First Night Fright

[Dally]

well last night i experienced my first night fright. visiting my boyfriend, i bring my birds with me so they receive proper care. well his cat jumped onto the top of the cage and i wake up to hear lots of flapping, hissing, and banging. the two of them, tsuka and dally, were on the bottom of the cage, panicking. they knocked down the bottom perch and tsuka broke a blood feather. but they calmed down when i turned the lamp on and when i picked them up and placed them back on the perch after checking them. they soon settled back to sleep and theyre both ok. u definately cant mistake anything else for a night fright now that ive seen it now. its pretty scary--wakes you from a dead sleep!

[Creaminomommy]

Aww, poor babies. Night frights are unmistakeable thats for sure, and very scary

[kassidyb]

Poor things, what did you do with the broken blood feather? Did it bleed?

Hope that cat will be leaving them alone from now on...

[Dally]

the broken feather actually fell out too so i didnt have to remove it myself. theyre doing good now and my boyfriends cat aint that bright... shell do it again >< i just gotta try to keep her off the cage. daystar, my calico cat of my own jumps on top of the cage but she doesnt scare them. alley did.

[Marrie]

Poor babies. Yes, a night fright is hard to mistake... and it thankfully wakes you up. I have to get up sometimes at 3am to cuddle my baby til he calms down enough to go back to sleep. If you can pull the door open by tugging on it, they can open it with a night fright too... might want to make sure it is secure with the cat around scaring them. I use a metal clip from one of the toys to keep the door closed, my tiel can open his cage by slamming into the door too hard.

[Dally]

my cage has a latch thats pretty secure. you have to pull it up pretty hard and the other doors are slide up doors.

[jusdeb]

I have to leave a night light on for all my parrots , they are prone to night frights and can quite seriously injure the birds . The last night fright here scared my cordon blue finches to death literally , the parrots all got over it though.

[Dally]

they did have a nightlight... kinda. i always sleep with the tv on, loud enough for me to hear but low enough to lull someone to sleep. theyve had that routine since ive got them. i just cover top of cage, leave space in bottom to allow light in

[notredamebird]

Unfortunately, you'll find that you won't need a cat around to have night frights. Weird noises, or all most anything else, can set off a cockatiel. Its scary because they make a racket from all the thrashing.

The good news is that tiels don't usually get serious injuries from night frights, even though it always sounds like they're dying, especially in the dead of night.

[Dally]

ya mine have never had issues with night frights, this is my first one--but theyre only 6 months old so i can likely guarantee, theres gonna be more but now im aware of exactly what they are!

[Courtney]

Oh night frights are very scary. I hate them, when I had a teil the first one freaked me right out. I kept a night light in their for him.

[Dally]

theres always light on for them! never a night lol

[Marrie]

Yeah, night lights aren't a total prevention, they do help though. I can't blame them, if I were sound asleep and something like 3x larger than myself fell on my roof, I think I would jump too!

I actually arrange my birds cage cause he always jumps forward if he's frightened at night, so that nothing is between his sleep perch and the cage bars. Made the mistake of having a toy in the way once and he broke some blood feathers. Haven't had a blood feather breakage since I did that though.

Hopefully they don't have many more though.

[Dally]

i know me too. these two are pretty resilient but the strange cat spooked them... she jumped on top of the cage at night. my kitty only jumps up sometimes during the day and they ignore that.

[di_dee1]

The joys of night frights. Sighhhh, one of my 3 tiels is very prone to them. All we can do, as you are doing is try to lessen them in any way that we can.

I also agree that they can happen without the cat jumping up there too. Is there any way that the cage can be put somewhere higher or something on top of the covered cage that will dissuade the cat from jumping up there when you are at your boyfriend's place?

[Dally]

cage is big and he has a low ceiling... so unfortunately theres nothing to put the cage up on without it being in the ceiling....

[KathrynK77]

My Simsim has night frights about twice a year. The other one never does. A lot of people think it's noises but I'm convinced with Simsim that he has bad dreams. He'll wake me up from a deep sleep with all this thrashing and I'll turn on the light and open his cage door and he'll jump right onto me. After about 15 minutes he'll allow me to put him back in the cage but he's always eyeballing the floor of the cage as if he thinks there's a snake down there or something.