I have my first button quail. He is perfectly fine during the day but at night he starts flying around his cage.it doesn't matter if he is covered or not. He only calms down if I get up and talk to him or shine a light at his cage. He has already hurt himself once by doing this so I'm a bit paranoid. Could he be afraid of the dark or something? He just got a mate the other day and is still doing this.
give him some time with the new bird to settle down this should help him as they like to have friends to live with... how big is the cage?
I'd pad the top of the cage to prevent him from hurting himself. I have one that does it as well and I keep it in a home built cage with plastic insect mesh suspended 1-2 inches below the actual roof to keep it from getting hurt. Works like a charm. Other than that, in my experience they don't do it if it's completely dark in their cage at night (as in 'can't see a hand') nor if it's light enough for them to pretty much see everything (though if they haven't settled properly before it becomes completely dark, they do it anyway). The latter might of cause prevent them from sleeping properly, but sometimes you can reach a balance - I have a different cage that houses both budgies and buttons and in there it's the budgies that panic if it's too dark, so I have to have a light and it also has to be relatively strong to keep the buttons calm. So I have an 8 watt blue LED strip and it's hanging down the side of the cage to make sure it lights up the bottom properly - it seems the buttons try to fly towards the light if it doesn't. It's not the entire strip that's turned towards the cage though, as that makes it very bright in there. It is also my experience they mainly do it if they are not completely happy. If I separate one from it's friends, it's more likely to do it. If there are too many mature males in a cage, it's more likely to happen. If I just removed a group of chicks from their parents, the parent's might start doing it. Things like that. Yours might have started because it was alone and didn't feel safe and for each time it hit the top of the cage and it hurt it could have become more and more convinced the cage is actually dangerous at night.
