Is Your Bird a Bully?

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 Photo by Dave
Location: Waynesboro, VA
Birds pictured: Blue throat macaw “Jinx”, Congo African Grey “Cressi”

This topic came up recently on the facebook. Someone asked about their two birds and explained how one picks on the other. This is making it very hard to have them both out at the same time without one bird getting its (excuse my language) ass kicked. Recently we’ve been encountering some ‘bullying’ behavior with our toucan Rocko.

 

Because we’re nervous about getting him too close to our parrots (for safety reasons – his beak could reach them way before theirs could reach him) he has started to feel that he’s king of everything and act like it too. He will go over to our stuffed animal toucans and ‘beat them up’ which isn’t a big deal except he started to pass that aggression onto us, other objects and eventually act like he could do that to our other birds when we were introducing them for the first time. We noticed it coming right away and stopped socialization for a while until we could overcome his heiness’ ego.

 

Photo by Dave
Location: Waynesboro, VA
Birds pictured: Blue throat macaw “Jinx”, Congo African Grey “Cressi”

 

We began doing this with where the behavior started: with the stuffed toucans.

 

As Rocko would go over to beat them up like usual, I would put my hand behind the toucan and act like it was alive and sick and tired of being jabbed around. At first, Rocko reacted even more aggressively but then as the stuffed toucan would come closer to him and eventually on him and around him, he would stop caring and leave the stuffed toucan alone either not caring what it was doing or playing elsewhere where the toucan wasn’t. After weeks of this, he plays with the stuffed toucans now but doesn’t bully them which we are hoping will help with REAL socializing, too.

 

Rocko has been flying outside and in Virginia was the first time in the company of our other birds really being part of it. Tusa, our camelot macaw, sat perched on Dave’s shoulder while Rocko did recall flights to Dave. At first, Rocko saw Tusa and aggressively made sounds at him but once he was focused on his flight tasks he practically forgot Tusa was there.

 

It’s important that when one bird bullies another you don’t encourage it or let it go on – in the wild birds often fight to the death and if your birds are clipped and unable to get away from each other easily without falling off something, it can be especially risky and dangerous.

 

Photo by Dave
Location: Waynesboro, VA
Birds pictured: Blue throat macaw “Jinx”, Congo African Grey “Cressi”

 

It’s better to stop the bully bird before he starts and have things around to distract him. It’s also okay to obviously protect the other bird whether that involves moving it out of biting range or blocking an attack when you know the bully bird won’t bully you.

 

I find it easiest to socialize and prevent bullying and fighting by listening to my intuition when working with two birds.

 

For example, out of our flock our african grey Cressi and our blue throated macaw Jinx get along the least. I put them both on a pumpkin for a picture and they both wanted to eat it – but since they both knew they didn’t care for each other that much and they were both wanting the pumpkin they were weary of the other bird. Because in this situation they not only had to lend a little trust to each other but they had to give it to the other bird as well. And it was obvious their trust in each other was lacking.

 

Photo by Dave
Location: Waynesboro, VA
Birds pictured: Blue throat macaw “Jinx”, Congo African Grey “Cressi”

 

Each bird had to stick their head into the pumpkin to get a bite and chew on that bite while the other bird did the same thing after them and wait. Each bird assumed the other bird was out to get them in their time of vulnerability for they were each on high alert. I tried to help… here’s the video…

 

 
Remember it’s always easier to get your birds to get along when they are fully flighted so they have the confidence of being able to get away when they want to. A clipped bird is more likely to lash out in fear and desperation.