Summer constantly wants to get on top of the new conure...

[summerday]

hi,

I recently got a baby green cheek conure named Lucy. Summer is now 3 months and a half old, and Lucy is 3 months old. It's my first time with a conure so I didn't know what to expect, but so far Lucy has been demonstrating very quiet and calm behaviors.

When it comes to interaction, Summer is the bully. She loves chewing Lucy's tail or wings. She even tried to nibble on Lucy's nose. I'm not sure if that's her way of showing affection; if it is, Summer isn't doing such a great job because Lucy is very annoyed and often terrorized. Summer is free-flighted and Lucy came wing clipped and can't fly. Maybe that's what has determined their hierarchy.

Lucy's rather defensive and never approches or attacks Summer first. If Summer gets too annoying, shd just lightly touches Summer with her beak and Summer backs away. (I think birds are better at reading each other's language) But I know what Lucy can do with her beak, so I never let them interact unsupervised.

Now the thing that Summer does that bothers Lucy the most is that she constantly tries to get on top of Lucy's back. I don't know why. I think Summer is too young to demonstrate any sexual behavior. Can this mean something else, like show of dominance? Because Summer most certainly is the dominant one so far lol If she sees Lucy eating anything, playing with anything, she takes it away from her.

But she's more like an annoying older sister; she never, ever attacks Lucy.

Any comments are appreciated!

[linda040899]

Now the thing that Summer does that bothers Lucy the most is that she constantly tries to get on top of Lucy's back. I don't know why. I think Summer is too young to demonstrate any sexual behavior. Can this mean something else, like show of dominance? Because Summer most certainly is the dominant one so far lol If she sees Lucy eating anything, playing with anything, she takes it away from her.

Summer is very jealous of Lucy and the intent with getting on Lucy's back is to harm her so she will go away. She sees Lucy as competition and wants her gone. I'm going to be a bit graphic here but it's the only way to describe what could possibly happen. Lovebirds, especially females, can be very dangerous to new birds and they are very capable of killing what they want gone. The normal site of a fatal injury from a lovebird is to the back of the head, as they proceed to bite and bite and bite until the back of the victim's head is broken open and the victim goes into shock and dies. Is Summer capable of this? You better believe she is. I've had a baby kill another baby and it wasn't pretty.

For the time being, you may not want them out of their cages at the same time.

[summerday]

oh my god. Thank you so much for this info. I am so shocked. I thought Summer was just being annoying...

it's so hard to believe that my baby bird has a dark side to her, but I take your words very seriously. I won't have them out together anymore.