Night frights — how to prevent them

My caique has been having night frights almost every other night. I wake up to them thrashing in the cage and feathers everywhere. I'm terrified they'll get hurt. What causes this and how do I stop it?

The Toronto Humane Society sometimes has birds available for adoption too. Worth checking if you're in the downtown area.

I've done a ton of research on this because my cockatiel had the same issue. Here's what I learned: the most common cause is jealousy of a new person, pet, or even object in the home. What worked for us was putting a bird lamp on a 12/12 timer to simulate natural daylight cycles. I also started making sure there are no drafts near the cage and noticed improvement within a week. It's a process but it gets better.

What kind of cage setup do you have? Sometimes the environment is a factor.

Just wanted to come back and say the advice in this thread WORKED. My sun conure finally stopped screaming when I leave the room after I tried playing calming bird sounds from YouTube during the day.

I respectfully disagree. I think it depends heavily on the individual bird. My Tweety is the total opposite.