How sensitive are parrots to age and gender?

[Jayyj]

Was wondering this as I've had a friend staying with me for a few days and for the first time since I've had her Alice is not hugely enamored with the new companion: I can't help wondering to what extent Alice is aware of the fact the guest is a young woman, and therefore feels she needs to make it clear that the role of breeding age female is taken in this household, or if it's simply that she's confused as to why there's a new person in the house and is consequently acting up a little.

It's not been a major drama, but my friend wanted to try handling her so that if they were alone in the front room together and Alice wanted picking up she'd know what to do - first time she held her arm out she got a painful nip, second time Alice cuddled for a couple of minutes then lunged for her chin, third time another hard nip and at that point we decided to give up. It's weird because I've had other people visit and she's usually like a lovesick teenager when someone new pays her some attention, and we did exactly the same routine as before: my holding her on my forearm and the friend offering his / hers for Alice to cross over.

She's quite a nippy bird anyway, but the way she nips me generally doesn't hurt very much and is easily deflected so I've probably been a bit guilty of ignoring the behavior. But I want her to be well socialized and not intimidating houseguests so it's obviously something we need to work on anyway and this recent encounter was really heading into bite territory rather than a nip.

 

[Kalidasa]

uh-oh! alice has some competition!

 

[Jayyj]

Well, I'd be happier if she had a little more competition!

 

[Pajarita]

I don't think she is so much reacting to the fact that she is a woman but to the fact that she is another person living with you two.

 

[davisn456]

Could it be her voice and/or body language when working with the bird? They're so intuitive that any kind of defensive posture or fear tends to be met with aggression sometimes, at least in my experience anyway. I've also been around birds that totally hated people because of their voice. Pitch/volume, etc I think has an effect.

 

[MonicaMc]

Birds can be very sensitive to age and gender. Many birds may be terrified of kids because they are small, hyper and constantly moving! Or making quick jerky actions with their bodies or odd noises.

Some rare parrots may only be handled by kids and will bite adults! It may be due to size, or maybe they just love little kids because they are so animated!

Birds can also tell the difference between voice, facial hair or no facial hair, hair length, etc.


I would say that sensitivity varies on the bird and what they are used to and what they prefer. Some birds can be handled by anyone, others can only be handled by one person or by a few people.

 

[Jayyj]

Her body language at first seemed right to me, confident but steady. After the first two bites, not so much... today and yesterday we didn't try any more out of cage contact, but where I would usually give her treats inside the cage (she gets a pine nut or two if she sits nicely on a perch by the door when I put her back in the cage - before we came up with that she would cling to the bars squawking at me to let her out again) I got my friend to do it, so they had a bit of bonding time through the bars. The friend is leaving today so no time to try to improve things further.

The other thing I didn't mention in my original post that I wondered might connect this to a gender thing is I've had a couple of sexually suggestive displays from Alice towards me in the last two days, which she hasn't done for a while - facing away from me in a crouch with her back arched and one wing lifted. We had a week or so of this sort of display when she was settling in, but I always walked away from her when she did it and she seemed to take the hint that I wasn't putting out, as it were. It seemed like a bit of a coincidence and I know some animals are capable of identifying the gender of other species - there's a fascinating article I read a while back by Peter Benchley about this sort of behavior in dolphins, so didn't know to what extent the same could be true of parrots.

Thanks to everybody for responding!

 

[goalerjones]

For a minute there I thought your FRIEND was making the sexual poses...I was about to get a cup of coffee and some mint milanos and get back to the post to see where this went! "Dear Parrot Forums, this never happens to me but my old college roommate and I did some catching up and the next thing you know...and then the pizza guy came to the door...":09:

 

[Jayyj]

Yes, hotting up nicely over here... But I should probably put on record that the only improper advances have been coming from the feathered one - the friend has been acting with entirely more lady-like decorum!