So last night, the tiels had possibly the craziest night fright. Not sure what scared them, but I heard flapping. The flapping was non stop and got louder, so I decided to go try to calm them down.

I turned on the light and they didn't stop. Both Lucy and Alex were flying all around in their cage, hitting themselves on the objects in the cage. Alex was already bleeding and at one point, Lucy Got her wing wedged between the cage bars. I managed to get her wing out, and she eventually stopped flying, and resorted to just hanging on the bars and hissing at my every move.

Alex on the other hand, kept trying to fly. He was getting pretty tired, so it just ended up him kinda hopping on the bottom of the cage. He even hit his head on the lowest perch a few times. Though his wing didn't seem to get caught in the bars (could have gotten caught and he managed to free himself before I got in there), he somehow managed to rip all the primary flight feathers out of his right wing.

I sat on the floor and began humming the tune I use to calm him down. Usually I can just hum the beginning part and he calms down, but I ended up humming the entire song. I managed to start scratching his neck somewhere halfway into the tune without him freaking out. Lucy also eventually stopped hissing at my every move and was calm enough to at least get onto a perch.

Alex was acting pretty funny. My guess is that he hit his head a little too hard on the perch. I got him to step up as well as Lucy who was by then calm enough to not fly off. I laid on the couch with them on my chest. Lucy began playing with the buttons on my shirt and preening my hair and Alex kept walking in circles for some reason. Lucy couldn't hold her wing normally probably because it hurt too much. I was almost beginning to think the wing was broken.

This morning though, they were fine. Lucy's wing showed no signs of being broken and Alex was acting normal again (normal for Alex that is. Not usually normal for cockatiels though).

I saw an airplane flying from outside the window, with blinking lights and all that. Do you think that could have been what freaked them out so much? It was very quiet, and usually if there's an unfamiliar sound, the dog would bark. Then again, I've had them both fly all over the room just by hearing the phone ring though.

What do you guys think could have caused this? And why would it be so bad compared to the occasional nightfrights they've had in the past?

I think that some night frights might be set off by bad dreams. Sometimes my birds go nuts when there's absolutely nothing out of the ordinary going on. There's evidence that birds do have dreams: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998 ... reaming-ra

My guess is that Alex kept it going longer than it would have otherwise. As long as one bird keeps trying to escape the others are likely to do it too. It takes longer for young birds to calm down than it does with older birds. My adult birds will usually stop flapping as soon as I turn on the lights, but the chicks will keep going for a while.

Once Lucy got her wing caught in the bars that would be enough to keep her going for a while too. In the bird's mind it has actually been grabbed by a predator, so the danger and the fear just got a lot worse. It's scary and difficult trying to free a terrified bird that's got its wing caught between the cage bars. I've had to do that twice, but fortunately there weren't any serious injuries.

When I was trying to free her, she bit me, and since it caught me off guard, I pulled back unintentionally, but in just the right way to get her wing free without any harm. Hopefully I'll learn to try and control the reflex though for future situations.

Though with Lucy, it only took a few seconds until she stopped flying. I would've guessed it would take her longer to stop after it. Of course, it did take her a little longer to actually calm down.

Alex is ironically the clumsiest bird I've ever met. If he had gotten his wing caught in the bars at some point, it honestly wouldn't be the first time.

One time he freaked out in the day time. I was at the table, and looked up when he stopped flapping. He was stuck on the water dish with the primary flight feathers of one of his wings in the cage bars, with his front beg held up by the perch behind the bowl and his feet dangling. Didn't take long to free him, and he wasn't necessarily afraid.
Ive also let him play with the tassel from my highschool graduation, and he somehow ended up with it around his neck. It wasn't tangled or choking him, and because I was on the other side of the room, he flew right to me to get it off. I guess after the incident of getting his wing caught in a toy, he trusts me to get him out of these situations.

I wonder if some of his clumsiness has to do with having worse eyesight than the average cockatiel. After trying to teach him to fly to my hand, I've noticed he has a poor judge of distance. Probably why he likes to land on my head, because the area is wider and his precision isn't that great. He's gotten better though, and can land on narrower surfaces. However, he did land face first into a bunch of fruit on the kitchen counter just the other day.

I'll have to wait until some feathers grow back to resume practice though. He somehow managed to yank all the primary flights off his right wing, which leads me to suspect that he got his wing caught in the bars as well at some point.

Missing primaries are usually from banging the wing against something while flapping, most likely the cage bars. The force of the impact knocks the feather upward while the rest of the wing is moving downward, and it pops the quill out of the "socket". Sort of like taking a long thin stick and whacking it against the edge of a table.

There are other possible ways to knock feathers loose of course. If he got the wing through the bars just a little bit, so the feathers were trapped but not the flesh and bone part of the wing, the effect would be pretty similar to whacking them against the bars. The feathers couldn't move along with the wing and would be twisted out of alignment.

In the daytime my red-eyed birds seem to see as well as the dark-eyed ones. It's when the light gets dim that I can see a difference. Alex got off to a rough start in life, so it's possible that he has vision problems that go beyond just having red eyes. Or that he's a little bit brain damaged and doesn't learn as fast as other birds. But he's a sweetie and a cutie, so enjoy him for what he is even if he's a little bit "special".

I wondered about brain damage as well. He's definitely an oddball compared to Lucy even, who's crazy enough as is.

But Alex has excelled in aspects that Lucy hasn't, so really, I don't think less of him regardless. He does seem to act a little younger than his age, and has his funny habits. He's also stubborn as all heck, but he is smart.

Though I'm talking about a bird who flew into a window, and then tried to fly through said window immediately after landing on the sill. In some ways, he's just a lovable idiot.

In all seriousness though I love him. He's a total clown. I'm hoping he'll get better in the areas he struggles in. He seems to be a very fast learner under the right motivation though.

By sheer chance I ran across a paper today that sounds like it might apply to Alex: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ke ... 9c353b.pdf

On page 7:
"undernourishment during post-hatch development may have severe consequences on the development of behavior and motor coordination, since cerebellum development (which plays a major role in the development of motor coordination in birds and mammals) is more affected by undernutrition than other parts of the brain."

Sorry they had a night fright. Get well soon little birds.

So far it hasn't happened again. They're both fine, though it took a little while for Alex to figure out that he can't fly right now.

Though just today, he was playing with one of the toys in the cage. Alex specifically likes to hang off of his toys, and flap around. At one point, something happened I'm not quite sure what, but I looked up and saw that he was hanging by his beak. He's done this before, but because of the lack of feathers in one of his wings, he couldn't create the lift to try and get himself back up, so he just hung there, flapping away. My parents and I were eating dinner at the time, and we all watched in confusion. I waited to see if he could figure out how to solve his own problem, though at some point he stopped flapping and started screaming, so I went to the cage and put my hand under him.

That whole thing about undernourishment affecting the motor coordination is intriguing. If this does happen to be Alex' case, then would that mean there is no way to help him with his control? I have seen him improve over time, and aside his sloppy landings and his tendency to miscalculate shorter distances, some of the problems he faces seem to be things that young birds have to learn to do when they fly. He has trouble flying downwards directly, so he ends up circling the room several times until he gets to level he wants.

He's gotten better though, so I'm hoping that maybe he'll come close to Lucy's level of control at least. I've been trying to get him to fly from the cage to the table by himself as practice, though now we can't really do that until the feathers grow back.

Enigma's better qualified to comment on brain function than I am. But sometimes it's possible to have improvement. It's usually a long process, but the fact that he's trying to do things improves the odds that he'll eventually be able to do it.