Night frights are very common in tiels, not so much in other species I have read. It is in fact what brought me to bird boards a few years ago. Angel had lost ALL flight feathers on both sides and went from fully flighted to falling like a brick. I had NO idea and thought it some rare fast disease. I had stupidly put a small play gym on the floor of the cage thinking that would give her enjoyment playing on. She fell on and into it, thrashing around and also had abrasions under both wings.
With night frights some covered birds prefer to be uncovered, others,the opposite applies. Adding a night light seems also to help tremendously as when dazed after the fright they can see around them. Eliminating shadows (eg if near a window move further away.) as much as possible helps too.
Angel (and the others) are now never covered, have a night light and when I am coming to the kitchen in the night I softly tell them it is me. The frights she used to have have decreased dramatically in number and intensity. Now she (and it also sets the others off) just falls from her perch sqarking, looks around, shakes off the brain fog a bit as she can see where she is and climbs back up to roost. If I am there for a fright I do not touch her I just talk calmly as she orientates herself and settles.
I woke up at 4am to the sound of Eddie thrashing about and peeping quite distressingly. I immediately turned on the light and my poor little boy was running around the bottom of his cage in a terror. I opened the cage door and coaxed him out, and let him sit with me while I checked him over and rubbed his head. I was worried that he might have broken a feather, but I couldn't see any blood on him (only a little bruise/bump on his face just in front of his eye. It looked like there was a bit of blood, but it was minor. I know I've heard of parrots letting go of their tail feathers when they are distressed. But Eddie let go of all of his flight feathers! Every single primary feather was at the bottom of the cage--it is if he had an instantaneous moult and lost all of the feathers all at once. It is terrible! He looks like he has little penguin wings. After he had calmed down and I was sure he was okay, I put him back into his cage and left a light on for him for the rest of the night. He seemed tired and out of sorts this morning. I checked the bottom of the cage this morning and finally find a broken flight feather. So my theory is that he broke the feather shaft and then shed all of his feathers to get the growing feather out of his skin. I can't see any blood or bloody shaft, but I'm still worried about him. I gave him some Harrison's recovery formula this morning, but I had a really busy day at work today, so he's at home and I am stuck here worrying about him. Should I take him to the vet? I'm so worried about my baby. I piled all of his feathers up today--there are a LOT of them. It's a horrible sight. Any advice would be appreciated. My poor baby boy!
