Jsoph
New member
- Jul 31, 2023
- 6
- 5
- Parrots
- Cockatiel
It's been 3 weeks we've adopted our lovely Mrs. Poulet (6 months old) into our household! 
For context: she is our only bird, but me and/or my partner are often home with her hanging out in the same room, so she gets her socialization from us. She has a rather large and tall cage with a little playpark above for when she spends time outside of her cage. She is still defensive towards our hands (she still hisses when our hands get close, but she eats treats from our fingers and is not scared by our presence close to her.) Her feathers were minimally clipped by her previous owner, so she rarely flies away from her cage area.
Since her arrival home, she's been doing her "bat" pose multiple times a day inside and out of her cage (hanging upside down with wings/tail feather spread out), we've found that quite cute and harmless since she was new to her home.
But this week she started having these random "manic spurs of territorial behavior", while playing on her own in or out of her cage. I can't see what's triggering it. She'll spread all of her feathers again and frantically moving her head side to side with her beak open, it looks just like she would be trying to scare something off or defend herself. There really seem to be no trigger to this, she'll be playing with her toys and suddenly go fire, while we're just in the room doing our thing. I can't help but wanting to leave her alone when she does this, as I don't want to invade her space, but at the same time I want to keep trying to bond with her so she becomes tame towards us. Or maybe she's just playing?
Even if she is 6 months old I suspect she might be getting hormonal/hitting puberty/molting, or all of these together
so I'm giving her a minimum of 12 hours covered at night.
Thanks for reading and sharing advice
For context: she is our only bird, but me and/or my partner are often home with her hanging out in the same room, so she gets her socialization from us. She has a rather large and tall cage with a little playpark above for when she spends time outside of her cage. She is still defensive towards our hands (she still hisses when our hands get close, but she eats treats from our fingers and is not scared by our presence close to her.) Her feathers were minimally clipped by her previous owner, so she rarely flies away from her cage area.
Since her arrival home, she's been doing her "bat" pose multiple times a day inside and out of her cage (hanging upside down with wings/tail feather spread out), we've found that quite cute and harmless since she was new to her home.
But this week she started having these random "manic spurs of territorial behavior", while playing on her own in or out of her cage. I can't see what's triggering it. She'll spread all of her feathers again and frantically moving her head side to side with her beak open, it looks just like she would be trying to scare something off or defend herself. There really seem to be no trigger to this, she'll be playing with her toys and suddenly go fire, while we're just in the room doing our thing. I can't help but wanting to leave her alone when she does this, as I don't want to invade her space, but at the same time I want to keep trying to bond with her so she becomes tame towards us. Or maybe she's just playing?
Even if she is 6 months old I suspect she might be getting hormonal/hitting puberty/molting, or all of these together
so I'm giving her a minimum of 12 hours covered at night.Thanks for reading and sharing advice
