My 2 parrots can't find peace

[Muffinsunny]

Hello,

First off I want to tell that english isn't my native language, so sorry if my story is gonna be a bit messy!

3 years ago, I bought my sun conure after my green cheek died. It really is a loving bird and nice to everyone. Men, women, children, dogs and cats.

Lately I started to be a little bit busy with my study. (The bird is still out of his cage atleast 6 to 8 hours a day) But since my mom got a new job too, he was lonely while I was at school and my mom at work most of the day.

I decided to buy a second bird, just so that he has someone to whistle to. After a year of research and reading into getting a second bird. I decided to get a hahn's macaw. Same size, both from south amerika and kind of the same behaviour.

So exactly 1 week ago I picked him up at the breeder, he was eating on his own and ready to leave his last brother (so sad, they kept calling eachother). It has been wonderful so far, no agression in the bird, loves a scratch and steps up easily.

But here is my problem. They are now in seperate cages. I made a big indoor aviary (1x2x2 meters). After a few days (I know it might be too fast), i placed them in the aviary just to check it out. They seemed to have fun.. But on their own. As soon as the hahn's macaw flaps his wings(the sun conure is clipped), my sun conure gets scared and suddenly goes right after the macaw, really like a charge and determend to kill him. This also happens when the macaw gets too close. If I threat train them together they are fine. And most of the time when I tell my sun conure to stop before he goes into a rampage, he snaps out of it and walks away from the macaw.

The macaw is ofcourse curious, and sometimes goes to the sun conure. But I can really see the difference between the way the macaw goes to my sun conue, and the way my sun conure goes AFTER my macaw. At night and when I'm not home they stay seperated.

Half an hour ago my sun conure bit the hahn's macaw in his shoulder, really hard. The macaw was screaming like he was going to die, so sad. I checked on him and he was fine, and now playing around again. He is only 14 weeks so he is still figuring out how to climb, fly and defend himself.


So my question is, how can I make them to be fine with eachother? They dont have to be best friends or something, just be ok with eachother. And what do I do when my sun conure is attacking the macaw? Ofcourse i seperate them, I've got like 20 holes in my hand already. How do i "punish" my sun conure for bad behaviour?

I do give him threats when he behaves well and such and it is going better. It just seems that my sun conure doesn't know how to interract with one another and sees him as something he needs to defend himself from. I also tried practicing in other rooms and such.

Hopefully you can help me out here!

[LadySaphine]

You can't force birds to become friends with each other. Chances are the Sun is feeling territorial. You'll have to keep them away from each other, or somebody is going to get hurt (I've seen pictures of a coral-billed pionus's beak that was ripped off by another parrot). Normally it's the smaller bird who starts the attack, and it will bother, nip toes, and bite until the larger bird can't stand it and attack back. I would keep them away from each other, and wouldn't take them out at the same time. You can probably keep them in the same room, but not together (I'm not too sure on how aggressive Hahn's or Suns can get, though).

[janetafloat]

I am sorry Muffinsunny, but what on earth are you doing? You have introduced these birds far too quickly, which you don't need me to tell you, and now you're continuing to expose them both to significant trauma and injury. And you want to punish your sunny for being less than thrilled with the whole thing?! I really hope that you can start to have more understanding of your sun's reaction, and take a huge step back and start the whole process again slowly and with understanding that your sunny may never take to this new bird. Hopefully he will and will be less lonely as a result.

[Muffinsunny]

Thanks for the quick responses.

As I said, I might have introduced them too early. BUT from every advice I've been reading: The one person says you have to expose the birds as quickly as possible, and the other says you have to give them lots of time. There are so much different opinions. My breeder said you have to introduce them early so the new bird grows up being used to the sun, and the sun "growing up" with the baby hahn's.

I'm not here to get judged on my mistakes or whatever. I'm here for advice and specific methods. I was also saying that I know that they dont HAVE to be friends. They have seperate cages. And I only have them together on each side of the aviary (2 meters between them). My problem was the fact that my sun gets scared quickly from sounds etc, so the flapping of my new bird which triggers agression.

I hope I can get some useful advice and specific methods with steps on how to cope with this specific kind of behaviour.

[Polarn]

First thing that comes to mind is that pairing clipped birds are harder than paring flighted ones since you remove the option to quickly fly away and perch somewhere else. I trust my little ones with plenty larger ones, but, and this is a big BUT it all comes down to the area where they are out of cages... I can fly my little ones in the same area as someone else flies larger macaws or toos... but then were speaking stadiums etcetera, in a decently large livingroom in an unfamilliar enviorment (for everyone included) I may trust em to be out together but then perched on separate humans. If I were to bring any larger birds into my little ones turf I wouldn't trust em outside of the cages at all, well I hardly trust one of em with the other as it is and not with any kind of bird but with a big size difference there are bigger problems and it is harder to get birds to get along in their own homes than it is at a strange location with room to house plenty.

So I would simply roll back keep em separated until your sun if fully flighted and then start slowly letting them having more access to each other (starting with visual).

[Muffinsunny]

My sun was fully feathered as for a few months ago, but he did not fly at all by himself. I got him to fly to his cage from any direction, but he never flew from one point to another. Only with sudden sounds which scares him (sneezes, doorbell, microwave ping, door closing etc etc) he flies off. Our room is full of windows so I decided to clip him again because he kept flying against the windows when he got scared.


Also, when I take my sun or hahn's out of the room. They start calling eachother. Not sure if that means anything?

[Polarn]

There is a great difference between calling to get a response or actually interacting or have nothing to separate them, an aviary bird will learn todo certain sounds because they will receive a sertain sound back from the owner, weather this is a wolf whistle or actual speech, but something that grabs the owners attention enough to speak back. however this bird may be totally fine with this vocal interaction through the bars and find it amusing it may very well have a total freakout or going into frenziemode as soon as the owner steps into the aviary to clean it.

heck my brothers bird sounds like a cat and if he hears a cat outside he will start with his meowing but he is fraked out by anything except humans, and the cats keep calling throguh the windows but if the cat were inside odds are pretty great that "findus" would freak out and the cat would try have him for a meal.

But then some birds work great in company of others others do not, my zon had his best friend be a budgie and I never actually had any problem with it even if I would never leave them alone together (unfortunitly the budgie is now gone at the age of 22 , a little too soon but 22 years ago she wasn't fed a high quality diet either) but as for my brown headed's especially one of em I wouldn't trust enough to ever let him interact with a smaller bird, well I have let him fly with a tiel once, and it worked great but nah, I prefer him to be out with other pois or the larger species atleast then I'm not the one having to walk around with my heart up my throat worrying sick my bird is going to hurt someone elses...

Again my brothers bird doesnt enjoy company of birds at all he simply prefers humans and therefor does not have a birdie friend. And he is an eclectus wich usually is a pretty easy bird to pair up... So the is a chance your birds will never really be able to be out together or even comftible being housed in the same room as the other. They may need to be out of each others visual field in order to be calm and able to rest properly.