Cranky macaws and the tailfeather

[Alwese]

My Scarlet Clifford has big long red tailfeathers. When the feather first comes in, the vein in the center of the feather is black but about 7 months later it turns white in the center just before it falls out. Cliff gets really cranky just before this happens, so I am assuming this must cause him some pain. I don't have a GW to know if this looks the same on other macaws but I wonder if the white center is the same for other macaws and cranky behavior at that time. We are having an extraordinary week of high temperatures here for the month of January and yesterday I took Clifford and Kayko to the beach. Kayko was a good boy and I put him on plenty of people for cell phone pictures. Clifford tore my hands up with all his pinching and cranky behavior.