I find the best way to give liquids by mouth is to hold the bird on their side, toward your chest, with the left side of their head facing up toward you. Hold onto the bird's head (you'll have to be holding the body as well, but it's important to control the head while actually giving the liquid) and slowly place a few drops of the liquid onto the corner of the beak. The bird will open up and swallow the liquid kind of reflexively. This way you don't have to worry about sticking the dropper/syringe all the way into the bird's beak, and it generally avoids having anything go down the wrong tube since the bird is controlling their own swallowing. Make sure you go slow.

Sometimes, after giving liquids that a bird is not particularly pleased with, they'll shake their head and get some of it in their nose, which results in sneezing. This is not the same as aspiration, which happens when liquid (or food) actually gets down the airway into the bird's lungs. Generally, aspiration causes much greater distress to the bird (think unable to breathe, not just sneezing), and you can hear it by holding the bird's chest to your ear and listening to the breath sounds. But it's unlikely to happen in an adult bird unless you're *really* forcing fluids down in the wrong way.

All of that said, if he's perking up, perching, and eating on his own, I probably wouldn't give any more at this point. It's just a bit of a boost to help get over the shock, not a longterm medication thing.

He's gotten some now, so I agree that you don't have to make him drink more. You can leave some in a small bowl for him to drink if he wants to.

thank you ladies for your expertise.
He still sleep a lot but he has never been a cheerful bird. He eats and even had an evening fight over the food bowl in the cage so I can say that he is getting back to normal. I will give them a water spray tomorrow to see his reaction. Two things are able to cheer him up - multi-grain crackers and a shower

I am afraid they will like sugary Gatorade and get addicted to it

It's easy to break a Gatorade addiction. Just stop giving them Gatorade! Although experiments on cockatiels show that they have low sensitivity to sweet tastes and aren't attracted to sugar water.

It's likely that he has some bruises from trying to pull his head free, so he might be kind of stiff and sore. It's good that he's getting back to normal.

I remember that study! Was that the they put two bowls of water (one sweet, other plain) and the cockatiels chose the regular one instead?

They tried a bunch of different flavors and found that cockatiels preferred plain water over everything else. Here are links to a couple of abstracts:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 9100001301

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11319776

Birds that eat sweet food in the wild (like fruit or nectar) need to be able to taste sweetness (and like it) to help them judge the quality of the food. Wild cockatiels don't eat sweet food so the ability to taste sweetness wouldn't do anything for them.

It's hard to keep my birds out of trouble
When I was carrying some wild bird mix to feed wild birds, I spilled some in the hall by the front door. I picked up what I could but didn't clean it completely thinking I would vacuum later.
Then three of my birds were caught sitting there and eating wild seeds. I consider that area very dirty (and usually my birds don't land there), this is where people enter the house and take off shoes. We have mice outside the house, garage isn't the cleanest place and we go there too in street shoes. We bring lots of germs on soles of our shoes and now my birds ate there.

Any possible health issues from this?

IS it safe to color hair taking into consideration that my birds like to sit on my head and preen my hair? I never did it before but need to start.

We all have to work to keep our birds out of trouble lol. They're natural trouble-seekers.

It's possible that your birds could pick up some germs from the dirt in the hallway, and also from the wild seed (which is lower in quality than pet bird seed and more likely to have something undesirable in it). The risk from doing it just once probably isn't very high, but don't let them make a habit of it. If you want to give them a foraging opportunity you can sprinkle some of their own seed on the kitchen table.

Permanent hair dye probably isn't a problem if you observe a few simple precautions. It stays in the hair and doesn't wear off, and birds don't usually eat hair so they're not going to consume it. Temporary coloring that goes away after a while might be more of a problem. If you're dyeing your hair at home, do it far away from the birds so they don't get any of the fumes. Don't let them near your hair until the color has completely set and you've washed your hair.

I didn't mean to be walking around with wet dye in my hair while hair is getting colored
I meant when the hair completely dry after coloring. I hate to even think about using that stuff but I guess the society tells me that woman with few gray hair should go ahead and fix it.

What kind of health problems should I be looking for after them eating germs off my front door carpet?