[mienscarpone]

I've posted about my tiel Bella here before with regards to what the vets and I agreed was a crop infection. She took her medication and we've even taken her back a second time just to be sure that she really is totally fine. The vet said that he couldn't seem to find anything wrong with her and that there's a very low chance that she's ill with anything at the moment.

My worry is this - lately, when the sun is about to go down, Bella will fly off and sit on her own on a curtain rod or her favourite dark corner behind the boxes on the closet etc. She'll grind her beak and lift up her feet (which is healthy bird behaviour as far as I'm aware) and then usually fall asleep for the rest of the night, but if you try and move her she'll become very aggressive and bite hard. If you manage to take her away from there she'll fly straight back.

Tonight I managed to keep her with me by closing the door after taking her off the curtain rod. She was still a bit grumpy but happily received affection after a while. Then, she started sneezing very frequently and scratching at her nose and face a lot.

What really makes me worry is that after one big sneeze (that ended up with a lot of her snot being sprayed on my face) she just sat and stared at me with her mouth opening slowly until it was hanging agape like she was having trouble breathing for a few seconds. What's worse is that I could tell whenever these sneezes were coming the more she did them as I could hear something inside of her making a noise. I can't really describe it properly, it was sort of like a bubbling or clicking, like the snot was building up (sorry for the gross imagery).

Does this behaviour mean that she's ill after all? She seems to only save it for night time, so does it mean she's doing the instinctive thing and hiding her illness throughout the day because she's a prey animal? All this time I thought the excessive night time sneezing was because she's moulting right now, but now I'm not so sure. My other tiel, Tinsel, died less than a year ago out of the blue, so I'm honestly extremely terrified of the same happening to Bella at such a young age.

 

[roxy culver]

So the flying away and biting is normal. She views that area as her "bed" or nest and has chosen that as her place to sleep at night so when you are removing her she's telling you no because that's where she wants to sleep. Personally, I wouldn't let her go there anymore, like if it starts to get dark put her back in her cage because it's bedtime.

As for the sneezing, it can be related to molting, especially if she's only doing it at night. The open mouth this was probably her adjusting her crop, they do that quite often. The clicking is not normal, but if she was sick she would be doing it all the time. You can call the vet and mention the clicking and ask what they think. Did you do any probiotics after the antibiotics?

 

[mienscarpone]

Thank you so much for the fast reply! It's such a relief to hear that her recent behaviour at night is normal enough.

I don't think it was crop adjusting, though. She didn't stretch out her neck like they usually do when they adjust their crop (as far as I'm aware). It was basically just a big sneeze and then her fluffed up on my chest looking me right in the eye and staying completely still while slowly and quietly opening her beak. I guess she could have had some dander or fluff caught in her throat.

So should I not be worried that she only sneezes a lot at night? I'm still thinking it could be because she wants to hide any possible symptoms until she's less vulnerable, because she never sneezes that much or makes those funny gargling noises before sneezing during the day.

As for probiotics, we weren't really given anything like that. We were basically told to keep putting a little bit of apple cider vinegar in her water for a couple of weeks to ensure the crop infection doesn't resurface. When we went back, we got an older and more experienced avian vet who was even able to look down her crop and throat and told us there was nothing wrong there. He also said it's highly unlikely that it could be something intestinal, so maybe I'm just being a worrywart because of my past bad experience with poor Tinsel

I think my main concern is that we initially did a very poor job of feeding her the medicine all those weeks ago so she could have inhaled it. The vet didn't really tell us that there was a special way to do it, so we basically held poor Bella in a lying-down position to stop her from struggling and forced the syringe into her mouth. Afterwards, we would hear a funny zipping noise coming from inside her until she readjusted. If she were to get aspiration sickness from that experience, would it be more obvious by now? It's been a couple of months now.

Sorry for bombarding you with all these questions since I know you're not a vet, but I'm just feeling so worried earl:

 

[roxy culver]

If it were from aspiration she would've showed symptoms WAY before now. Like within days of it happening.

That being said, it doesn't hurt to call the vet office and let them know of your concerns. Did they listen to her lungs when you had her in there? The clicking doesn't sound normal but I'm not sure.

 

[mienscarpone]

They didn't listen to her lungs because I forgot to mention my worries about aspiration unfortunately but from the sounds of it she should be a-okay in that regard. She's back to her normal self today, no sneezing or snotty noises or anything which is good.

Thank you for all your advice, I think I'll call the vet and see what they have to say about it!