Pet Forum / Birds / Birds / May 2008

Saturday, 05/24/008   00.50
sfcausa

To people who have never had budgies, this would surely sound like a
very silly anthropomorphic question indeed, but as those of us who
live with the little impsters know, anything is possible. So I will
just ask the forum as straight forward as possible. Can parakeets
deliberately influence how other parakeets will behave? And do they do
so on purpose?

We have 3 budgies -- Oliver and Clara are a couple, much more
interested in each other than in us, and haven't had much in the way
of hand-training ; Alias (who was represented to us as having been
hand-fed when he came to us) lives in a separate cage across the room
from them and is considerably more tame and human-friendly. They're
separated by about 10' (we live in a pretty small apartment) and so
they are in visual and voice contact much of the time.

Here's the issue: when I am playing with Alias, sometimes one or both
of the other two will suddenly set up a great raucous racket of
screeching and squawking and "ackackackackackacking" that seems to get
Alias all alarmed and worked up and suspicious of me! If I take him
into the other room or bathroom to try to get us a little "alone-time"
they will often start making loud noises much as if they were shouting
out to him, and he'll be all distracted and start yelling back and
want to go away from where we are, back to where they are, at once. I
try talking and making birdy noises at him, bribing him with a treat,
and so on, to no avail.

My question then: do you think the two "wilder" ones could be
deliberately "instigating" him to be less friendly with the big weird
no-feathers-having thing (aka me) ? Or some birdie behaviour that is
not quite that, but works out to the same effect? And is there any way
I can either dissuade them from doing it so much, or -- even better --
get Alias more interested in the interaction with me that's going on,
than the carryings-on of his non-people-friendly roommates?