worked all day long (they had their own business) and only let him out of his cage for a couple of hours at night. This did not only make him overly-hormonal (which is another reason for bad screaming) but also got him used to screaming for attention all day long -attention he did not get because there was nobody home so he kept on screaming and screaming. So, when he came here, even though I am home all day long, he was allowed out for hours and hours, got A LOT of personal attention and had his cage in the middle of the living room where he could see and hear me as well as the other birds (meaning he was never alone), he would still scream and scream and scream. All I did was give him attention every single time he asked for it and, eventually, he stopped. The thing with screamers that got into the habit from lack of attention (and this is, by far, the most common reason for screaming) is that even when you do give them the attention, they still scream simply because they got into the habit and just keep on doing it for nothing else than behavioral 'inertia'. But, once their endocrine system is working as it should (through a strict solar light schedule and lower protein during resting season) and they realize that they don't need to scream for attention because they are getting it, they stop. It takes time and one does get a bit impatient after a while (I don't but my husband was 'losing it' after a few months ) but it works. With Freddy, it took ten months for him to get to a 'bearable' point but he is great now. You hardly hear a peep out of him and, when he does vocalize, it's a short thing. I think that the biggest mistake people make when they get a screamer is believe that ignoring the screams is the way to go. Why would it? If they scream for attention and they don't get it, the only thing they could surmise from this is that their needs are not taken into consideration (unloved?) and that they need to either continue screaming (to see if it makes a difference) or resign themselves to not getting what they need (which causes chronic stress).