by Pajarita » Fri Feb 28, 2020 9:44 am
Hi and welcome to the forum - Smokey is your bird's name, right? Anyway, yes, he must be super angry because, in my personal experience, there is no species of parrot that is sweeter than cockatiels. They are so sweet that even when they are not handfed, they will not try to bite you when you have to towel them or hold them for whatever reason so, for yours to actually attack you, there is something VERY wrong with his life. I am not blaming you, mind you, I am just stating my opinion based on my personal experience (I don't have any tiels right now but had a flock of over 30 of them for years).
Now, I don't think that hormones are an issue UNLESS he is not kept at a strict solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk because, in the Southern Hemisphere, you are going into fall (I was born and raised in South America) but, if you free-feed protein food and little else and you have kept him at a human light schedule all his life because the long days and high protein added to the fact that he is now sexually mature and all alone all day long, would most definitely create a chronic anxiety and sexual frustration in him. Why was he put in a room by himself? Was it because he was vocalizing too much? They are not loud but, when they are alone and hormonal, they call for a mate almost incessantly and that can get on anybody's nerves.
What you need to do is get him a mate (do you know for a fact it is a male?) because cockatiels are what we call an 'aviary species' which means they need the company of other birds of their own species to be happy, and put them together in a LARGE flight cage, feed them the right diet (which means you cannot free-feed protein food) with lots of greens (they love greens) and keep them at a strict solar schedule with good quality full spectrum lights for during the day (but make sure you ONLY turn them on when the sun is already streaming into the room and to turn them off when the sun is halfway down to the horizon in the afternoon/evening). You are in luck because the process of adjusting his endocrine system is going to be short as they days are already getting shorter where you are and he is VERY young. Once he stops making sexual hormones and has 24/7/365 adequate company (and I say 'adequate' because, let's face it, a human cannot give them what they need from another bird) and the right diet, you will hardly hear a peep out of him and he will become very content and comfortable and will stop attacking you.
Let me know if there is something that needs further clarifying.