Is It Over???

[Jenypher]

Hormone / breeding season in the United States, that is.

We got Baya (DYH) in November, and the rescue said words to the effect of, "Well...he just started making overtures to the parrot in the next cage, so you may be in for a rough couple of months."

He chose my son as his mate. Despite sitting Baya down and having a nice chat with him about how I'm not a threat to his mate, nor am I trying to interfere in their relationship, Baya was not convinced. I have some scars.

But...in the past few weeks, his behavior towards me has started to drift more towards guarded companionship than consummate rivalry. He's asked for a few step ups, takes walnuts from me very gently, and allows my arm into his cage to change bowls without also attempting to remove chunks of flesh...

I'm sure some of this is just settling into routine and a new home (plus I haven't tried to eat him or anything), but how much of this can I attribute (in your opinion) to the arrival of spring?

 

[Anita1250]

Well, sometimes it can be over and sometimes it won't. My 36 year old BFA can be hormonal way into summer. He starts in the spring with the attack mode, then moves onto mating behavior, then onto feeding his toys as if they are babies. As he has gotten older, he has mellowed a bit.

 

[EllenD]

I think you're going through a combination of hormonal behavior and a newly adopted parrot still settling-in to it's new environment, it's new flock, and new routines/schedules...I think you're going to see a lot of changes in Baya throughout the next year or so, and that also does include the possibility that his chosen person being your son changing as well...In homes with multiple people they do often quickly choose a person in the house as their mate or as "their person" (especially if they are hormonal at the time they are first brought into the home), and then once the hormones calm down or once they adjust and settle-in with everyone and everything in the house and start actually taking-ownership of the home and thinking of it as "their territory", they very often suddenly switch their bond/affection from the person they chose first to someone else in the home...So you just have to give Baya some time to settle-in fully, adjust, and then also for breeding-season to pass...Some birds do this during every breeding-season (usually spring and fall, depending on the species), some don't, some do it all year round, it just depends on the individual bird...But this is still the honeymoon-period for Baya, so when the smoke clears things will probably change...