My Quaker

I agree with aaron. My quaker loves to rub his beak on his perch that has a sort of gravel on it. After he roughs it up he will polish it on many things. I always say he is brushing his tooth when he does this.

Shah rubs his beak along the bars of his cage, on clothes, sheets, whatever he can find just like Bonnie.

Mitu does the same exact thing. I think its shows that he is marking his territory or its just love.

I hope that some of you still check this, as the last post was some time ago. My Mother-In-Law gave me her QP about three weeks ago. I didn't realized how badly he had been abused before I got him. He is adjusting awesomely, with his feathers growing back, shaking diminishing, and no longer drawing blood or biting at all, which was a given all the time. My QP (12 y/o) rubs his beak on the cage bars too, and he also rubs the top of his beak on the bars to wipe his beak off after he has eaten something. However, he has started a new behavior of turning and rubbing, more like caressing, the top of his beak in my palm when I am petting his head, neck, and wings. I am wondering if this is a mating activity because sometimes when I pet him, he rubs his privates back and forth on the top of the cage door. It is obvious this feels really good to him. He also says, "Oh baby" sometimes when I do this, but he has not said that when he rubs his beak on the palm of my hand. At first, it was frustrating because it made it difficult to keep petting him, until I realized I could keep petting him while his head was in the palm of my hand.

Thanks Eastex! That was very helpful and encouraging! I will certainly stop stroking his wings. It is funny you mentioned the hours of daylight because she covered him at 3:30 or 4 pm every day because she did not want to hear him anymore. Since I have had him, I have been putting him to bed at 8 pm. He seems to really like being able to stay up later, but he is consequently now getting longer hours of daylight.

I laughed when you said he had fallen for me. That is what I thought. I was a little timid to pet him initially after seeing how he has bitten everyone so hard for so many years. He has known us the whole time she had him. I never tried to pet him when she had him; although, I would talk to him. He had only been at our house a day and one-half when it became obvious that he wanted me to pet him and kiss him. It took a little bit before I allowed him to kiss me on the chin. He likes me to kiss his head, but he sometimes tries to turn his head around quickly and kiss me on the lips. I try to be careful so that this does not happen, simply because I don't want him to accidentally hurt me or to encourage it, as I read that our saliva can be dangerous to them.

He has also taken to my 9 year old son. He likes talking to him and allows him to hand-feed him too. I know he is a male because she had him sexed in 2005, and I have the paperwork. I am encouraging my son to hand-feed him because I want him to be socialized and non-aggressive and non-territorial to other people. I have read that some QP do not like you putting your hands in their cage, but he even allows me to do that. Even though I have hand-raised a Grey Coccatiel, Petey has always only allowed her to touch or kiss him prior to my getting him.

It is funny because she has always clipped his wings, but he has watched Dimples, my other bird, fly around to my head, and Petey has recently flown to the floor a couple times and gripped the bars tightly while exercising his wings so fast, it looked like he was wanting to take off in flight. There is a little jealousy going on with both birds, but I try to give them equal attention; however, they are different, with different wants. I was going to continue to clip Petey's wings, but I am considering letting his wings grow out, at least enough so that he can fly up because we have 2 cats, and although, they recognize him as family, they still have animal instincts. We keep them locked up upstairs during the day when the birds are out. I am not worried about him getting away from me because he has seen Dimples resist going up and hurried in his cage when it was his turn. This is laughable because he has learned from Dimples being a bad-boy. As a side note, she had taught Petey that he was a bad bird, and he came to believe it because he heard it so much, so I do not use those words and counte him by saying, "No, Petey is a good bird." That he ems to be working, and he rarely says it now. I let Dimples get his flying out of his system, but when it is time to go up, if he doesn't, I let him only briefly land long enough to point a cane up to him and make him fly again. Eventually, he gets enough exercise that he will allow me to put him up. However, if he still refuses to go up and won't stay on my hand, I use oven mits to pin his wings and scoop him up. Petey has seen him be a bad-boy and gone in his cage when I just mentioned needing to get the mits, if he did not go in his cage. It has been pretty funny. I knew Petey was smart, but I never really know how smart. Kellen, my son and I sing "Good-night Sweetheart" to them each night before covering them, and he usually goes in right away, with no issue, and then, He says, "Night night." The only time I had to use the mits was the first time he flew to the floor right after I got him, and I needed to get him up. I have since picked him up bare-handed without him biting me. He has yet to step up on my arm on his own though. I am still working with him. I hope I can get him to do this before his wings grow out.

Once I got him and saw his behavior immediately change, I realized that she had trained him to be mean to everyone but her, in order to boost her self-esteem. Prior to getting him, I thought he was just territorial to her. When I found him after she was hospitalized, he had plucked his chest; under his wings bare to the skin, and his upper back down to thin, fuzzy feathers. She did confess that she had thrown a spatula at him before she went into the hospital, and I wonder if she threatened him with a knife because one day he freaked out when he saw me with a knife, even though I was four feet from him. His feathers are growing back nicely! He also has mostly stopped shaking. The only time he shakes now is if I am gone for any extended period of time. I had never seen a bird shake so violently before. It saddens me when he still starts shaking while I am gone. I have thought about getting an anti-anxiety medicine from the vet for him, but I am hoping he will overcome this in time. She stayed with us for about 5 or 6 days after she got out of the hospital the first time, since I took him, and he did shake when she was around. He also will shake if he hears her voice over the phone. We use certain cues and sayings when we do our regular routines, so that he becomes accustomed to the new routine, environment, and knows I will be back. It seems to be working because he now will tell me "Bye-bye" before I even tell him "Bye-bye."

Thanks for the warm welcome and answer to my questions.