So, I honestly wish to get another bird, specifically a parakeet. However, Zippy, my zebra finch, seems to have a possessive like problem. When I originally had Matthew, a cockatiel, she would fly onto his cage, around, and just generally seem to intimidate him (my mom took him, he's happier there) and I was wondering if there was any way to get her to calm down a bit? I was thinking maybe it was curiosity, she didn't seem aggressive, just... curious.
I answered a question a while back on possessive aggression here that explains more about what it is and comparing it to territorial aggression. Birds can be taught to be calm during the removal of food bowls, presentation of another bird by simply starting at a far distance and rewarding them for being clam, moving closer and closer rewarding the calm behaviour but in this case I don’t think it’s really necessary to do so since there’s easy ways to avoid the interaction. Overall this shouldn’t be much of a problem since neither of these birds should be coming in direct contact with one another due to the high injury risk and preventative measures can be taken such as housing in different rooms, bringing them out in separate rooms, putting a towel on top of one cage when bringing one bird out, etc. Generally the best way to reduce possessive aggression is to ensure there’s more than enough resources, a large cage, multiple food/water bowls, so the bird doesn’t feel threatened about their resources. This is an excellent article which details the types of aggression and has case studies at the bottom regarding examples of the problems and solutions for most types of aggression if you wish to do more reading in to it.
- Courtney (flock-talk)
