Mysterious and irritating

I don't know if his behavior has anything to do with the fact that Thomas wasn't home. I guess we'll see if it repeats itself tonight -- I certainly hope not!

Over the past few weeks, Rocky has been treating a towel inside his cage and a ball with certain reverence. It appears to be some sort of displaced nesting behavior; however, he doesn't dig in the towel or try to sit on the ball/egg. He just likes to stand on the towel, near the ball. Sometimes he'll gently rest his beak on the ball.When either one of us is home, the parrots spend the majority of the time out of their cages. Exceptions are made for sleeping and safety.

Yesterday, as usual, I let Rocky out of his cage shortly after returning home from work. As soon as the cage door was open, he started screaming. Constantly. Loudly. Not wanting to incur the wrath of my neighbors and, quite frankly, having heard enough noise, I decided that if he was going to scream anyway, I was going to lock him in his cage so that I didn't have to worry about a sneak attack as I tried to fend off an oncoming headache. The screaming instantly ceased.

Headache averted, I returned to the kitchen to cook dinner. Then, as I settled on the couch to eat, I opened his cage door again. More constant screaming. How does this not hurt his throat in some way? The parrots we saw in the wild screamed occasionally, but certainly not for 5 minutes straight!

I closed the door again, and he quieted down. When I relayed the story to Thomas, he guessed that Rocky didn't want me disturbing his nest. Whatever the reason, he spent much more time in his cage yesterday than necessary; let's hope this is only temporary!