Is it preening or playing? - New owner questions

[ParrotRick]

Hello parrot people

I am a new parrot owner having only collected my young Senegal (about 4 months old) last Friday night so it's only really been five days. So far things are going great but getting your advice on some of the things I haven't seen in any of my research would be good.

My first question is related to when I stroke his head, he seems to enjoy it most of the time and fluffs up and once or twice his eyes have started closing. But he nearly always interrupts a head scratch if it continues more than a few seconds by mouthing my finger. It's almost like he is trying to swallow it which reminds me of a baby bird begging for food, but he will also make excited little cheeping sounds and gently chomp my fingers all over in a very playful way. I am not sure if this his way of telling me to stop or he is begging for food (he was hand reared from 2 1/2 weeks old) or playing but his body language seems fine but if he is stood on one foot he will put it down. He does do this with my fingers randomly too but stroking him definitely seems a guaranteed trigger.
Similar to this he is very fond of licking my face and ears, he loves spending lots of time doing this but will also sometimes hold my ear gently and shake it a bit. So overall my question is, is this all preening behaviour or is he also using me as a toy? He has only very occasionally been a bit too rough (maybe three times) and I respond by pulling my hand or ear away and tell him it's too rough and this does seem to work as he will stop for a little while and start again being gentle again - he doesn't bite it's just my ears/eyes are quite sensitive to a pinch. If he seems to be in the mood to chew something I don't repeat myself asking him to stop I just put him on his cage where he has ropes and wood and cardboard he can destroy as much as he likes. I think of this as a re-direction and not as a punishment, he doesn't seem perturbed and can come back whenever he wants.

One other question (sorry if this is getting a bit TLDR) is should I be helping him learn to fly with more vigour? He does fly but he is hilariously terrible at it, he can take off but then seems to lack the muscle to maintain it and the skills to actually land so other than getting from my armchair to his cage (about 4') which is a very big target (he hits the side of it somewhere and climbs the rest), all of his attempts have ended in a crash landing into a wall or side of a cabinet. I don't want him to be discouraged but he will only fly about 18" to my hand and even that takes him a good amount of psyching up to try. I am just curious if too many crashes ever makes a parrot nervous of flying? It seems failure is something they will always encounter but he doesn't try very often and with everything else I make sure I always set him up for success, whereas with flying I have just left him to it to try at his own pace. I am pretty sure this is the right thing to do and he will get it in time and I don't mean to sound impatient because I am really not, I just don't want him to be afraid of anything.

Other things that have surprised me is how slowly he eats, how inefficient he is at eating and how often he likes to nap but this is all very cute. He has fallen asleep on me many times already but I tend to pop him back in his cage or on the back of the armchair when he does because I can't keep still enough and it wakes him up when I make the slightest move.

Any thoughts appreciated I am really looking for constructive criticism so I am not making any mistakes.

 

[Notdumasilook]

On ur first question.... my bet he's begging food... normal... as well as shaking ur ear..probably the same thing. Don't be shy to give lily healthy treats when he begs.

As far as his flight attempts... keep working with him on short flights until he builds up muscle tone as well as skill.... AND get him on a healthy diet. Best of luck with your baby.

 

[LordTriggs]

sounds like a very well-behaved bird to me!

I'm going to say the mild chomp is combination of returning you preen, a little attention seeking from being hand-fed, maybe begging for some food and playing all at once, maybe try getting a tiny bit of mash potato or something warm and mushy, he may enjoy it until he gets a bit older.

As for the flying, do you know if he was clipped? It would explain the extremely short flight distance. On a fully grown parrot with developed chest muscles they can only glide to the floor but for a baby bird who hasn't quite got his muscles sorted yet then it would explain how he falls. Just keep working on short little flutters between your self and the cage until he works it out. Also take him around the home, tap the windows walls and other hard things with your finger, bring him close to them so he can join in tapping and understand that what's in front of him is a solid object

 

[clark_conure]

What lordtriggs said....clark sometimes nestles with me while I pet too. Remember with another bird they would both be together scratching eachother maybe at the same time, you just happen to be 9000 times bigger than him so he preens your finger.

The best is when you take turns, and he sits on your shoulder and begins allopreening your ear, hair, eyebrow etc. That feels amazing.

 

[ParrotRick]

Thanks for the replies that helps a lot.

 

[ParrotRick]

Oh and no he is not clipped and he has improved quite a lot now, but still fairly pants. For example he will fly 4' or so to me and then back to his perch whilst I train him and has flown the full length of my room to land on me. He also missed my arm and instead of continuing forwards and crashing he managed to do a full loop back to his perch. But other than this he doesn't seem to want to fly on his own he is happy sitting on his cage the whole time. In fact he now seems to prefer the cage to spending time with me and I don't know of this is a bad sign or I have somehow trained this into him by using it as a training ground. He has also refused to step up for the first times without coaxing when he is content up there sometimes. The first thing he wants to do when I take him out is go to the top of his cage.