Feather stuffing behavior

[Wags]

My mom is visiting with her love bird. It loves chewing up strips of paper and stuffing them in its feathers. Has anyone seen this behavior before? Whats it all about?

Dave

[The Outlaw]

Yup. Its a fairly common and crazy behavior that lovies and a few others do. If you think about it, we have our nerve. We use fashion accessories all the time!

I've also seen birds hide food under their wings and even on their backs! They are nuts!

[Spinnergirl]

Oh my I had never heard of that...I would have asked also about that.

Rather funny thing isn't it?? Trying to accessorize like that!

Outlaw do any of your birds hide food under thier wings?? That would be a very funny and kinda wierd thing for me to see!!

[The Outlaw]

None of mine do, but I occasionally board an ekkie that does. He puts food on his back!

[Erynn]

i heard it was behavior that allows them to carry supplies back to their nests in the wild which sounds reasonable to me

[Monica]

This is normally a female peachfaced breeding behavoir... They like to take nesting material, stuff it in their rump feathers, fly to their nest, deposit the nesting material, and fly back to get more... It's normal!

[CrazyBirdLady]

Depending upon the age of your lovebird, if she's under a year old, you might want to discourage the behavior and not give her paper or shredable materials right now. Shredding and tucking generally lead to nest building, and then egg laying. In a younger hen, it's not good for her health to lay eggs if under a year. This can lead to egg binding in some cases.
If your lovie is older and you want her to lay eggs, I'd suggest making sure she has access to cuttlebone and lots of leafy green veggies, like kale and chard and broccoli which is high in calcium.

[sparkysmom]

My peachface does this. It is hilarious. She does it so perfectly shreds the strips. Will get like 3 shoved under there then they all fall out. But she keeps on going. On and on and on............won't even play with the toys unless they are totally shreddable.

[love_lovebirds]

My Henry does this all the time, its perfectly normal! She loves destroying any paper she can find anywhere in the house and stuffing the strips into her rump feathers... nothing to worry about... and its also highly entertaining (as long as its not an important form or a treasured photo, hahah....

check out the pic :P

Mels

[AmandaB]

My grandparents saw a bird on tv once who did this. Not sure what kind of bird it was, but they said it didn't have tail feathers and would shred strips of paper and put them where his tail feathers would be.