cuddles!

[chika]

my quaker clover loves to cuddle with our irn which is super cute. and thats wht their doing on the desktop screen.( ontop of it) so she was cuddling with him and wanted hhim to scratch her with his beak( which is why she doesnt really like pets from fingers.) so she nudged him a little. he didnt want to so he shuffled away a little. clover cuddled into him and nudged him again! lemon shuffled a bit ( like 1 cm.) away again. clover kept doing this for like 3 more times when on the fourth like lemon was at the edge of the screen so he slipped off and i saved him before he got a bad injury and he bit me so under my breath while lifting him up to the top of the screen i was like " ahhh. ouahahaha oooh owowowow" so it seemed to take painfully long to get him there. now they are sleeping on the top of the screen so its hard to type quietly.... im going to move them somewhere more comfy....

[Wolf]

Does anyone actually have any idea of the ages of these two birds? It was mentioned only briefly that I am aware of and then it was only that Clover may have had a mate that she was separated from but nothing more on this. It is possible that they are bonded or could just view themselves as flock mates. Would really like more information before making any suggestions.

[chika]

unfortunately we dont know the ages of these birds. all we know is that the people who owned them before us had them for about a year. for the gender of the birds.. well we're just assuming. my sister ( the one who owns the irn) is trying to get my dad to go for a gender check at the vet she found a vet that handles birds and she had the money since it wasnt that much but our dad said no.

[Wolf]

With the IRN, you won't need to have the DNA testing done to tell its sex, just look for the neck rings. If it is a male it will have a black and pink neck ring, if it is a female the ring will either not be there or it will be very light almost like a shadow. I know of no way to tell the sex of a Monk except through DNA testing.
It will be very interesting for me to learn from you about these two birds. The Monk or Quaker lives communally and builds large communal nests. The IRN is an extremely social bird also and often roosts and hangs out with other birds including other parrots. For me it means that some of the behaviors that they exhibit will have a different meaning than they do in other parrots, probably not totally different but there will be some differences. Pajarita grew up in an area where these birds, the Quaker, was a native species and will be much more knowledgeable about them and their behaviors than I am.
In a lot of parrots this preening of each other, especially if they are of opposite sexes would be a pretty good indication of a mate bonding, even if they are of a different species. But due to the nature of these two birds I would think that this would be less likely to be such an indicator, but I don't know enough about either of these species to be sure as to how to view this as in my thought the are just as likely to be showing normal flock behavior as opposed to mate behavior.

[Pajarita]

Well, for what it's worth and going by what we have been told, it seems to me that they are mate-bonded.

[Wolf]

That is what I would have said had it been any other two species as well. I just did not know how their natural behaviors would affect this.

[chika]

well like i said we dont know any of our birds genders so for all we know they could just be really close friends. i told my twin a joke about how if clovers mate is lemon then we will soon have an indian quaker. if i see her building something i will inform the forum.
also i will try to convince my mom about how the birds need real air and real sunlight. though their are very small windows in the basement... but they still neeeed air.

[Pajarita]

No, even if the female (Lemon?) lays eggs, they will not be fertile, the species they belong to are too far apart, genetically speaking, so they can't produce hybrids.

[chika]

actually ithink clover is the girl alsoi taght her a trick this morning ( she actually taght it to herself which is pretty cute)

[Roonil Wazlib]

that is so cute!!