I have these two cockatiels, Sidney and Sushine. Sunshine is a rather typical cockatiel, with the “wild” color scheme and the hyperkinetic somewhat bratty personality (with a hefty dose of charm when he wants something). Sidney is a white-headed cockatiel, meaning he hasn’t any yellows and looks like an animated charcol drawing of a cockatiel, all blacks, greys, and whites. He’s rather quiet and sensitive, with easily hurt feelings and a desparate, desparate need for affection and approval. And he’s a bit of a neat-nick, a Felix Unger of a bird who is very precise in his grooming habits.
Anyhow, yesterday morning I wake up, and there’s the two darlings in their cage. Sidney is already awake, with a somewhat odd expression on his little bird face. And he’s not doing his morning preening, he’s just standing there, looking sort of stunned. And I notice that, instead of the usual smooth head feathers cockatiels sport his head is sort of… rumpled. Like someone had smooshed a lot of mousse into his head feathers, swished it around, then the bird had slept wrong on his head. Which doesn’t make sense, since we don’t have any mousse in the house and Sidney, like any proper cockatiel, sleep standing up on one foot and lying down where he can mess his feathers up. And it’s then I noticed what his expression was. It was “something awful happened to me.”
Thing is, he’d been in the cage all night. I looked up - nope, nothing had leaked from the ceiling. There was no peculiar, unidentifiable ooze in the water dish (not that I was expecting any - it’s changed at least once a day, often many more times than that).
I reached into the cage and extracted the bird, who, inside of heading directly for my shoulder, just sort of stood there and continued to look mortified, like a proper aunt who had just smelled a fart or heard a rude belch. His feathers were stiff and not at all soft - something was defnitely gooped up in them. They weren’t discolored, just all matted and stiff. Like he’d gotten hit be a big wad of snot and it had dried on him. Which didn’t make sense, either, because we use Kleenex to blow our noses at my house, not small birds.
Well, I got the bird bath out - I figured his famillar bath tub would be less traumatic than simply holding him under the kitchen faucet. Filled it with nice, tepid water. Bird got in. I got a paper towel and helped with the head feathers.
Much squirming ensued.
Funny thing about birds - there’s not that much bird under the feathers. Their necks are like pipe cleaners wrapped in cotton balls. And he wasn’t struggling too mightily, but he’s not used to human assistance with hygiene and he really couldn’t reach the back of his own head easily.
Well, I cleaned him up as best I could, and a very soggy, dripping cockatiel ran up my arm and onto my shoulder, where he proceed to drip into my right ear as he hunked down next to my neck. At least his wasn’t particularly pissed off at me.
Having a wet, shivering bird nuzzling your ear is kind of weird.
The Other Half pried him off my shoulder and attempted to blot the worst of the wet with a dishtowl, which didn’t work too good. Sidney is just not famillar with using towels, is all, doesn’t like being confined, and wanted to sit on my shoulder. Although I think he liked the warmth.
Well, he shivered for about a half an hour until he started to thoroughly dry out, after which his feathers looked better but still felt a little stiff. He’s almost back to normal this morning.
What I can’t figure out is what the hell he got into. It didn’t have a smell, it didn’t have a color, it was this stiff, gooey *stuff * (it was definately gooey when it got wet again). Ick. The only thing we could figure was that at some point Sunshine was sitting on a perch above Sidney and let loose with a really loose, liquid poop, which then landed on poor Sidney’s head
No wonder Sidney looked mortified.
Then it dried there. Now, you may think getting crapped on by a bird is gross and awful, but let’s face it, the poops are pretty small compared to the rest of you. Now, imagine a poor bird getting bird-pooped. It’s like someone overtuned a five gallon bucket on his head. Poor little guy.
I’ve been trying to observe the cage behavior and see if Sidney is being careful to not sit directly under Sunshine, but so far have not reached any definite conclusions.