I am hoping you can help me. I have 3 budgies. The first 2 I got at the age of 7 months. They are now 9 months. In the 7 months I have had them, they will not tolerate me coming close to the cage. They jump to the furthest corner and cling onto the bars with their hearts pounding in fear. I constantly speak to them every day, try to play with them. I'm home with them all day. Feed them millet (which after an hour of patiently holding it near the cage each day, I have to just leave it inside). They hate me and wont come near me. I have a green female budgie and a white male pied. I sent you pictures of them a while back trying to determine what sex they were. The green female budgie is normal. The pied is absolutely MENTAL! Its like he's revved on PCP or speed. It jumps from perch to perch, and fast too, he's acrobatic, follows the green one all over the cage, harrasses it night and day, hangs and swings from the toys, literally stretches from one perch to another, plays and plays and play, swings upside down from the preening toy, extremely active while the green one just watches him. I was got another blue male budgie, a year old. He is such a gentleman. He is quite, occassionally sings and plays, doesnt have much to do with the other 2 younger ones. The green and ********* white have been together since birth (brother and sister). The female seems annoyed with the pied following her, pecking at her, and they often fight. The new blue one just watches quietly. Has nothing to do with them. My Problem: The white one screeches, not trilling or singing, or nice bird whistles. He SCREECHES... insane, loud, piercing, elongated screeching!!! Its as if someone was counting to 10 really fast, but instead of saying the numbers they are screeching. A fast series of SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH! He literally pecks at the green bird, plays musical perches by quickly jumping from one perch to the other, jumps to the cage bars, climbs up, jumps back to the green bird, pecks at her, hangs and swings upside down from the toy, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, back to the green bird, pecks at her, jumps to the food bowl, eats a little, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, plays with the mirror toy, climbs up the bars, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH, SCREECH. As soon as someone comes in the room it give this wretched ear pearcing screeching, when the tv goes on, screeching. They all have their own food bowl. When I feed them, they all go to a bowl and eat, then he leaves his bowl and bites at the others tails so he can get into their bowl. The others mostly move out of the way and he jumps to their bowl and eats. Then when they go to a different bowl, he follows them, both the blue male and female and bites their tails for them to move again. At night, the lights are off and all three are sleeping. They are all puffy and sitting in a row on the perch eyes closed. But not the white one.. the white one is always 'vibrating' and shaking, singing and chirping, even in his sleep with his eyes closed. It's like he is hyperactive, a bomb ready to explode. The other two are not like that. I thought of moving him into his own cage, maybe that would quiet him down. I am sure this bird is on PCP or something. He is absolutely mental and noisy. Is this perhaps a result of inbreeding?

 

I dont know what to do with this bird. I started a new job at home, I cant use the phone because as soon as he hears activity he screeches. We can no longer sleep in on weekend (any) mornings, he screeches and screeches. We cant watch tv. SCREEEEEEEEECH!! He plays constantly with the toys, jumps and climbs all over, screeching all the while. When any door opens he screeches. When he screeches he puts his head down and give a series of 10 to 15 consecutive ear pearcing screeches. He does this constantly, from dawn to mignight. When I absolutely cant take it, I cover the birds. Its not fair to the others two, but regardless, it can be pitch black, and he still screeches. I have been tempted to kill it or let it loose outside. I am at my wits ends. But then I thought I would write to you. Perhaps there is a fix for this. I know that he is happy and healthy and active, but his noise is too much. What can I do with this screeching devil? I really would love to keep the birds but I am at the last straw with this white one. Do you have any advice for me at all?

I can sympathize as I had a screecher years ago... but not this bad!!!

I'm not a budgie expert on here however the word "mirror" jumped out at me. I'd suggest getting rid of any mirror toys as a start.

My birds love a classical playlist on the old iPod. It goes for hours, and when I start the playlist they go into a kind of quiet busyness, eating and exploring their toys, then they settle down peacefully. They've been listening to this exact playlist since they were inside their eggs though, as I played it for the mom when she was sitting on the eggs.

I'm sure others on this site will have advice for you, good luck!

honestly i am not sure what could be iritating him sexually frustrated male mabe lol

how big is the cage on a serious note ?

i would suggest mabe getting one thats at least a meter high by 90 acrossed and and around in a square 90 each side hope that makes sence im didlexic so its hard to explain basicly a square cage one meter high and your whole arm length long on each side

deck it out with fresh gum leafs on a new branch and have a scuwer with 3 diffrent fresh fruits on it a day cut into cubes and pushed onto it hang it from the side walk put a cork on end but be warned he may eat that chew should i say

put a cocky ball in their one that has the big holes in them and hang it from roof he will go in their and out and in and just chew it and be mental on it but possably wont screech

id interduce a older hen on thats got a bit of grunt about her and is quite active her self and i would place the cage out side under cover or on wall of house and cover it nightly with a tarp to protect from wind and animals put green shade cloth around it also for sun and wind protection during day

he sounds pissed off and cooped up to me oh and the hen thing only actually get one for him if he doesnt chill out over a period of a month

thats my sugestion if that does not cut it find some one who will place him in an aviary

do a swap mabe for a quiet one that actually does the sweet little chirppy sounds good luck

let us know what gives k

First of all: how big is your cage? Even if they have their own food bowls, they should be able to get sufficiently far away when (or before) he bites their tails. This continual harassment must be extremely stressful for your quiet ones, and I would advise either getting a bigger cage or separating him so he stops picking on them. It’s not fair on your other birds to be constantly harassed like that.

