Aggressive/untamed lovebird
Hi!
I have a female lovebird who is 4 1/2 months old. I got her from a pet store when she was 3 months old. There are no bird rescue places in my area that I know, otherwise I would have gotten a rescue. But this pet store is family-owned and apparently has a good reputation. They breed their own birds, I was told she’d been hand-raised and was used to human interaction.
One mistake I made was not trying to handle her in the store to see how she would react. The store worker reached into her cage and she flew out, and I picked her up to put her back in, but that was it. She seemed alarmed and I didn’t want to traumatize her.
When I brought her home, she was extremely shy and quiet. I figured she needed to get used to her environment, so I let her be for a few days, just quietly moving around her so she’d get used to me. Little by little she moved around more and started to peep. I also have a pair of budgies, who are in the same room but in a separate cage. She seems to enjoy “chatting” with them and often keeps to the side of the cage that’s closest to theirs.
She was fearful of me at first. I started by feeding her millet through the bars of her cage. Then we moved on to my hand in the cage, and she nibbled millet that way. Now I’ve “tricked” her into stepping on my finger to get the millet, by placing my finger along her favourite perch and keeping the millet just out of reach so she’ll put one (sometimes two!!) feet on my finger to get to it.
I was encouraged by this progress because she was so shy at first. But we seem to be stuck at this stage for weeks now. She won’t step up of her own accord. They say to try rubbing a bird’s heads so it can get used to your touch, but if I don’t have a treat she won’t let my finger near her, and in fact she bites me quite a lot.
She seems healthy, she’s active in her cage, she has happily destroyed all her toys. But she doesn’t seem to enjoy interacting with me. I thought it was in a lovebird’s nature to bond with its human if there was no other lovebird around — so it makes me sad that she’s not bonding with me, not only for my sake but for hers too! I want her to bond and be happy if it’s in her nature to do so.
Do you think she will come around? Should I accept that humans just aren’t her thing and get another lovebird for her to bond with? Does having budgies in the same room interfere with the bonding? (I live in an open-plan apartment so I’m not sure how I could keep them apart.)
The budgies were rescued from another pet store. They are a bonded pair. They eat treats out of my hand, but otherwise don’ t want much to do with me even though I interact with them every day. But I don’t feel as badly about them because they have each other. All birds have big flight cages and lots of toys and attention.
Any advice would be appreciated, thank you!