Problem with Amazon screaming

[Chai]

Hello everyone. I am a new bird owner and I'm looking for a little guidance with my white-fronted Amazon, Addison. I have been nosing around different threads and noticed that background info is helpful so I will provide some here.

I adopted him from an avian welfare foundation 5 days ago, where he had been for 1 1/2 years. They estimate his age to be about 10 years old. He was previously in a home with 45 other birds and when the owner died, they got turned over to the foundation. I know that we are still in the "honeymoon phase" as I learned from reading other posts here so I haven't been asking him to do anything, I just leave his cage open when I am home, usually for 5 or 6 hours a day, and he comes and goes as he pleases. He mostly stays on top of his cage but will occasionally fly over to the couch or the back of a chair. He doesn't step up and is rather fearful of hands, but I'm not about forcing him to do what he doesn't want to do. The problem he is having is the screaming. He does it both in and out of his cage, at seemingly all times of day, and can go for hours if he feels like it. I'm worried that I am doing something wrong and he's trying to tell me that, but I have no idea what it is.

For his diet, he gets a mash in the morning made of grains, lentils, and garbanzo beans, and in the evening he gets a fresh salad and a tablespoon of seed mix. With it being summertime I get up at 5 am to feed him breakfast, and dinner time is at around 5 or sometimes 6 pm. I have read about birds being photoperiodic, so I make sure that he has natural light, and has exposure to dawn and dusk. After the sun goes down he has no exposure to artificial light, just occasional moonlight. I have provided many different kinds of toys for him but he doesn't seem interested in them.

I also want to mention that I took home 2 special needs African greys about a month ago from the same foundation, so Addison is not alone, there are other birds in the room. These guys are old, one is blind and the other is thought to have had a stroke at some point and doesn't have full use of his feet. Everything is going well with them.

If anyone has any suggestions about Addison's screaming, I would appreciate it! Thank you for reading!

[Pajarita]

Welcome to the forum and thank your for adopting instead of buying a baby! You have the right idea about pretty much everything so I only have a couple of things to add.

For one thing, five days is nothing to a parrot - and I do, most emphatically, mean NOTHING - ZERO - ZILCH - NADA! So I would not worry at all about the screaming being my fault and would not expect it to end any time soon, either. At that age, unless he has been getting good care (good diet, solar light schedule, etc) - which I seriously doubt, he must be overly hormonal and this is, most likely, the reason for the screaming. In my personal experience, amazons are not screamers unless they are very unhappy and/or uncomfortable/in pain and, once they are getting consistent good care during enough time for their bodies to get strong and healthy again and their minds to be at ease (meaning, to realize he 'belongs'), they stop. Well, let me rephrase that. No parrot is completely quiet - if you have a quiet parrot, you have a VERY sick or very stressed out/anxious bird in your hands and zons are no exception. They do vocalize but of the four I still have, only one actually makes flock calls at feeding time (Naida, the BlueFront female) and they last just a couple of minutes. The others don't even bother. Mami and Precie talk a lot and Zeus hardly ever makes a peep. So just give it good care and continue allowing him to roam at his pleasure and sooner or later he is going to stop.

But, my dear, although the diet you are giving him is not bad and shows you have been doing research ( ), it's also not as good as it can be - all it needs is a little tweak here and there. Chickpeas have a lot of oxalic acid and although they can eat them, they should never be fed often (I never feed garbanzo beans to mine, I use only small white beans in the gloop and I have been reducing the amount and plan to eliminate them altogether actually). Whole grains and lentils are good but you need to mix that with veggies (for the vitamins and minerals) and offer raw produce (for the phytonutrients and enzymes) on the side so it's a more rounded breakfast because, if you don't, he will end up eating way too much protein. The seed at night is fine (mine get a cockatiel seed mix with two or three pieces of nuts -like one medium size almond and half a walnut, for example) but you might want to add a nut or two to it (nuts being so much better for them than just seeds - even if the mix doesn't have too many sunflower seeds in it) but the salad needs to happen in the morning when they are hungriest and more inclined to eat the healthy food because if you give a parrot seeds with a side of lettuce, they will not eat the lettuce.

[Chai]

Thank you so much for your reply Pajarita. I have been reading and learning from your other posts and I'm so thankful that you choose to share your knowledge with everyone.

That's a relief to hear about the screaming. I was worried it was me and that he just doesn't want to be here. I will give him more time and keep taking good care of him. Thanks for the tips about his diet too, that's so helpful. I will take the chickpeas out of the mash I made, as there aren't too many in there to make it difficult to do. I also think, from reading a different post, that I may have cooked the mash too long, so next time I will make sure I fix that as well. I will add veggies in starting tomorrow, and give him his salad first thing in the morning. As far as the nuts go, I forgot to mention that I have been chopping an almond and walnut everyday and handing pieces to him periodically throughout the day (but not during his screaming), which he takes from my hand pretty well. I can include a couple pieces with his seed mix also.

Do you give your African Greys the same diet also?

[Pajarita]

All my parrots eat, more or less, the same diet. They all get the same breakfast (gloop and raw produce) but their dinner has more or less protein depending on the species. The gray I now have is a very healthy 19 year old girl that has been with me for 11-12 years and which has perfect blood work results for liver and kidneys and is flighted and living cage-free so she gets more protein than the zons. African birds seem to eat, in general, more protein than their South American counterparts so I add more nuts to her dinner. But you said the grays you have are old and sickly so, unless their blood work is coming back normal (and this does not mean borderline but firmly in the middle), I would not give them more protein.

[Chai]

Ok, they will stick to the same diet as Addison then. This has been very helpful, thank you so much!

[Pajarita]

My pleasure - and please do not hesitate to ask any question you might have. The only stupid question is the one that was never asked.