The Agressive Queen

Rani is a female red sided Eclectus. She is our third bird - born May 28, 1994, brought home in September. The males of this species are green with red under their wings and have a candy corn colored upper beak. The females beaks start out that color and turn black as they mature. We certainly didn’t have to guess at the sex of this bird!

In my experience this is a hard bird to care for – at least the female is. I understand that the males are the sweeter of the two, and the female is the one who guards the nest in the wild. I certainly believe that! For the first seven years of her life Rani was extremely protective of her cage. She managed to bite me in the face three times. (That REALLY hurts!) She got me once under the nose and twice took hunks out of my bottom lip. Each time I dropped my guard for just a moment as I was cleaning her cage. It took everything I had just to walk away when I wanted to lash out at her.

When she was younger she didn’t like to be touched. She would step up with no problem, but was quick to let you know she would tolerate no petting! When I held her she just sat nicely on my arm. I don’t know why she changed, but from the time she was about 7 she has been much less cage aggressive and when I hold her she is up on or near my shoulder either buried in my hair or making kissing noises as she rubs her beak back and forth across my face. I can now touch and pet her on her back and head – actually anywhere. Sometimes she nests on my shoulder and just looks at me lovingly. Other times she’s totally annoying – biting at my ear or my glasses, scratching on my shoulder like a chicken.