Hi, I have a stray parrot in my home (you can read the hole story in the introduction thread) and as I have never had a bird I have a few questions. I would like to explain his behaviour and maybe someone could give some comments on if he seems stressed or not...
He is pretty calm and eats a lot. He is pretty brave, will eat out of the hand (through the bars) after just 3 days. He is interested in everything we hang in the cage and he makes little noises, not loud, just kinda like he is talking . Every once in a while he whistles a little higher but again, just seems to be talking. Then he also sometimes runs back and forth on his perch... is this exercise or stress? He does make high pitched noises once in a while, maybe a stress call? Remember, he has only been in the cage for 4 days.
We have been reading a lot about food since to me this seems to be the most important thing to learn. He gets special Australian Parakeet food and those sticks with food on, dont know what they are called. Then we have been giving him nuts but he seems to play with the more then eating them He also has orange. And then he has a toy with apple and honey and he LOVES apple. We have tried some veggies but no luck so far. Can he have to much apple? Should we be careful with that? Right now we are trying to just give him apple when we are trying to tame; we just figured it might go easier since he loves apple so much.
His cage is 44 inches wide, 26 inches deep and 47 inches high. Im assuming this is sufficent? We bought the biggest one we could find... cos maybe he needs a friend? He has about 4 toys in his cage now but we wanna get more. Different perches on different levels.
Now, how necesary is it to take him to the vet? This would TOTALLY stress him out I would think... He has lost a couple of feather around his neck but we dont know how long he was outside eather. He seems to go to the bathroom just fine.
Im spending my evenings with him so he can get used to me and he really seems to like the company. My husband is at home during the day. We have two dogs but are ofcourse not letting them get to Joe.
Final question, what comes first; taming and then out of cage to fly or first out of cage to fly and then taming?
Sorry this thread was so long... we just really dont wanna do anything wrong. We have really grown attached to Joe (Im actually pretty suprised how fast that went)
Here are some pictures of when he was still outside: