Parrot Puberty

Earlier this month, Miss Laka celebrated her 6th "hatch day". We don't do cake and candles for this event, but we do see that a birthday card is produced, often (as was the case this year) something that Stephen puts together using his computer. Here she is (above) about to commence the joyful shredding of this year's offering.

At this age, we can expect to see periodic hormonal behaviour. It's not unlike having a human child at about the age of eleven or so. And, sure enough, we got a little sample of it the evening of Laka's birthday.

Stephen and I were sorting and folding the wash in our bedroom. I'd tossed the clean laundry onto the bed and we were going through it, sorting and folding. Laka was with us "helping" (which means she was stomping all over the bed, investigating this piece or that, grabbing the socks we reached for and so on). It was all fine, good fun, at least for a while.

Then Laka's attention turned to one of my tee-shirts, which I'd neatly folded and set down on the bed. She grabbed at it and tugged it, then started pulling it around, forming a swirl of cloth. Her demeanor then changed and I knew we were in trouble. She flattened her back, put her head down and cocked her wings slightly to the side, out from her body. The feathers around her face flipped outward, making her head look larger. Then her tail went up slightly and she started raking her beak along the bedspread in a fairly aggressive manner. She stood on the tee-shirt and struck out at us if our hands came within a foot or so.

What was she doing? That tee-shirt had become "a nest", her nest, and she was warning us to keep well back. She'd claimed that part of the bed as her territory and was prepared to defend it to the death.

-sigh-

She was clearly having a hormone surge, poor thing, and although Stephen and I couldn't help but chuckle a little at her, the truth is that she wasn't playing. From her point of view, it was deadly serious.

A hormonal macaw defending her nest is nothing to mess with. Although normally very gentle and loving, she was a fairly dangerous animal for the moment. For her it was no game. Her beak is very powerful, capable of crushing a brazil nut with ease. Anyone foolish enough to come within striking distance might end up with a nasty injury.

She momentarily stepped of the shirt and I made a very quick grab to pull it away. I hoped that, deprived of it, she'd settle a little, but that didn't happen. She moved back to the spot where she'd scrunched it into a swirl of fabric, and started scraping her beak on my quilt. If I didn't move fast now, she'd surely rip into the quilt. I triple-folded a bath towel and draped it over my arm, then moved in toward her, extending my arm and commanding her to step up. She struck with all her might at my arm and chomped into to towel as hard as she could. The terrycloth protected me, and I persisted, pushing my arm under her belly until she had to step up or fall over. She stepped on the towel grudgingly, lowered her wings and tail, and the feathers around her head dropped back to normal position. There was still fire in her eyes, though, and although I could get her to step onto my other (bare) arm without a fight, I knew she was still pretty worked up.

It all ended without anybody getting hurt. And I learned a valuable lesson. Although I've known for some time that "nesting behaviour" was probably going to commence soon, I hadn't anticipated the speed with which a macaw will get "nesty/nasty". Or maybe she'd been giving us signals we didn't recognize until she went for that tee-shirt. In any event, it's clear that puberty has arrived; we can expect more of these incidents in future.