putting your bird down for a sleep

[sofie2meg]

hi

can other caique owners tell me what to do with my bird for settling her down for the night.
i use to put her in the other room when we first got her, but now that we have the aviary up in the lounge she stays in there, but she will not go to sleep when we are in the room, she just keeps on sqwacking.
she has her cage in the aviary to help her settle but it makes no difference she just won't settle.
i have covered the cage with a blanket but she just walks on the bottom of the cage.
she spends all day out with us at weekends and in the aviary until i get home from work at 12.30 then she is out again, the aviary is 7x7x4 so it's really nice and big for her to play in.
any advice would be helpful.

[AerieAviary]

We recently bought a sleep cage for our 2 caiques to sleep in, and put them in around 8:30 or 8:45 pm before the lights (on a timer) go out at 9. We keep the cage in our laundry room, which is in a pretty quiet and secluded part of the house. We also cover about 80% of the cage with a sheet so that the sunlight coming through the window doesn't wake them in the morning. The cage has their birdie bed, food and water, a perch, and a couple of foot toys in it. We have only been doing this for a couple of weeks now, but they're starting to get used to the routine... they still do their "siren" scream for a few minutes after we close the door, but they sleep later than they did when we kept them in their daytime cage overnight, and they should also be sleeping better since their big cage is in a busy part of the house.

I will mention that we "con" the into going into the cage by giving them pine nuts, a favorite treat, in their food cup inside the sleep cage, which keeps them busy and distracted from the new routine for a few minutes while we get everything set up for them to go to sleep.

Finally, we're working on teaching them "go potty" before they come out of the sleep cage in the morning, otherwise there's quite a mess to clean up en route between the sleep cage and the daytime cage. :P