Monday, March 21, 2011

A streak of aggression

I've previously posted about issues between Pixel and Shade.

While Shade is mostly passive with all birds, Pixel seems to have it in for Shade. And we generally have moments where she is ultra aggressive and will try to really hurt Shade and then there are moments where she's very neutral (won't say "nice") and tolerates Shade quite closely without anything happening.

Over the last three days we've entered into a aggression streak - regardless of Shade being on me, close to me or somewhere further away, it appears that Pixel's main goal is to get to Shade. While in the beginning it really seemed like she got this way when Shade was close to me, it seems to have escalated to an overall behaviour.

I tend to want to keep Shade close during those times - it makes it easier to intervene and just shoo Pixel before she gets too close. But I sometime, when she is being too persistent, have to either put her in her cage for a few minutes (after a close call) or put her in the birdroom separately so that the tension breaks down a bit.

I'm really hoping that with time she'll learn to just tolerate Shade just like Petey has done with the other birds. But the difference between Petey and Pixel - Petey would attack if a bird came close (and the distance between him and the other bird where he would attack has diminished greatly since he first arrived) and Pixel actually is looking for trouble. Petey would also not discriminate against who he became aggressive whereas Pixel really only has it in for Shade, which makes me wonder if it's about Shade being the only other female bird here.

I hope this streak will end soon - peace is so much more enjoyable!

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