He loves me, he loves me not :(

[canarysanctuary]

I've had my peach-faced lovebird for about 1.5 years. After a few months of getting used to his new home, he warmed up to me (I say he, but I actually don't know if Elbie is a male or a female).
He'll sit happily on my shoulder for hours, get scratches, jump onto my hand when I reach into his cage.
Except for the last couple of days.

All of a sudden he acts as though he's afraid of my hand. He doesn't want to come out of his cage, and when I pick him up and take him out, he avoids me entirely.

I haven't done anything differently, so I'm stumped as to what has provoked this extreme personality change.

Help! I wish I could have my affectionate lovebird back!

[linda040899]

One thing I've found out about parrots is that they are very sensitive to change. It can be a major change or something very minor that we might not consider "change." I remember when I first decided to wear contact lenses instead of glasses. Now to me, it wasn't a huge change, but my Quaker Parrot acted like I was the devil come to life!!! He took one look and took off screaming when I first came home wearing the contacts. I wasn't "me" anymore since I didn't look the same to him. He recognized me by sight. My Tiel, on the other hand, didn't see anything different because my voice, which is how he recognized me, was the same so all was well with him.

I guess what I'm trying to say is the problem could be something as minor as nail polish vs no nail polish or even a change in color. Many parrots don't like the color red. To them, it's pure evil. Have you changed your hair style, new earrings, a new ring?

Don't know if this helps or not, but take a step back and try to see what he might be seeing. :)

[canarysanctuary]

Thank you so much Linda!
I'll certainly look more critically at myself/surroundings.
I'm just hoping that this is something that he'll get over!

[canarysanctuary]

Just to follow up:
About a week after Elbie started acting all scared, he began slowly to come back to his normal self.

He still does this weird awkward "I'm afraid of you, but I love you and I wanna come out!" dance when I put my hand in the cage, but he's happy again to sit on my shoulder for hours :)