Hello! After much thought and consideration, I decided to take to the form for some advice. I have a male, Green cheek conure who is about a year and a half old. I had noticed he was attempting to mate with the bell on his boing toy. I told mom an der she said it was him sexually maturing, but this is only the start of this. After doing more research on this, I've soon discovered I was encouraging sexual behaviors on my bird. I don't want to do that for both of our sakes. I read up on different ways to discourage this type of behavior, so that's what I'm doing.
I removed the toys he would try to mate with and would regurgitate on, which were both the bell toys. (Apparently he has a thing for bells.) as well as distracting him with his ball tous. (He likes to attack those) and picked up the pillows we have set along the floor. I picked them up to discourage him from looking for a nesting spot in them. He is allowed free range of the house and goes where ever he wants for the most part. He would crawl off his cage, onto the couch, and onto the floor and across the living room to check out the pillows for hours. He was also shown a huge interest in crawling under blankets we use and trying to crawl into my shirt.
I particularly noticed that he has chosen me as his "mate". I don't want to lead him on, but I'm not sure how to tell him I'm not into birds. (Excuse me for my crude humor.) I didn't realize all of the cuddling, and preening he would do was rather obsessive and signs of sexual behavior. I'm trying to limit my time with him I'm and be careful of where I pet him.
He's began to attack my mom, my sister in some cases, every friend, and will go after the dog. (We have a cocker spaniel who is terrified of the bird.) dad is the only one who skittles has never bit it attacked in his life. However, I'm the one that spends most of the time with the bird.
I've noticed it also affects me, too. Since I didn't realize what was happening sooner, I continued to encourage his behavior because his attention and love for me made me feel wanted and special. I know that sounds weird, but I'm very attached to him now and it's very hard for me to try to break these behaviors and wean myself from him. I suffer from terrible anxiety and his love and attention for me has been helping me, but I fear it's becoming a problem where I'm getting anxious without him.
Another thing he does, is scream and scream and scream if he cannot see me. And once he does see me, he screams some more while bobbing his head up and down wanting me to come get him.
With him being a free range bird, he will often run up to me. Theres been a few times he's crawled up the stairs for me, and then crawl across the house and into the basement and began to make his way to my bedroom (I live in the basement) to get to me. Also, just about every time I use the bathroom in the main floor of the house, he slips under the door, crawls onto me to preen me and himself.
I feel so guilty when I try to leave him alone and ignore him crying for me every time I'm nbor with him. But I want to show him that the rest of the family are fun too all while trying to prevent him from being sexually frustrated as best as I can. It just breaks your heart and the separation from him hurts me as well. I'm not really sure how to handle this. If anyone had any sort of advice or experience with this situation, that would be wonderful! Thank you everyone for your time.