IndianRingNeck.com

I looked in the other thread about odd behaviour but didn't find any thing that quite fit, so I do apologise if this has been asked before.

When I went to buy my two Alex's the male was rolling his head, quite violently repeatedly, the man that sold them to me told me not to worry this was just stress.

It must be almost a month since I brought them home now and this morning I found a little blood along the perch so decided to put the old video camera in the shed to watch them with me out of the way.

For a full half an hour of the tape all my male is doing is walking backwards and forwards on his perch stopping by the wall and then head rolling where he flicks his head over his back and round and round it goes for a few time before squeaking and repeating it all over again.

It cannot be stress, I am sure as every thing is nice and quiet out there, nobody is going in apart from me twice a day to feed them and check on them before lights out. They do have some wooden toys to play with and their flight is large so they have enough room to fly around ... though we are going to extend this just in case they need more room.

I could not see what the female is doing as she was off camera, but she seams much more settled when I go in there, not as flighty as the male at all and has even started to eat infront of me over the pass few days.

He is said to be 3years and she is last years baby, there is no nest box as she is too young.

Do you think this is stress, boredom, frustration as the female is too young (we can separate if this is the case) or is he showing off to her?

Any idea's on this would stop me worrying so much!!!
thanks!!!

I am wondering if it is a behaviour developed when in the previous owners care from bordom or stress and it has now developed into a habit. As we all know, habits are hard to break!

I think maybe as there is not alot of human contact that the bird could be easily stressed everytime you or someone else goes in there to feed and check on them. If you are only interacting about 2 times a day for aprox a month, thats not alot of time especially with a new bird in new surroundings.
I have aviary birds who have been here aprox 5 months. All is fine when I chat with them outside, some even come up to me and take food from my hand, but if I go into the aviary to change water, clean etc, they fly around and don't want me in there.

Is this bird aviary bred or handraised? Perhaps the male Alex has suffered some kind of trauma and this is his way of coping when he is stressed or panics. Sometimes it can be the smallest thing that can trigger a reaction if the bird has been traumatized in the past.

There could be so many factors why your Alex is doing this.

Perhaps you could post your video of him doing it, that way others can see and maybe give you a better answer

Thanks for your answer, I have been videoing them on the old type video recorder not digital so don't really know how to up load it to the computer ... or even if I could

He was an aviary bred bird, I did find it a little odd that he had to collect this bird from another aviary, it wasn't in with the others, yet the hen bird was. But the first time these two bird saw each other was the evening before I collected them.

The hen bird, as said is relaxed about me being in their aviary now, she will stay on the perch when I to in to collect the food and water pots every morning and night but he just panics ... hence why I thought that may be I should still keep my visit's to a min until he is happier. If I watch them he will shout and scream ... I have spoken gently to him while he does this and not moved until he has stopped as I did not want him thinking he could make me go if he was loud.

As said, the odd thing is he will do this head rolling over and over again even with nobody in the aviary or even out side at all so there is no technically there is no plausible reason why he should be doing this, there is nothing out there to be stressed about.

I will see what I can do about the video to see if you could help me further.
Thanks