Finding a mate...

[DanaandPod]

Thank you everyone for your responses... Some interesting information.
Actually, what my parrot fixates on outside when he looks up is not birds but the sun. He stares right at it...and will do this from perched at the apartment window too... It would blind me to look straight at the sun... Is this bad for him and his eyes?
When he said "i love you" it could have been stress...though I felt it was also excitement... I mean, I don't exactly force him into his travel cage... He jumps right in knowing what lies ahead! All I have to do is take it out. The tone of the "I love you" is how I say it when I come home at night and greet him after walking in...now, I suppose that could be interepreted various ways... is he excited to see me? Yes...but maybe stressed that I was gone? Anyway...that is the emotion timing he is exactly mimicking. I did not know that they don't like to explore...or go far from their places... Hmmm...now I don't know if taking him on a hike is good or bad.... though i still believe that the outdoors/sun/air...is a good thing verses never leaving the apartment...
Some of his calls out to people could be stress...as he gets very verbal when stressed. However, what he is doing is bobbing his head up and down to get everyones attention to come over...
I need to learn about the solar lighting because I dont know what it is. I find it funny that everyone thinks they need bright light for umtienth hours a day...yet today i am home...and he is under my bed...in the dark....a typical play

[Wolf]

Not saying bright light at all, saying unfiltered( like through a window) sunshine as the uv rays ins sunlight allow him to make vitamin D-3 in his body. The wavelengths of light that occur at dawn and at dusk are what they use to mark the length of the day to control their breeding cycle. The term is called photoperiodism, do some research on your own, you don't need to take my word or anybody else's in this matter.
We all know that too much stress is bad for us, but not all stress is bad. We don't know exactly what stresses are always bad for our birds and there have been no studies or research into whether taking your bird out for a walk is good or bad for them. I know that birds do not live stress free in their natural environment, But I don't know how much stress they experience in nature and neither does anybody else. There are exactly no reports, research papers, or anything else to say whether it is good or bad for them to go for outing with their human. The result is that with nothing to give us a clue, you will have to make up your own mind about this topic.
A solar lighting schedule is very simple as it just means that your bird is exposed to the twilight that occurs at dawn after which they will wake up shortly after the sun rises and that they are then exposed to the twilight period of dusk in the evening and then go to bed by full dark after the sun has set. It is how almost every bird in the world functions. This serves to keep their biological clock in tune with the seasons where they live.

[Pajarita]

The thing about stress and undomesticated animals is that not all stress is the same. People talk about the stress of living in the wild, having to forage for their food and been constantly on the lookout for predators but, in reality, this only seems stressful to us. Why? Because nature evolved them to have mechanisms to cope with this so-called stressors. To a wild bird, foraging successfully or not might have the ultimate result of life and death but nature made it so the action itself is not onerous to them. Quite the contrary, foraging with their flock is nothing that would resemble work, it's actually a social occasion for them, more like a party than a job. They have a system where different able individuals take the positions on the periphery of the group and watch out for predators so they can let everybody else know if there is danger so the ones on the outside eat, lift their heads, look around, see that everything is OK, put their head down and eat some more, lift their head and so on and so forth while the ones in the middle just eat and eat not worrying for one second that they might get eaten by a predator because they have the assigned 'watch' looking out for them. They do this at night, too, and they take turns so everybody gets a chance to eat without worrying and sleep with both eyes and both sides of the brain (this is something that only birds can do, namely, choose if they sleep with both sides of the brain or with just one). So, you see, what looks like a life full of stress to us is a normal, happy one for them. It's like a person that was born and bred in the city and an aborigine from the Amazon jungle - if we were put in the middle of the jungle, we would be terrified and would not sleep at all (and, most likely, die in a matter of a couple of days) but the aborigine from the Amazon jungle would have no problem with it - and, on the other hand, if we brought this same Amazon guy and put him in the middle of a large city, he would freak out BIG TIME and, most likely get run over by a car! It's all relative and directly related to what's familiar to you (natural habitat), and, for parrots, also whether they have their flock around them (nature's number one mechanism for effectively coping with their natural habitat stressors) or not but pet parrots don't have a flock and that makes for a stressful life even when they are not exposed to anything specifically stressful (we know that lone pet parrots live with stress which, ultimately, reduces their lifespan -they did a study with African grays).

[liz]

Each bird has it's own personality. If I tell Rambo we are going bye bye he just can't wait for the carrier and steps right in. Myrtle has to be tricked. Even though I put the carriers facing each other so she can watch Rambo, she still stresses to the point of panting.

Where some birds do not like change, my Amazon kids think it is great fun to move their cage or rearrange it.

I originally searched for a friend for Rambo when I got Myrtle. They have a strange bonding and act like brother and sister. There are times that he tries his best to ignore her and other times that he calls if she is in another room.