GCC suddenly afraid of my hands?

[InvaderNugget]

I'm really close to tears right now.

I don't know what happened, Kiwi is usually very friendly and cuddly with me, I've had her for just under a year now.
I had her out of her cage earlier and she was fine, but as soon as I went to put her back into her cage a few hours ago she was all of a sudden terrified of my hands. She would fly away whenever I tried to get her to step up on my finger, she still lands on my head and nestles on my shoulders and in my hair.

If I get my hands to close now she will either fly away of screech in a strange way I'd never heard before.
Nothing that I'm aware of triggered this behaviour, it just started happening. I did clip her nails for the first time yesterday but she didn't seem to mind while it was happening and was fine with me in between then and now.

She isn't showing any signs of illness or injury, she is a lot quieter than usual though.
Whenever I'm around her cage she will chirp, say her name and dance, I'm not getting any of that now. She's doing everything else normal though, eating, drinking and playing with toys.

I don't know if this is a phase, perhaps she is now suddenly associating my hands with going back into her cage?
Is this a common quirk with green cheeks that will be gone the next day? Or could it be a sign of something serious like an injury I'm unaware of?

I'd really like some advice, this is really upsetting me..

 

[webchirp]

Has she had a wellness check recently? I would recommend one if all the sudden a new behavior has developed just to rule out a health related issue. I do have a couple of cheekies who do something similar and Zephyr is usually because he doesn't want back in his cage and i've upset him. I give lots of treats for a few days and work a bit extra with him until we return to normal.

 

[InvaderNugget]

Not recently, I'll be taking her.
I'm now wondering if its possible for Kiwi to be upset with me because I had been spending a lot of time and attention on Casper today, could they get jealous over these things?

 

[Mizzely]

Koopa does this to me on occasion too. It's because she doesn't want to go into her cage, or she is happy where she is and doesn't want to budge! It could also be jealousy; Koopa gets fussy with me if I give Gizmo kisses before I give her kisses

Do you only require her to step up when you want her to go to the cage?

 

[roxynoodle]

I think it's because she didn't want to go back to her cage

It could also be the nail trim. In that case, extra attention from you and time to get over it. She will

However, if you see any other unusual behavior, particularly signs of illness or injury I'd get her to the vet ASAP.

 

[InvaderNugget]

Well I'm relieved now, she did take some treats from my hand ' they're suddenly not scary then' and as I'm about to go to bed we have this routine where I say goodnight several times and she says her name back each time, which she did

Do you only require her to step up when you want her to go to the cage?

No, I'll get her to step up for all sorts of reasons, though strangely I've got a feeling that she knows when I'm about to put her back into the cage lol

 

[JLcribber]

Grabbing her with your hands to trim her nails would be a good enough reason for the behaviour.

 

[InvaderNugget]

Grabbing her with your hands to trim her nails would be a good enough reason for the behaviour.

I didn't grab her though, she was perched on the cage bars when I trimmed them.

 

[JLcribber]

Have you ever trimmed her nails before? You had to of grabbed her feet in order to trim them correct?

 

[InvaderNugget]

No, it was my first time trimming them. I'll be honest I didn't really know the proper way to go about it with a bird, I'd only ever clipped dogs and rabbits before that and thought it was the same (at least that's what my parrot owning classmates told me). Luckily the nail trimming scissors were tiny, I just had her grab onto my finger with each foot as I snuck in there and trimmed a little bit off each nail.
She got treats afterwards as well

She didn't seem stressed as it was happening and wanted to play with the scissors.
Perhaps the new experience was still a bit much for her despite what I assumed

 

[InvaderNugget]

A bit of a good update:

Kiwi was still wary of me today, but I managed to lure her to me with treats.

I forgot to mention before and it might be important but she is going through her first big moult, I managed to get her to step up and she allowed me to give her scritches and remove a few of the many pin feathers around her head and neck.

She's been stepping up, still a little reluctantly than before but I'm happy, she even climbed down my arm and 'shared' some of my raisin toast (I only allowed her to take from the ends I didn't bite from yet).

She still isn't very talkative to me but enthusiastically talks to my budgie, even saying her name to her.

I also have an idea of what MAY have caused this. My mother was making two minute noodles for my brother just before and Kiwi climbed down from me and my raisin toast and tried to eat some of the dried noodles. Me and mum just laughed it off (we didn't let her get any) but my brother angrily ran up yelling and waving his hands at her and loudly scrunching an empty chip packet at her to scare her away from his noodles. We told him off and he is sorry and said he won't do it again but I'm thinking he may have done this last night at some stage.
Kiwi does have a habit of trying to 'share' people's food or landing on them.

 

[carkam]

I have clipped my greenie's toenails quite a few times, but this last time I did it he does the same thing with me. its been over a month and he is still leery of my hands even though he wasn't before and he is 4 years old!

 

[InvaderNugget]

Oh wow, maybe that was the cause then :/
Hopefully both our conures go back to normal soon.

 

[karen256]

Maybe something changed about your hand's appearance. My GCC was terrified of my hands the first time she saw me with a bandaid on... flinging herself into the cage to hide in terror. Some birds also react like that to nail polish.
She got over it fairly quickly; nowadays a bandaid is just something that she will gently try to preen off.

 

[InvaderNugget]

Perhaps, Kiwi always used to freak out when I painted my nails a different colour. The only thing I can think of is for the first time in class we learnt surgical hand scrubs and that was the night before this happened.
The solution in the scrubbing brush left a bit of a yellow stain, even though I washed up since then, maybe it was still visible to Kiwi somehow?

Good news though, she is back to normal now