 

My Milly occasionally sits there and screams her head off, but the birds now have their own room so it doesn’t bother me much. Usually she does it when she wants something (I unintentionally taught her this and enforced it by giving her what she wants when she does it – mainly attention or veggies in her case. I’m trying to break this cycle). Since your bird is not humanised, it’s probably not this, but keep it there in mind.

 

Like people, every single bird is different. They have different personalities and different activity levels, and it sounds like your white pied is one of those naturally highly active birds. I should say now that birds were made to be noisy and it’s not natural for them to be quiet. The flock only goes quiet when there’s danger. Budgies love noise; any time anyone puts on the TV or music, or even have conversations in our house, the birds join in. The louder we get, the louder they get. It sounds like what your white pied is doing is joining in on making noise he hears around him, only his idea of noise is to scream.

 

In terms of correction of the screaming behaviour, there are two approaches I can think of that may help you.

 

1. Positive reinforcement and behaviour training. Now I know this is rather difficult because you say the birds aren’t tame. The best way to do this is to separate him from the others. Find a food item he loves very much. A way to do this is to put a selection of food (seeds, bread, nuts, fruit and veggies) in front of him and see what he eats first. For most birds it’s sunflower seeds. These are very high in fat, so if this is the case, chop them up into quarters. Make sure you remove the treat item completely from the cage; he can only get this treat from you. Now go over to his cage. If he screams, ignore him. When he makes a sound you like, reward him. This is as simple as dropping the reward into the food bowl. He won’t get it at first, but be consistent, he will learn to associate being quiet/making a nice sound with his favourite food.

My conure used to scream his head off wanting attention; we ignored him when he screamed, and rewarded him with attention when he whistled. Now he whistles his head off when he wants attention, but it’s a much nicer noise than screaming!

This won’t happen overnight, it took months for us, but with persistence he’ll start changing the noises he makes because he learns that he gets what he wants when he makes a nice noise, rather than screaming. You can apply the second approach at the same time as this.

 

2. Give him heaps and heaps of things to do so that he’s too busy or too tired to do anything else. From what I can tell from your post, you have a mirror toy and a preening toy; what else does he have? It sounds like he wants to have something to do and is bored; so he makes noise and annoys the other birds because to him it’s fun and there’s nothing better to do. Give him lots of toys and things to shred like paper, veggies, bark etc. Rotate these in and out of the cage weekly and change their positions in the cage weekly.

Get him captive foraging. In the wild, budgies would spend something like six hours of the day looking for food. Our pet birds spend two minutes going down to the bowl, picking out their favourite seeds, and then have the other eight hours to do… what? In this case he’s chosen to scream and annoy the others. So you could hide his food inside things so he has to rip things up and use his brain (and beak and feet) to get to his food. If he spends more than two minutes going to his food bowl and eating his fill, he might spend less time screaming because he’s just too busy. In fact, this captive foraging idea can be applied to your other birds too, since it’s a natural behaviour and good for them anyway.

Consider clicker training him (even something as basic as target training), again to keep him busy. Plus it's a fun and rewarding thing to do with your budgies. Make sure you click on all the links in that thread; I got my Squee target training in literally half an hour, and you'll be amazed at what you can teach them to do.

 

That’s the advice I can give you. Please try some if not all of these things. If you are at your wit’s end, consider putting him in a different room or giving him up to an aviary or even a foster home – there are plenty of people in your part of the world willing to take on birds that others don’t want or can’t keep anymore. Please don’t release him as he is domesticated and will not survive alone in the wild.

 

Good luck, I hope you find something helpful in my long post. Please let us know what you end up doing and keep us posted on what's happening.

Edited September 28, 200915 yr by Chrysocome

Double the screeching, tape record and play back to him when you aren't there. Screech along...If you can't beat em, join em. Can't do much to change them, they have to want to change or have a reason to change themselves. Sometimes environment and stimulus changes help. Change the cage position? Start talking to him?

Edited September 29, 200915 yr by DrNat

What do you consider screeching, I can't imagine he does this all day long there are different types of budgie noises and your misinterpreting them as all screeching. Male budgies are very vocal in play and can get loud. Would you mind getting a video and uploading it here so we can see what type of behavior he is displaying.

 

Merlin doesn't screech very much as a sole budgie but if he does I simply cover him up if he doesn't quiet down. If your bird is screeching first thing in the morning do you have a dark enough cover on him? Most them of them won't wake up fully until they are covered.

 

You have received good advice but I would still like to see a video of his behavior. Budgies have many different sounds.