Good boys!

[Mitchan]

Donnie is still pretty new to the flock, and being 18 years old and never having met or interacted with another bird before, he's still a bit rusty when it comes to trying to communicate with Drogon. They really like eachother and they both want to be close to eachother, but they're both uncertain about the other closing in on them so they'll end up either trying to mount eachother or bickering with eachother. Nothing bad or dangerous at all, but, I don't want any of their interactions to be negative in any way, so I have to watch them super closely at all times so that they don't get themselves in those situations

Today, however, they were being Very Good! Spending lots of time right next to eachother with no attempt at either mounting or bickering.
I'm very proud of my boys!

 

[TiredOldMan]

Beautiful boys you have there.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Scott]

Wow, they are outstanding!!

 

[Inger]

What sweeties! They’re lovely and I want to smooch them both.


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[YUMgrinder]

awwwwwwwwwwww!

 

[Kiwibird]

Healthy looking amazons! They do indeed seem to be enjoying their outdoor time

Do note, that while this is early days of their blossoming friendship and close supervision is still very much required, just saying that a certain amount of 'bickering' is normal even amongst mates and long time buddies. My moms amazons were bonded for around 40 years before the male died and they would occasionally get in a "fight" right up until the end. Nipping, intimidation, chasing etc... NEVER injured each other but definitely let each other know when one offended the other in some way. Interestingly, it was usually the female who initiated the 'fights' and the male who high tailed it to the safety of the cage lol. My male BFA was also intimidated by her and always towed the line in her presence. Not sure how 2 males interacting will play out in who ends up top bird in the relationship (one or the other will, it's in their nature for there to be a 'flock leader'). Right now, I'd say they're probably just trying to sort out who's the bigger, badder bird. It's pretty typical behavior and they will likely remain good friends even if one is dominant.

 

[Mitchan]

Healthy looking amazons! They do indeed seem to be enjoying their outdoor time

Do note, that while this is early days of their blossoming friendship and close supervision is still very much required, just saying that a certain amount of 'bickering' is normal even amongst mates and long time buddies. My moms amazons were bonded for around 40 years before the male died and they would occasionally get in a "fight" right up until the end. Nipping, intimidation, chasing etc... NEVER injured each other but definitely let each other know when one offended the other in some way. Interestingly, it was usually the female who initiated the 'fights' and the male who high tailed it to the safety of the cage lol. My male BFA was also intimidated by her and always towed the line in her presence. Not sure how 2 males interacting will play out in who ends up top bird in the relationship (one or the other will, it's in their nature for there to be a 'flock leader'). Right now, I'd say they're probably just trying to sort out who's the bigger, badder bird. It's pretty typical behavior and they will likely remain good friends even if one is dominant.

Oh, yeah, definitely aware of that! I've introduced several birds to eachother, at home and at work, and I've always kept my own parrots in pairs (not necessarily always bonded pairs but good friends of the same species or genus at least), only exception being my very first bird years ago Bickering is absolutely expected and fine - however at this point, Donnie and Drogon just won't leave eachother alone. They're both very interested in eachother, and Drogon is a very young and high energy, intense bird, while Donnie has very rusty bird skills. They'll sword-fight with their beaks and growl like demons until the world's end, with either one or both of them sticking their feet out in a meek attempt to mount the other.. And neither one of them is usually stepping away at this point, I have to go in and separate or distract them. I'm not too worried about it since they've at no point tried to actually hurt eachother, they're just very confused as to how to interact at the moment! They'll probably learn in time, but for now, I prefer working hard at making all of their interactions positive so they'll get used to being close to eachother without actually being right up in eachother's faces, beaking and grabbing.

And, it actually isn't in their nature to have a flock leader - there's no dominance in a parrot flock. The entire flock works together equally to survive and to decide direction, speed and purpose, there's no one leader in any regard. Imagining a single individual of these Budgerigars or these Mealy Amazons or these Blue-headed Pionuses would somehow be more dominant or have more of a say in frankly anything, would be crazy to me, and no studies on the matter have suggested that's the way their flocks work, but rather the opposite! Certain species have been observed feeding in a flock while one individual was perched above them, previously thought to be the flock leader, but more recent studies have shown that this is not the case - the "top bird" always changes (peacefully so), and it's been found that the looking-for-predators position is taken on by several, if not most or all, of the birds at some point. They're always equally working together.
When talking about species that don't usually move in flocks but rather in pairs, there's no evidence of any sort of dominance either. They likely have a naturally set dynamic in their relationship to make reproduction as efficient as possible, but that doesn't mean one is a "leader" and one isn't, since that wouldn't be beneficial as a prey animal (as having a flock leader would suggest that one individual takes the lead and decides when it's time to go anywhere and where to go - and having one individual be responsible for when it's time to flee from a predator would not be very productive). Even in species like the Eclectus, a parrot that's not actually monogamous but a female will entertain several males while not actually leaving her nest, and a male will go from one female to another to take care of both or all of them, there's no dominance or "leaders" involved. Maybe some rivalry at most..


Now, of course in our human environments, they don't really have all of the prerequisites to behave fully like they would in the wild. They don't have the same conditions regarding flocks, foraging, choosing partners, etc etc. Most companion parrots don't grow up around other parrots, especially of their own species, to learn all of these things that would be second nature to them in the wild - so it's understandable that it isn't always going to work exactly like it would in nature. But the core of their behavior doesn't change, and they don't really have a concept of dominance in captivity either.
What they definitely do have is their own personalities of course! A bit of a tougher bird could work well with another tough bird (both of them being insistent on not taking any crap, both of them eventually realizing that and "calming down" - often one of them taking on the role of de-escalating first) or it could work well with a more mellow bird (who would just step away when the tougher bird gets cocky, thus not escalating anything and the tough bird "calming down" on their own simply by being anti-provoked). Both of these situations could be interpreted as dominance, and two "tougher" birds not getting along at all and not being able to be kept together what so ever could be interpreted as a conflict of dominance, but that's not the case.
We also have the scenario of two mellow birds getting along well with no signs of anything to be interpreted as "dominance" at all, but still having a lil' argument every once in a while, though for Amazons in particular with their, uh, very Amazon personalities, I'm not sure how common that combination would be



Sorry this got so long It's probably a lot of me just putting too much weight on semantics too, but... Eh. I quite enjoy going off on tangents like these. My immediate friends have since long gotten tired of me talking about birds and ethology for hours on end so you'll have to excuse me for taking this opportunity to get some of it out.... :18:

 

[msdeb]

They are such beautiful, healthy looking fellows! I am glad they are learning to adjust to each other

 

[April]

I’m digging how cute these 2boys look on there swing outdoors , gotta just love when your kids are getting along