Conures are very interesting birds to keep as pets, your pet conure is likely very playful, cuddly, and even loud and will show other sides of their personality as well.
But is the bird rubbing its beak against its cage a personality trait or something else? This article looks into it.
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Why does my conure rub his beak on the cage?
Understanding your bird’s different behaviors is key to knowing if the bird is healthy or not and is helpful in understanding if the bird is happy or not.
Here is why your conure is rubbing its beak on its cage:
Beak wiping:
Conures, and other types of birds, will try to keep themselves as clean as they can however they can.
The bird keeping itself clean can sometimes look like the bird taking a bath, preening itself, or rubbing its beak against its cage, rubbing its beak against things is called beak wiping.
Beak wiping is a common way that the birds remove food or any other debris from their beak.
Your bird may not only wipe its beak against its cage to beak wipe, your bird may also wipe its beak against other surfaces like perches and toys after it eats.
You will usually see this if your bird eats juicy foods like suet, fruits, or juicy insects and this eating makes a mess on the bird’s beak.
The bird wants out of the cage:
Your conure will try to communicate to you in a variety of ways and one way of communicating to you is to grind its beak against its cage.
A bird that does this is trying to communicate that it wants out of the cage.
Birds aren’t fans of always being stuck in their cages. Your bird rubbing its beak against its cage is one way of your conure telling you to get it out of there.
If the bird rubs its beak against the cage door then the bird very likely wants to get out of the cage.
Beak grinding:
If your conure is roughly rubbing, or even grinding, it’s beak and the cage bars then the bird may simply be beak grinding.
Your conure’s beak is always growing just as any other bird’s beak is, the bird will wear the beak down, and maintain the shape, by grinding its beak against rough and hard objects. The cage bars may just be the only rough and hard thing that your bird has to grind its beak against.
The outer layer of a bird’s beak is made up of the same material that our hair and fingernails are made out of, keratin.
Keratin is a protein that keeps growing non-stop, so the beak needs to be ground down and groomed to keep it at a manageable length and size.
The grinding will wear down the beak to whatever size the bird wants it to be and this will keep it usable and keep it from becoming overgrown.
What to do:
The bird rubbing its beak against its cage is not an issue and you can leave the bird alone if it is doing this to get debris off of its beak or to maintain its beak size
However, if your conure is doing this as a way of telling you that it wants out of its cage then take the bird out of its cage. Do this in a bird-safe environment.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Why Is My Bird Rubbing Its Face On Everything, Do Female Budgies Hump Things?, Lovebird Rubbing beak On Cage, Female Budgie Not Allowing Male To Mate, Why Do Conures Rub Their Beaks On Things?, Parakeets Mating But No Eggs, Do Budgies Like Blankets?, Why Do Parakeets Rub Their Beaks Together?, Budgie Vomiting Undigested Seeds