melissasparrots
Rollerblading along the road
Avenue Veteran
Celebirdy of the Month
Mayor of the Avenue
Avenue Spotlight Award
Blue fronted amazons are one of those species that if you get a good one, you can have a nearly perfect bird. The males of the species can be unholy terrors...sometimes. Males are like that often enough that they have a reputation and when it happens it is such a level of aggression that it tends to be a deal breaker for people. Male blue fronts are kind of hit and miss with some of them being very nice and others hitting sexual maturity and flying at you and latching onto whatever body part they land on and sinking their beak into your flesh multiple times before you shake them off and high step it onto a chair because now they are launching a ground attack on your feet. Females are far less likely to do that sort of thing. If they are raised right, amazons tend to be petable but not overly clingy or snuggly. There are certainly snuggly amazons, but it isn't the stereotype. A quick scratch on the neck or cheeks and then on to other things. One of the reasons that people do like amazons is that they are fairly independent and roll with life's changes better than many species. They probably will not fall apart if they have to stay caged for a week while you go on vacation. They are affectionate enough to be rewarding, have enough personality to be fun, but they don't take huge amounts of your time. A macaw will trend more hands on and actually snuggly, but that can change through their teenage years. Some species such as military's are a little more frequently hands off. If you get an amazon, either buy a young female or if you get an older bird, make sure to get the history of the bird and why it needs to be rehomed. Don't just assume that because you can or can't handle it when you first meet that it will be that way forever. An aggressive male can be disarmingly sweet if you first meet him away from his home territory. Then once he gets settled in your house for a few weeks, the Dr. Jekyll side will come out and you will be bleeding, repeatedly for months during the hormone season. On the other hand, my first female amazon bit me hard when we first met. She was in her home territory and she had been rehomed before and likely knew what was up. Her owner at the time said she was a sweet bird and I could easily see the owner could handle her. So, I felt confident that once in my home she would eventually develop a similar relationship with me. Which she did. Another thing to be aware of with amazons is that they all have triggers. Things that happen and or the bird sees and it immediately bites whatever is nearby. Blue fronts and the yellow headed/naped amazons are among the more reactive species. Once you get bit a few times, you know your bird's triggers and can easily avoid them. For my female amazons, it is my dog getting too close or the sight of another female amazon flaring its tail. If that happens, I may or may not have time to put the bird down before it bites me. This is not aggression toward the human but it still makes you bleed and you still have to learn your bird's body language and its triggers. Sometimes a trigger can be a spouse or child of the favorite human. Males have that as well as the crazy outrageous hormonal aggression too. No matter what anyone tells you, hormone aggression starts somewhere between 3 and 8 years old and can potentially last the bird's lifetime or until it is so old it is feeling sick. My old male amazon didn't stop trying to attack me until he got so arthritic he physically could not chase me anymore. He was well over 30 years old. Possibly closer to 60 plus. His unpaired son is mostly seasonal in his aggression. 2-4 months sometime between late january and June he gets untrustworthy.
