Depressed and Clicking? Odd Behaviour

[canarysanctuary]

Hi all,

My young Elbie and I went to the vet two days ago. He's checked out fine, in good health. He had his nails and wings clipped.

Now, Elbie is behaving very differently than before! I've had him for about a month, and in that time he's shown that:
-cage door open? He's out and flying!
-offer spray millet through the cage? He'll hop over and eat it
-even sometime take spray millet from my hand outside the cage.

Now that he's clipped, he's behaving differently:
-won't come out of the cage as readily
-won't take spray millet from my hand through the cage bars.
In fact, when I bring the millet close to him (or my hand in general) he's clearly unhappy, moves away, and starts making this very faint clicking noise. It's hard to describe... He doesn't move his beak.

I hope he's not depressed/angry, and now irrevocably afraid of me and won't warm up!

Help!

[linda040899]

When you say clipped, just how clipped are his wings? The proper method is both wings, 6-8 of the primary flight feathers so there's still limited flight. If he can't fly at all, whoever clipped his wings did a bad job of it and I would be angry/depressed, too!!!!!!

[canarysanctuary]

Hi Linda!

It was my vet who clipped Elbie's wings, and I think he said he clipped the ends of the 4 outer feathers. Elbie can still jump up and sort of "fly", so I'm really hoping this is just a few days of sulkiness....

[linda040899]

Sounds like Elbie is just unhappy about his flight abilities being limited more than he would like! Yes, parrots have wings so they can fly but there are considerably more dangers in the human home than there is in their natural environment, although dangers in the wild are multiplying, too! At least he can still fly rather than fall when he tries.