Questions

[Guest kraylus]

I have had my Jasper, 4 month African Grey Congo for a month now. He is great and has settled in well. I have a few questions that I hope someone can help with.

 

1. He loves to scratch his beak on the pirch. So his beak has lots of scratches on it. Is this normal behaviour?

 

2. He likes to fly into the window. He has done it a few times. Will he eventually learn that there is glass there and stop doing this?

 

3. Why do they scratch the bottom of the cage when they want to come out?

 

4. He loves to have his head scratched so much he would sit there all day if he had a choice and be scratched. Is this normal that there heads are so itchy?

[Guest javacrypto]

There's a lot to learn isn't there - for both you AND him. And the first thing is that you many never know why Jasper does many of the things he does, some are instinctive, some serve purposes that humans can only guess, some make no sense to us but perfect sense to a parrot. Usually it's not the "why" of what he does as much as the cause-and-effect relationship of his actions. Just something to keep in mind as time goes on; believe me, the "why"s of his behavior don't matter as you teach and guide him to learn to live in our world, and a system of rewards for desired behaviors/ignoring undesired behaviors will serve you better than trying to understand the reasons - remember we're only humans and simply can't. Anyway...

He doesn't "like" to fly into the window; he needs to learn about glass.

Babies need to learn about everything, and you need to teach him before he injures himself. (None of my 14 flighted parrots has ever flown into a window, BTW.)

Many greys are known to scratch at their cage bottoms (or the floor, or whatever); why is anybody's guess. "When they want to come out" is no better or worse a guess than the many others I've heard .

Another assumptoin - he may not be itchy . Maybe he just enjoys the sensation, or likes being close to you. Two bonded birds will preen each other's heads and, once again, humans can only guess at the reasons. Mostly my african birds (grey and poicephalus parrots) will "let" me - their willing servant - scratch their heads until my fingers are numb - lol

[Guest javacrypto]

There's a lot to learn isn't there - for both you AND him. And the first thing is that you many never know why Jasper does many of the things he does, some are instinctive, some serve purposes that humans can only guess, some make no sense to us but perfect sense to a parrot. Usually it's not the "why" of what he does as much as the cause-and-effect relationship of his actions. Just something to keep in mind as time goes on; believe me, the "why"s of his behavior don't matter as you teach and guide him to learn to live in our world, and a system of rewards for desired behaviors/ignoring undesired behaviors will serve you better than trying to understand the reasons - remember we're only humans and simply can't. Anyway...

He doesn't "like" to fly into the window; he needs to learn about glass.

Babies need to learn about everything, and you need to teach him before he injures himself. (None of my 14 flighted parrots has ever flown into a window, BTW.)

Many greys are known to scratch at their cage bottoms (or the floor, or whatever); why is anybody's guess. "When they want to come out" is no better or worse a guess than the many others I've heard .

Another assumptoin - he may not be itchy . Maybe he just enjoys the sensation, or likes being close to you. Two bonded birds will preen each other's heads and, once again, humans can only guess at the reasons. Mostly my african birds (grey and poicephalus parrots) will "let" me - their willing servant - scratch their heads until my fingers are numb - lol