Hi all,
More than a year ago we’ve bought a young Rainbow Lorikeet (RbL) with a gender certification which states he is a male. We decided to choose for the Lorikeet because of his ‘personality’, very playful and energetic, but also able to play on his own. For a long time where weighing the pro’s and con’s from different species. Once the lorikeet was settled it started fantastic. He is very, very clever. Within a few moments he was able to fetch and his vocabulary consists of about 20 words/sentences by now. The older he got, the more we’ve noticed that he was more attracted to the girl in the house, to a certain point that he wasn’t able to entertain itself anymore, but only wanted to be together with a female person. Meanwhile he also gets more distant towards man, even though we tried to practice together and ignore his bad behavior. Towards the female he is very tame. She is even able to play with him while he is lying on his back.
This behavior was getting worse and for us the reason to find a buddy for RbL. Finally we’ve found a Red-Collared Lorikeet (RCL) which is proven to be female. Since we don’t have the intention to breed, we’ve focused our search on a specie which has the most change to live together, but which from the outside we could keep apart from each other .
Last February we’ve got her. This RCL has gone through a lot in her short life. Her feathers where cut very badly and she didn’t even had a tail. We estimate her age a little younger than the RbL. Also she already had more than three owners and was quite scared. For us even more reason to help her out and let them both together be birds again.
This went very well. She got her feathers and tail back, got almost the whole vocabulary from the RbL and together they are (they have their ‘fights’) a good couple and living in the same cage!
Now the problem:
Most of the time when we have the birds out of the cage they are playing on the playtop on top of the cage. Sometimes the female RCL flies towards us. The male RbL sees her as his partner and has to keep track on her. In other words he will always follow her, wherever she goes. If she goes to the female person in the house, the RCL will join and will be a little bit defensive but not offensive. But when the RCL flies to the male person in the house it’s a different story. He will keep continuing with attacks at the male, until the RCL is away from the male person. This is really attacking and continiously biting (very hard, blood will certain follow).
We have no idea how the handle this. If we have them separate out of the cage, it’s kinda hard as well..
Situation 1, RbL in the cage and RCL out of the cage: No problem, the RCL is playing on the cage and joining the humans in the household as well.
Situation 2, RCL in the cage and RbL out of the cage: In this situation the RbL will not leave the cage play top. It’s impossible to play or train with him, since he wants to be around the RCL.
Our preference is to not clip the birds their wings. Because the RCL is now learning to fly and for the RbL we notice it’s his way to lose his energy. If he hasn’t been flying for a day we notice that he is a little bit nippier and doesn’t know what to do with all his energy. Unfortunately we don’t know something else to solve this ‘problem’.
Is there anyone who has been dealing with a situation like this or know how to deal with this situation? We are noticing that we are less enthusiastic to get them out of the cage every day, and that it’s getting more an obligation than a nice time.. We first thought this was a ‘skippy’ period from the RbL (The Good, the Bad, The Ugly about lories and lorikeets | Avian Avenue Parrot Forum), but it has been around for longer now.
All the tips are welcome, thanks in advance!
More than a year ago we’ve bought a young Rainbow Lorikeet (RbL) with a gender certification which states he is a male. We decided to choose for the Lorikeet because of his ‘personality’, very playful and energetic, but also able to play on his own. For a long time where weighing the pro’s and con’s from different species. Once the lorikeet was settled it started fantastic. He is very, very clever. Within a few moments he was able to fetch and his vocabulary consists of about 20 words/sentences by now. The older he got, the more we’ve noticed that he was more attracted to the girl in the house, to a certain point that he wasn’t able to entertain itself anymore, but only wanted to be together with a female person. Meanwhile he also gets more distant towards man, even though we tried to practice together and ignore his bad behavior. Towards the female he is very tame. She is even able to play with him while he is lying on his back.
This behavior was getting worse and for us the reason to find a buddy for RbL. Finally we’ve found a Red-Collared Lorikeet (RCL) which is proven to be female. Since we don’t have the intention to breed, we’ve focused our search on a specie which has the most change to live together, but which from the outside we could keep apart from each other .
Last February we’ve got her. This RCL has gone through a lot in her short life. Her feathers where cut very badly and she didn’t even had a tail. We estimate her age a little younger than the RbL. Also she already had more than three owners and was quite scared. For us even more reason to help her out and let them both together be birds again. This went very well. She got her feathers and tail back, got almost the whole vocabulary from the RbL and together they are (they have their ‘fights’) a good couple and living in the same cage!
Now the problem:
Most of the time when we have the birds out of the cage they are playing on the playtop on top of the cage. Sometimes the female RCL flies towards us. The male RbL sees her as his partner and has to keep track on her. In other words he will always follow her, wherever she goes. If she goes to the female person in the house, the RCL will join and will be a little bit defensive but not offensive. But when the RCL flies to the male person in the house it’s a different story. He will keep continuing with attacks at the male, until the RCL is away from the male person. This is really attacking and continiously biting (very hard, blood will certain follow).
We have no idea how the handle this. If we have them separate out of the cage, it’s kinda hard as well..
Situation 1, RbL in the cage and RCL out of the cage: No problem, the RCL is playing on the cage and joining the humans in the household as well.
Situation 2, RCL in the cage and RbL out of the cage: In this situation the RbL will not leave the cage play top. It’s impossible to play or train with him, since he wants to be around the RCL.
Our preference is to not clip the birds their wings. Because the RCL is now learning to fly and for the RbL we notice it’s his way to lose his energy. If he hasn’t been flying for a day we notice that he is a little bit nippier and doesn’t know what to do with all his energy. Unfortunately we don’t know something else to solve this ‘problem’.
Is there anyone who has been dealing with a situation like this or know how to deal with this situation? We are noticing that we are less enthusiastic to get them out of the cage every day, and that it’s getting more an obligation than a nice time.. We first thought this was a ‘skippy’ period from the RbL (The Good, the Bad, The Ugly about lories and lorikeets | Avian Avenue Parrot Forum), but it has been around for longer now.
All the tips are welcome, thanks in advance!
