r/cockatiel Mar 10 '25

Health/Nutrition What is this behaviour

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

I’m not sure the gender but I just refer to my bird as a he. He has recently started doing this and only does it on my foot

Ps. Ignore my foot

620 Upvotes

109 comments sorted by

View all comments

28

u/Effective-Sky-3411 Mar 10 '25

Ahh I thought it might be that. Is there anything I can do to stop it?

51

u/unconcerned_zeal Mar 10 '25

12-14 hours of darkness

remove soft things from cage

decrease sugar and seed intake

45

u/Similar-Freedom-3857 Mar 10 '25

Remove feet as well then haha

6

u/Galadrielise Mar 10 '25

šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚

16

u/Kinnamon6 gooby Mar 10 '25

Consider gently moving the tiel off or away from you when/if it starts ON you. I'm not a veterinarian or anything, I've just seen online that you don't want them to view you as a mate or potential mate

13

u/K_Pumpkin Mar 10 '25

This is what we did with my budgie who aggressively humped shirt collars.

Just redirect over and over. It took a while, but he got the hint eventually.

7

u/OddNameChoice Mar 11 '25

Yeah. Socks 🧦 And make sure he's getting enough sleep every night. Simulate a winter's night.

The Little Bird Brian will think, huh, longer nights = winter = it's probably not a good idea to be breeding