by Pajarita » Tue Jan 23, 2018 11:35 am
Welcome to the forum and thank you so much for taking the poor lost bird in! John is right, you are expecting way too much too soon.
Parrots are not like dogs or cats that, once they are socialized to people while babies, they would go to any kind human. As any prey animal [dogs and cats are predators], they are very distrustful of anything and anybody they don't know so she will need time to get to know you and learn that you are no threat to her. Once you get her trust, she will begin the process of bonding with you. But it's imperative that you do nothing that will make her bite you because this is what we call the honeymoon period, where the bird is assessing its new home and humans, and the very foundation of your future relationship with her. Aside from that, it's essential never to put the bird in a situation where it feels that the only way of getting its point across to you is biting you. It creates a terrible precedent and can become a habit which will be very difficult to break.
You are doing almost everything right, it just needs the smallest tweak, actually! You rescued her from sure death, you provided her with a nice large cage [make sure all her perches are natural tree branches and not dowels and that her roosting perch is at your eye level when you are standing up -prey animals don't like anybody looming over them - put the cage very near a window so it can get the exposure she needs to dawn and dusk and, make sure the back of it is solid -as in against a wall or having a piece of material draped over the back to create a 'wall'], food [make sure you are providing her with lots of produce, especially fruits -their natural diet- and VERY low protein food -a budgie seed mix will do for now], company and out-of-cage time. Now, all you have to do is allow her to get used to you and learn to trust and love you - and you are pretty much doing it already by allowing her to come out of her cage and keeping her company. Spend as much time as you can in the same room she is in, talk/sing/whistle to her, offer her a treat every now and then but do NOT ask her for anything. The ONLY time you should ask her to step up is if she goes down to the ground or flies away from her cage and does not go back into it on her own and, if you have to do it, use a stick and not your hand. But, if you time the out-of-cage time correctly, she will got back on her own. In order to do this, you would need to feed her something like gloop, mash or chop in the morning [always accompanied by raw produce, of course!], let her out at dawn by just opening the door to the cage [it's always good to tie some nice tree branches to the side of the cage so she can climb up as, for birds, there is safety in high places] and take out all the food out of her cage putting fresh food two hours or so after she wakes up with the dawn. By then, she will be real hungry and will go back into her cage on her own to eat. Mind you, she might not do it the first or second day but, eventually, she will.
Same thing with her dinner, let her out when the sun is beginning to set [around 3 pm] and put her dinner in her cage at 4 pm, as the dinner should be the budgie mix, she will be eager for it and will go right in without you having to force her in any way.
And be patient! Parrots timetables are not like ours, they take their own sweet time for everything so don't think that because it's being a couple of months and she still doesn't love you, it's a lost cause because it's not. Also, she will revert every now and then and it would seem that you go two steps forward and one back all the time but that is the way they are and, in time, they do settle down. The best thing you can do to speed things up is to keep a strict and steady routine where you do the same things with her every single day [and that means EVERY single day, weekdays, weekends, sick days, holidays, etc]. It will not only reassure her, it will also decrease the inevitable stress parrots suffer in captivity and it will allow her to settle quicker.