Hey guys,
I know it's been a while since I've been on. I've been spending as much of my time with the birds as I can give, which means that the forum gets second place. Anyway, we're having a setback with Timber, our black-headed caique.

He has been blatantly angry with me for the past 3 days; fluffing up, pinning his eyes, going rigid etc. as soon as I walk in the room. There is no reason for it, as far as I can tell - no nail polish, no appearance changes, the room hasn't changed... *sigh* I just don't know what's causing this. He has also taken to biting me again, and hard.

The odd thing is, he is perfectly wonderful with new people. I'm actually quite confident that he would go to anyone without any problems. He even bites when you try to take him away from them. He LOVES new people, but is suddenly hating me. We've gone from his regurgitation problem (which I think Elwood, my 1 yr old qp may now be imitating, because he's recently started doing this for me too) to this abrupt and out of character behavior.

It just feels like all the work that I've put in with this bird has all gone down the tubes. If he continues hating me, I'm not really sure what to do. He still doesn't mind my husband, who said that he'll give him more attention. However, I know my husband, and the extra attention will only last for about a week before it goes back to the way it was before. (He really is like a big kid who quickly gets bored of his toys.) If he doesn't come around, I'll have to face the decision of rehoming him, but that will be his 4th home, and I really don't want to do that. However, I want him to be someplace that he actually wants to be, and with people he likes. He deserves better, but if he won't have me, then I'm at a real loss for what to do.

Just as a sidenote - I was originally drawn to this bird because he supposedly hated men. I knew that my DH wouldn't be putting in much effort, so I figured that would be fine for him to hate men. Go figure.

How old is Timber. And do you know if its a male or female? It sounds much like a hormonal thing going on, Sometimes they can be pretty evil when they start getting hormonal, especially if he's regurgitated for you and you've basically turned him down as his mate so he could be angry at you for that. That's not to say you should allow him to regurge for you because that can lead to other problems.

You might try the rescue technique with him by having someone else place him in an unfamiliar room and letting him stay there for a few minutes by himself, and they you rescue him and make a big deal out of saving him. It could take a few times doing that, but that seems to work fairly well.

He's 5, and is supposedly a male. He tries to regurgitate for both my husband and me, and we both turn him down. That's actually an interesting theory, and it makes sense.

I'll give the rescue technique a try and see if it helps. Thanks.