Arching back and mewing? What's this?

[tobiloh]

Hi! Thank you for viewing this post. I posted earlier but it seems I did not ask the right question. Beau will arch his back and sit on my chest with his mouth open and will "mew" incessantly! I pet him and he calms but will still mew.

Is this normal? Is he happy? Upset?

[tobiloh]

Guess no one knows?

[MissK]

I dunno. Rocky has never done anything like this. Could it be begging?

-MissK

[Fidgit_Green]

perhapse if you could manage to get a video of it and post it on here then maybe someone might be able to identify if better for you.

just my 2 cents

Cheers
Paul

[ellieelectrons]

The video is a good idea. My gut instinct is that it's a "happy" behaviour. Females will arch their back as part of mating behaviour - but I think your bird would be too young to display that kind of behaviour. I think it's just a "we belong together" type behaviour. The IRN sees you as part of its family... as the mewing is generally something it would do to its parents. It could also mean that it is hungry though, so is it getting the right amount of food? Is it steadily gaining weight? Are you feeding it until it's crop is full (but not overfilling it) and then waiting until its empty to feed it again?

When we brought Janey home she did this for a while to us until she grew out of it even though she was fully weaned and we were not hand feeding her.

Ellie.

[tobiloh]

Thank you all for your comments!

Beau is always very well fed. No worries about that! He will stop accepting food after a while and is actually bigger than his brother (we have two IRNs from the same clutch).

I was hoping this was a good behavior.. because it was so pleasant.

Now that behaviour has abruptly stopped and Beau is no longer as sweet