New mexican Quaker Parrot owner

Greetings again! It sounds like you are making some progress with Alfi. The opening and closing his beak fast is beak grinding, which is something they do when they are content, so that is a good sign.

As others have mentioned, the sunflower seeds are definitely something you want to change, although I can understand not wanting to push Alfi too much right now. You might at least see if you can get him to eat something like Higgins Safflower Gold, instead of sunflower seeds. Personally I have found that sunflower seeds are like drugs for our Quaker, and she gets obsessive about them as well as just starts acting crazy when she eats them. And of course from a nutritional standpoint they are quite inadequate and too fattening.

Cupcake, our QP, was from a pet store. By my estimation she spent nearly 6 months there. She is very well adjusted at this point with minimal behavioral issues to speak of, so it doesn't have to be a problem. But obviously some pet stores are more traumatic for the bird than others depending on the people that work there and the general practices of the store.

I would say you are correct, at 5:30am, Alfi is probably still sleeping. When I approach Cupcake's cage even at 7am she is generally still fairly motionless.

All in all I would say you are doing well! Keep us posted as things progress!

Hello Easttex and Aarón!!,!,

Thank you for your comments, as I wrote they are very motivated and I will continue slow with Alfie. When I bought Alfie I didnt know how amazing is the birds world.

I have been reading alot about parrots in general and Quaker parrots in particular, and I found out that parrots are very different than dogs for instance, due to their intelligence and longevity. So, they most be treated different, like if they were a person.

Thank you again for your comments, I will follow your advices.

Santiago and Alfie.

It is really remarkable, no?  I had never had a bond with a bird the way I do with our QP... and our whole family is continually blown away by the depth of the bird personality.   Pretty incredible stuff.

I have never trimmed Bonnie's nails. I just put some calcium perches in her cage in the hope that they will keep her toenails short enough. Her nails are only 3 or 4 millimetres long at most.

I agree with Easttex, I would not try to do that nail trim yourself at this point. We only get Cupcake's nails trimmed once a year at her annual vet checkup. Aside from that we use perches and sometimes she appears to be trimming them herself although I am not sure how effective she actually is at it. I have cut her nails before, and she handled it well enough, but we did once have some bleeding and have not done it since. At any rate, if Alfi is still quite afraid of you, the last thing you want to do is put him through that kind of invasive handling unless you absolutely have to. Have a groomer do it so they can be the bad guy if he needs his nails trimmed.

I have read that when the bird sits on their perch and their nails go all the way around and touches the back of the birds foot... then they are too long. (this is on a medium width perch) I used to think Oscars were too long but really they are not. Also.. he has started to trim his own nails so I am not worried about them anymore.

Hello again.

I am worry because Alfie is a puzzle. I have been very careful to him, I have never tried to hold him because he is very afraid. However, as I already mentioned, he sometimes close to me specially when I am seatead when dinner.

Every internet page that I have read about taming a parrot, have advices based on give treats and gave for granted that the parrot allows to approach your hands.

Alfie doesnt behavies like that. In fact, The treats thing doesnt work with him. Yesterday I made an experimet. I put its food in the usual container and put some sunflower seeds, that he likes very much, in the cage ground. My expectations were that when I return from work the seed were tone, however Alfie didn't touch one single seed.

So the treats strategy seems that wont work with Alfie.

Any advice or comment?

Thank you again.