FINCHforum

Last night one of my male yellow face star finches had what I can only guess is a seizure of some sort. He was flopping and rolling spasmodically all over the floor of the cage. I thought he was in the throes of death. (But he didn't die, and he looks OK this morning.)

He would pause occasionally with one wing stretched out, which I assume must have been for balance. I picked him up to check for injuries, but found nothing., so I put him back down on the newspaper.

After he was done intermittently rolling and pausing, he went up to a low perch and rested for a while, with his beak pointing up, and his eyes shut. He was panting at first, but as time went on, he became more and more normal. Eventually he went up to sit with the other three stars, and by the time I was putting in their veggies, he came over and ate with the others. (I did not dare give them a bath. That cage will just have to miss out until I feel he will be safe.)

When I checked on him this morning, he was with the others, acting and looking perfectly normal. I'm planning to do a search on bird seizures while I wait for feedback on here. Has anybody ever had any experience with this? Is there anything to do for it? What was the eventual outcome for your bird?

Wow - so glad he is still with you. Definitely sounds neurological.
Perhaps a reaction to some toxin you were not aware of?

Please keep us updated.

It certainly sounds neurological. Could he have hit his head during a night fright? The only experience I have had with this was 1) an injury, and 2) e coli outbreak in handfeeding formula (my fault, not manufacturer). Unfortunately, there was not a good outcome in both these incidents. However, I would not assume the worst, as I have read of other cases where birds had just a single incident of seizures and then never repeated it.

I would say it may have been due to an injury or something within the nervous system...I would set a heat lamp nearby for him to go to if needed.

Poor baby...hoping this was just a 1x thing.

Birds like other animals and humans too, can have seizures from a variety of causes. Injury (head trauma of some sort) Infection, lack of calcium or improper calcium phosphorus ratio, toxins to name a few and sometimes you just don't know what caused it. Make sure he's getting enough calcium and an overall varied diet and keep a close watch on him. Perhaps this will be a one time deal but if it continues you should consider consulting an avian vet.

Thank you all. I really couldn't say whether he hit his head. Night frights are always a possibility, but I would probably not be aware of it happening unless it disrupted the whole bird room and made so much noise that I could hear it from far away in my room while I was asleep.

The only thing unusual that I noticed when I entered the bird room was that there were a ton of pink feathers around one Bourke's cage, and I did wonder whether he had freaked out/fought with his buddy, or whether he was just molting. So then once I noticed the star flipping around, I wondered if whatever happened in the Bourke's cage had upset the stars too.

One thing I found out when I googled it is that just about every kind of problem or illness a bird can get can eventually cause seizures at some point. So that pretty much narrows it down to EVERYTHING.

But most of the time there would be other symptoms. So without those, it seems like it's just a matter of waiting and seeing if it happens again. And to keep an eye out for the appearance of any other symptoms.