Male budgie, about two. He grips the perch and flutters his wings hard without going anywhere, usually when I come into the room or first thing after the cover comes off. Sometimes there is head bobbing and a lot of singing with it.
He looks pleased with himself rather than distressed, but I would rather know what I am looking at. Is this exercise, showing off, or something I should be reading as a problem?
Head bobbing and singing with it makes that courtship, and the audience is you. The full routine is bobbing, song, eye pinning where the pupils flick small and large, beak tapping, quick wing flicks, and sometimes bringing food up for whoever he is performing at.
The flapping on the perch when the cover comes off is probably a different thing in the same bird: that one is exercise, which is normal and more common in budgies who do not get much flying time. Same movement, two meanings, and context is all you have to tell them apart.
He does the whole performance at a bell toy, repeatedly. Is that worth discouraging or is it harmless?
@wings_held_out · 1h ago
The one version of this that is not good news is worth learning now, because it looks superficially similar and means the opposite. Energetic fluttering is fine. Trembling or shivering while sitting still and fluffed up is not.
Birds cannot sweat, so a hot budgie holds the wings slightly away from the body, breathes with the beak open and sits quiet. Wings out plus open beak plus a warm room is heat, and heat stress in a bird is dangerous. Move him off a sunny windowsill and away from radiators.
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