Birdie Nightmares?

[❤ Rosette ❤]

This is really sort of irrelevant and I wasn't sure where to put it, but in any case I've got to go to bed soon and I just wanted to throw this out there.

Iris, our Green Cheek, is prone to screaming during the night as if she were experiencing a nightmare.
She doesn't flap around or anything, she just sits and makes various frightened noises, all of which are pretty soft. Tonight I walked over to her and tried to console her - she was making scared screech-y noises and crunching her beak - and after I woke her up she just sat still made quiet "whee, whee" noises for about a minute, as if she were traumatized or something. But then she started to act normally and made a sassy grunting noise at me, and I knew she was okay.

I left a part of her cage uncovered - my dad tells me not to, something about "babying her?" - and she seems to be fine now.
Do parrots have nightmares? Is anyone else's parrot exhibit similar behavior during the night - or even just in the dark?

(Maui isn't perturbed by the dark at all, he just crawls into his happy hut and goes to sleep. Iris has a happy hut but she doesn't care for it in the least, she usually sleeps cuddled up to a toy.)​

 

[faislaq]

When we got our first green cheek, he did scream at night when we first got him. I would go into the living room to his cage, talking softly so I wouldn't startle him and hold him until he calmed down. It happened once or twice a night at first so we set up a small night cage on my nightstand so he would he closer to us and it would be easier for me to comfort him without having to get up a couple times a night. This was way before I found this site, so I didn't know or think about spoiling him. All I know is it seemed to work for us.

We also put a soft nightlight behind my nightstand so there was some light under the beach towel we had his cage covered with so he wasn't in total darkness, but not bright enough to bother him.

And not all birds like to be covered all the way, some don't like to be covered at all.

 

[faislaq]

@ Rosette , how is Iris?