Seems I SCARED my male lovebird away of his nest!

[Nour826]

First I am totally new to birds, have a pair of yellow / orange headed lovebirds which recently laid about 3 eggs or this was the count I saw last time.
My birds are not tamed - bought them already old enough to breed.
I used every other day to open the top of the nest & capture one picture with my mobile to check the eggs.
Now considering my birds used to get scared when anyone is approaching their cage & run quickly to the best box, they are always in & not allowing me any chance to check the nest while they are out!
Ok one day I saw 3 eggs. Few days after I noticed there is only one egg so I decided to push the birds out just to check whether they are hiding any. The hen refused to move so I didn't push her but the male got scared out of the nest box & stayed out for the whole night! By the morning I noticed he is so nervous & aggressively biting the cages bard as if he is trying to escape the cage. Finally he managed to push himself between relatively wide two bars of the cage & flied to the room.

I can of course get him back to the cage but I do feel guilty because I scared them that much! & I will appreciate any advice to help him feel quite back.

Thank you all!

 

[Marc]

I would be worried only for the fact he was able to escape through two bars!!
The risk is that, in future, they can remain beheaded or trapped.
What is the distance between the bars?
As for the fear (of your male) is not important; the lovebirds are prey animals in the wild; so into their DNA is foreseen that there is the possibility to be scared;
A fear should NOT provoke consequence, however you can be more careful the next times, respecting better their privacy but(at the moment)you don't have to feel yourself guilty...

 

[Nour826]

I would be worried only for the fact he was able to escape through two bars!!
The risk is that, in future, they can remain beheaded or trapped.
What is the distance between the bars?
As for the fear (of your male) is not important; the lovebirds are prey animals in the wild; so into their DNA is foreseen that there is the possibility to be scared;
A fear should NOT provoke consequence, however you can be more careful the next times, respecting better their privacy but(at the moment)you don't have to feel yourself guilty...

Thank you so much for your kind response.

Yes I should have payed more respect to their privacy.
Just as an update I managed to get him back to his cage. Once he is in he ran directly to hide again in his nest box with his hen which has not left her nest box during all these events except for about 10 min or so!!! I am happy he's back to his nest though still very confused about those missing eggs issue!

As for the cage itself, yes I am keeping them in a very big cage that is actually supposed to be for bigger size of parrots. You can say the distances between the bars are around 1.5 - 2cm in some cases but they never escaped it before. Only in this very strange scared mood that he came to when I scared him I was shocked to find him hardly & aggressively trying through the bars for the whole day to get out! I thought he wants to come out to punish me

Thank you again & have a good day,

 

[Marc]

I deem, your current cage is very dangerous for your birds;
keep in mind, that if he has been able to escape one time, it means that he can escape everytime he wishes to flee;
Thus they can escape due to open window or they can remain trapped between the bars;

In your shoes, I would avoid to keep them in a cage that has been projected for bigger parrots;
There are a lot of big cages that have been thought and built for the lovebirds; If you want to assure them a lot of space then you can buy one of these last cages;

 

[Mrcrowley]

Marco is right you really need to get a better cage if you have a travel cage I suggest you let them sleep and that at night or when you're not in the house or not supervising them .Just be really careful of birdies are very clever and they will find a way out of a cage like you can already see .

 

[Daisy's Mom]

Bumping for you..