Preening With Your Friend

Helping your buddy preen is a great bonding mechanism although you have to earn his/her trust before it goes well.  

First, a bit about feathers.  There are three types:

1. The  contour feathers are the colored ones that that lay flat along the back, head, chest and legs and follow the contour of the body (hence the name)

2. The flight feathers are the big wing and tail feathers

3. The down feathers are the itty-bitty white feathers under the contour feathers.  You don't see these unless you ruffle the contours.
   

Each of these feathers grows in a protective sheath which is growing, living tissue with blood and nerves. As the feather matures, the living tissue receeds leaving a new feather in a waxy white coating which can be 'crunched' between fingers or beak, freeing the feather inside. 

Collectively, these are referred to as "Pin Feathers" but it's easy to tell the two types apart:

1. The full, growing blood feathers will be sort of fat and soft/squishy and translucent and will look sort of pinkish getting deeper red inside with a harder white tip. These are the ones that hurt and/or itch.  He won't mind if you wobble them around as part of the scritching as long as you don't pull on them or mash them or push on the end.

2. The emerging mature feathers.  These will be all white with no hint of red and harder, with maybe a little bit of colored feather sticking out the end.  THESE are the ones you can help with.  The white is a crunchy, waxy sheath that will crumble if you squeeze it right and release the fully formed feather inside.  This is what a birdy buddy would do for your bird in the wild and what you have to do in its stead.
   

Your bird can maintain all of the fethers on his body except the ones on his head. but he really needs help with those when moulting.  Sit down with him on your favorite chair and get comfortable.  Scritch a little, then begin working through the countour feathers on his head, looking for the white sheaths with a bit of feather sticking out the top.

When you crunch them, do it with a slight twisting motion, rolling them sideways between your thumb and finger.  I've found that just pinching them tends to pull outward and earns me a  nip.    But if you roll it you'll hear/feel a crunch and the white sheath will disintegrate into powder leaving a new, colored feather in its place.  It'll be a little straggley at first, but will fill out in a day or so.

You can see a *much* larger version of this sheath at the base of the tail and flight feathers, which follow the same development  sequence.  Don't try squeezing these though.  They're much harder and he can get to them all anyway.  It's the ones on the top and sides of his head that he needs help with.

Once he gets used to you doing this and trusts you not to hurt him (too often), he'll probably just sit there and preen elsewhere while you work on his head.  It's totally enjoyable to you both.  He may even decide to preen you or your clothes.

Even when the trust thing is going though, be ready to yank away quick and apologize if you inadvertently mash one that's not quite ready or pull a little too hard on one that is.  After a session of this, you'll both be covered in white lint.

One other feather thing.  It's not uncommon to see black horizontal bars or spots on the wing and tail feathers, especially in younger birds.  If you do, don't worry.  These are called "stress bars" and result from the feather being physically or emotionally stressed while it is still forming.  By the time you see them, whatever was doing the stressing is long past and there's nothing you can do about it.  They'll be there until the feather drops out.    Jazzy had these a couple of times while he was a baby but hasn't had any since then.