tmck3053
Meeting neighbors
Hi all - I'm new here but would like to ask a question. The background is that my girlfriend and I, living in an apartment, got a little loverbird named Flip about a year ago. He was hand-raised, though we didn't know the gender (we decided he was a little boy). He has grown very fond of both of us - while he's probably a bit more happy to be patted and touched by me, he's very sweet with Stephanie as well and doesn't get aggressive near his cage at all. He's very good with hands and while you get nipped here or there (as with all birds) he's generally very gentle and well-behaved.
About two months ago we discovered him putting little bits of paper in his tailfeathers and concluded that Flip was actually a girl. Since then (say in the last month), he/she has taken to chewing up the paper on the bottom of his cage obsessively, spreading it everywhere. She always liked to fly around the apartment and find little things to rummage in but in the last week or so has become slightly obsessive about this. We let her out every morning, and for the last couple of days she has basically spent the whole time looking for cavities or covered places - we've tried to remove or restrict access to as many as we can but obviously sometimes this is a losing battle. Whenever she finds a place she likes it's very difficult to remove her - she makes loud warning chirps and will bite if approached.
Cutting a long story short, it feels like this nesting behaviour is escalating somewhat and it means that she gets very tense and prone to biting more often, and spends less time with us in the day - in the evening she relaxes and is a bit more like her normal self but we're not always around then. It'd be great if anyone had advice for how to perhaps discourage some of this behaviour and return things to normal.
Things we have tried:
About two months ago we discovered him putting little bits of paper in his tailfeathers and concluded that Flip was actually a girl. Since then (say in the last month), he/she has taken to chewing up the paper on the bottom of his cage obsessively, spreading it everywhere. She always liked to fly around the apartment and find little things to rummage in but in the last week or so has become slightly obsessive about this. We let her out every morning, and for the last couple of days she has basically spent the whole time looking for cavities or covered places - we've tried to remove or restrict access to as many as we can but obviously sometimes this is a losing battle. Whenever she finds a place she likes it's very difficult to remove her - she makes loud warning chirps and will bite if approached.
Cutting a long story short, it feels like this nesting behaviour is escalating somewhat and it means that she gets very tense and prone to biting more often, and spends less time with us in the day - in the evening she relaxes and is a bit more like her normal self but we're not always around then. It'd be great if anyone had advice for how to perhaps discourage some of this behaviour and return things to normal.
Things we have tried:
- Taking out paper: we used to put paper on the bottom of his cage to keep things clean and make it a bit easier for him to get around, and change it daily. We have taken this out so that there is no more paper for him to spend all day shredding and putting in his tail feathers.
- Earlier bed-time: In Sydney we have just come out of summer and are in the middle of autumn, so it gets dark around 5.30-6. We used to put him to bed any time between 7 and 8 but now have started putting him to bed closer to 6pm. The laundry of our apartment is quiet and away from the window (so he can't hear the outside birds chirp) - we close the doors so it's dark and put a towel over him as well.
