12 week old lori can't fly...

[alex1905]

This young lori turned up in our garden late Nov....unable to fly but still being fed by the parents, so we left it alone.  We thought he was around 5 weeks then. It just lived in the tree and along the fence..which you can see in the pic.  It had no flight feathers or tail feathers, and slowly they are growing but he is a bit scruffy... and the end of his wing feathers are turned up.  It's now the end of Jan and we thought he would have flown off by now, but he still cannot fly - the photo was taken a couple of weeks ago.  Parents no longer feed him so we've stepped in with wet, dry food and some fruit.  Apart from a lot of scratching he seems well, good appetite and energy..but we're concerned about his feather dev...has anyone seen this before?

[totemando]

it looks like and sounds like he has PSITTACINE BEAK AND FEATHER DISEASE "PBFD" it is a disease in parrots that inhibits the correct growth of the feathers. Varies from case to case the severity of the effects. Your bird looks very lightly affected. He has all his tail feathers intact, but is evedently missing his wing flights, which would stimmy his flying efforts.
The good news is that not all birds infected stay that way, from my experience sometimes after a second moult the birds not the worst affected can throw it off and develop their feathers as normal, but its not always the case.
All in all its good of you to be caring for him, so keep up the good work.

Cheers, Trev