Known Space
Meeting neighbors
- Joined
- 6/6/18
- Messages
- 69
Ok so to prefix this entire post:
I do not intend to make them friends. I never got the pionus to keep my parrotlet company. I never intend to have them out together unsupervised: and by that I mean, direct supervision. Not just being in the same room with them. They'll never on the other side of the room together
So a brief history:
I've had a parrotlet for over a year now, she's my lovely little friend and I love her. Very welcoming of new people and new birds so it seems.
Then there's my pionus, he finally joined us in the main room a couple of weeks ago. He's lovely and affectionate, loves to preen me and seeks me out constantly and wants to befriend everyone. Me, my girlfriend and my parrotlet. But mostly me. He's still learning to step up without me hodling a perch and he has the attention span of.... something with a very short attention. He's target trained, but I'm honestly not interested in formally training him much at this point since he's just too young and distractable for it .
As soon as my bronze-winged pionus joined the room, my parrotlet was REALLY itching to meet him and even tried to squeeze herself into his cage (I didn't let her). She's not territorial about anything except for her cage at all.
However, when I first let my pionus out he had the audacity to sit on my parrotlet's cage. My parrotlet isn't cage aggressive towards my girlfriend or me at all. But to strangers she is. And I decided that both birds had to be out together to avoid territorial conflict. She also managed to sneak in a little bite in his foot through the cage bars when I wasn't quick enough.
In spite of that, my pionus was still POSITIVE he was gonna make friends with her. But she grew increasingly scared of this big, hulking bird just taking off and flying around at his leasure.
My parrotlet is basically constantly scared of him, but she's gotten a lot less cage territorial as of late. My pionus actually spends MOST of the time observing everything from her cage (which I will discourage when he gets more consistent at stepping up), and she's just fine doing her thing unless he gets close when she's eating. Still, when she's on a surface and she lands directly besides her, she tries to shoo him away aggressively. So at times, he does open his beak at her. But only after a day's worth of being shood away by her.
They never aggressively seek each other out though. My pionus has like these moments where he'd rather just sit and observe from a distance. And my parrotlet is a huge cuddlebug and likes nothing more than to just sit against or on me and fluff up.
Tonight, I tried making my parrotlet perform tricks and reward those, while giving my pionus treats as they were standing next to each other. I did that for like 5 minutes and... they were completely fine.
Since the main problem seems to be fear and not territoriality, I can really only reduce the problem to fear at this point. My parrotlet is just scared of this young, huge bird who has no clue how to approach her carefully. What's the best way to get her desensitized to his flying around?
I was originally planning to introduce them when my pionus was fully willing and trained to step up, enabling me to introduce them more carefully. But that didn't happen when he once got out during a taming session.
I do not intend to make them friends. I never got the pionus to keep my parrotlet company. I never intend to have them out together unsupervised: and by that I mean, direct supervision. Not just being in the same room with them. They'll never on the other side of the room together
So a brief history:
I've had a parrotlet for over a year now, she's my lovely little friend and I love her. Very welcoming of new people and new birds so it seems.
Then there's my pionus, he finally joined us in the main room a couple of weeks ago. He's lovely and affectionate, loves to preen me and seeks me out constantly and wants to befriend everyone. Me, my girlfriend and my parrotlet. But mostly me. He's still learning to step up without me hodling a perch and he has the attention span of.... something with a very short attention. He's target trained, but I'm honestly not interested in formally training him much at this point since he's just too young and distractable for it .
As soon as my bronze-winged pionus joined the room, my parrotlet was REALLY itching to meet him and even tried to squeeze herself into his cage (I didn't let her). She's not territorial about anything except for her cage at all.
However, when I first let my pionus out he had the audacity to sit on my parrotlet's cage. My parrotlet isn't cage aggressive towards my girlfriend or me at all. But to strangers she is. And I decided that both birds had to be out together to avoid territorial conflict. She also managed to sneak in a little bite in his foot through the cage bars when I wasn't quick enough.
In spite of that, my pionus was still POSITIVE he was gonna make friends with her. But she grew increasingly scared of this big, hulking bird just taking off and flying around at his leasure.
My parrotlet is basically constantly scared of him, but she's gotten a lot less cage territorial as of late. My pionus actually spends MOST of the time observing everything from her cage (which I will discourage when he gets more consistent at stepping up), and she's just fine doing her thing unless he gets close when she's eating. Still, when she's on a surface and she lands directly besides her, she tries to shoo him away aggressively. So at times, he does open his beak at her. But only after a day's worth of being shood away by her.
They never aggressively seek each other out though. My pionus has like these moments where he'd rather just sit and observe from a distance. And my parrotlet is a huge cuddlebug and likes nothing more than to just sit against or on me and fluff up.
Tonight, I tried making my parrotlet perform tricks and reward those, while giving my pionus treats as they were standing next to each other. I did that for like 5 minutes and... they were completely fine.
Since the main problem seems to be fear and not territoriality, I can really only reduce the problem to fear at this point. My parrotlet is just scared of this young, huge bird who has no clue how to approach her carefully. What's the best way to get her desensitized to his flying around?
I was originally planning to introduce them when my pionus was fully willing and trained to step up, enabling me to introduce them more carefully. But that didn't happen when he once got out during a taming session.