Issues with a young cockatiel's behavior.

[Publius Fishyius Maximus]

Hello there, I am posting because my girlfriend purchased a hand fed cockatiel back in early July. The bird's name is Zoey.

Zoey from the very beginning has been an extremely social bird. She loves everyone and will fly to and perch on a complete stranger. This is a great personality trait except for one thing, it often gets to be too much.

We treat the bird like our child and we only cage her overnight, when we are sleeping. When out of her cage Zoey seems to have three moods. Hungry, sleepy, and hyper social. When she gets hyper she refuses to perch anywhere other than my head or my shoulder. I'm a fairly large guy so my head and shoulders are obviously a more attractive perch compared to that of my girlfriend's.

I find it extremely uncomfortable when she perches and dances around on my head and when she sits on my shoulder she has a nasty habit at picking at the skin on my neck and my face. This can prove quite painful especially when not expecting her surprisingly powerful bite and pull. If I gesture the bird to fly away she does, only to let out a high pitched shriek and fly right back onto me seconds later.

If shes not tormenting me she is either picking paint off the walls, chewing right through important wires, breaking computer keyboards, throwing light and delicate things off of counter tops, etc.

Is there anyway to try to discipline this behavior without having to lock her up more often? Unfortunately we're too soft to keep her in her cage for long. Is there any hope that she might mellow out or changer her habits or is it wiser just to lock her up when she becomes a problem.

By the way, Zoey is only a year old. She turned 1 year back in January.

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[Marrie]

For the biting your neck, probably she is preening. My bird will preen the hair on my neck, any moles or pimples etc. If they see something they think doesn't fit, they will try to bite it off. Yes it can be quite painful... find out what she is trying to pick and best bet is to cover it up as best you can. I use my hair to cover up the mole on my neck, cause my bird wants to bite it off.

Chewing on wires etc, you can give a "No" and move her to a proper toy. Eventually she will get the idea, but she will still try to sneak in chewing if she thinks she can. My bird has learned to leave my keyboard wires etc alone.

Also, 1 year they sometimes go through the "teen phase" from what I have read. Which is a lot of temper tantrums, bad behavior, moodiness. They grow out of it though.

And... if you want her to be more independent get her a playstand and start giving her alone playtime. My bird is a velcro bird too, but I make him spend time playing alone, more for his good than anything else. They need to learn a little independence

[HappyFlappy]

If shes not tormenting me she is either picking paint off the walls, chewing right through important wires, breaking computer keyboards, throwing light and delicate things off of counter tops, etc.

To keep her busy, you could try making her a foraging tray. If you do a "search" under the user name Mythara, she's a member who gives a lot of tips on how to get your tiel into foraging. It helps to keep my busybody chewer out of trouble (most of the time........)!

The "throwing things off" though - I don't think that's going to change. The tiels I know think that's a great game Maybe move the breakables to another spot?